London – The Shomrim (“guardians”), a volunteer-based Jewish organization, has been keeping London’s Jewish neighborhoods safe in cooperation with the Scotland Yard for years. Now, with the riots in the British capital, their work has become doubly important.
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This week they have already managed to thwart looting attempts in one of the Jewish neighborhoods, in an operation befitting of a Hollywood blockbuster action movie.
“We decided to go out and show a presence in the streets,” chief executive of Shomrim North-West London Gary Ost told Ynet. “We realized that people start riots when there is no police presence on the scene, and then it is hard to control them, so we wanted to stop it in the Jewish neighborhoods before it gets started.”
Ost says since the riots erupted, however, the phone has not stopped ringing.
The Shomrim decided to expand their operation, work around the clock on two 30-men shifts that patrol the Jewish neighborhoods in north-west London including Golders Green and Finchley. “We sat down with the police chiefs on Saturday night and on Wednesday and exchanged information,” Ost added.
Since the start of the riots, the Shomrim callers have expanded to include concerned citizens outside of the Jewish community.
There was a similiar story in the NY TImes yesterday describing a similiar “self-defense” effort in several of the Turkish and Pakistani neighborhoods of London where a strong local ethnic group united in a show of force to defend their homes and shops against looting. Good for both of them.
@Anon Why do you bother reading that leftist rag called the NY Nazi Times?
There’s an article on VIN today about how the Times published misleading information during the Crown Heights pogroms, just like they failed to properly cover the Shoah, and nearly every day, they publish something negative about the State of Israel.
Groups of vigilantes – you can call them whatever you like – are not the way to preserve law and order in any community.
We pay taxes to support legal and lawful police forces; they should be more than adequate. Vigilante groups always put their own private agenda before those of the larger communities in which they live.
We have not heard from the GB Jew about this situation. He always enunciates his barbs of the USA, regarding its sociological problems. Therefore, I’m wondering if he would kindly car to comment on the situation in the UK, pertaining to the riots, and the weak response to them?
As if shomrim can do soething when a group of 20 6 foot fat shvartze armed with knives and sticks approach them. They’re helpless.
I wonder what does the achronim NWCP on the young man’s vest stand for. Curiously, one of the two patrol organizations, is called by the same achronim and in ours it stand for Northwest Citizen Patrol.
Anyway, the brave men are doing the great service in London. I know, as long as we are here, nothing like this will happen to our neighbourhoods in Baltimore.