Mamaroneck, NY – In the space of about 19 hours ending Thursday, a rabbi from the New York suburbs was arrested twice and pleaded not guilty once on three separate charges of impersonating a police officer.
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In each case, Rabbi Alfredo Borodowski was on the roads of New York’s suburbs when other motorists angered him by driving too slowly or cutting him off, police say. So he allegedly flashed a phony badge and tried to get them to pull over.
The rabbi’s unusual case has made headlines in the car-centric suburbs north of New York City and gained momentum after his first arrest, when others came forward to tell authorities he tried to stop them while driving.
The latest arrest stemmed from an encounter in Yonkers in April when “what appeared to be minor road rage escalated,” state police Investigator Joseph Becerra said Thursday.
He said Borodowski angrily waved a badge at a driver who cut him off on Interstate 87.
“Words were exchanged,” Becerra said. The other driver and his passenger “felt they were intimidated by this individual and he was purporting to be a police officer.”
The passenger videotaped some of the encounter, he said. The footage is not being released.
Borodowski surrendered Thursday at a state police barracks in Hawthorne and was charged with the misdemeanor form of criminal impersonation. He is due in court July 29.
The rabbi’s lawyer, Andrew Rubin, said Borodowski suffers from bipolar disorder.
Thursday’s arrest came just a few hours after Borodowski pleaded not guilty in Mamaroneck Village Court to the same charge, stemming from a June incident in which Borodowski is accused of pulling his Camry alongside a woman’s car, flashing a badge and shouting “Police! Police! Pull over!”
Police said he told them, “That girl was driving too slow, and I hate when people do this.” He denied posing as a police officer.
Prosecutor Diana Hedayati agreed to reduce the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. The revision means the rabbi is much less likely to be jailed if he’s found guilty.
The Westchester district attorney’s office said the charge was reduced from felony status because the rabbi’s behavior did not include intent to commit another crime while impersonating an officer.
Judge Daniel Gallagher ordered a psychiatric evaluation and adjourned the case to Sept. 12.
Borodowski did not speak during the proceeding and refused to answer questions outside the courthouse. Richard Clifford, a lawyer representing the woman who reported him, said he was not disappointed that the charge was reduced.
“Putting everyone in jail is not a solution,” he said.
On Wednesday, Borodowski was arrested in White Plains. A driver there complained the rabbi had confronted him in a rage in May, claiming to be an officer and displaying a badge. The driver said it appeared Borodowski wanted him to drive faster.
Borodowski has been fired from a position at prestigious Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. He is still listed as the leader of a congregation in Larchmont. The Journal News reported Thursday that the synagogue’s president wrote a letter to the congregation saying members should help the rabbi “recover from his illness and … welcome him back as our spiritual leader at the appropriate time.”
Video below courtesy of The Journal News
he also plead no guilty to impersonating a Rabbi.
If he is a rabbi, I am the Exalted Grand Poobah of Bensonhoist.
I’d like to send him a gift certificate to Eichler’s so that he can get a nice yarmulke!
2 & 3 Need a double dose Chill-Pill!
Lighten up and stop barking at posters!
It was a very funny comment.
It’s even funnier that #3 is berating #1 for posting anonymously while calling himself……Yup! Anonymous!!
Oich Mir ah rabbi
Talk about the issue. His rabbinic credentials or lack thereof are Not the issue. He is alive today, only because NY doesn’t have as many gun tote motorists as say TX or FL.
Is he the angry-looking guy in front?
Or the guy who looks like a cop in the back?
How about if I makey own medical school in my parents basement, and I reject everything modern medicine teaches, from Hippocrates till Pasteur till curie and beyond, can I still term myself Doctor?
And will you and everyone else respect me as a doctor?
Of course not!
Well, that in a nutshell is a reform rabbi,
a rejection of the entire Rabbinic tradition and the divinity of Torah and Rabbinics- yet they want to be entitled Rabbi???
Especially this retarded yokel, creating chillul hashem in the most asinine way imaginable.
As the above poster said, “oich Mir ah rabbi”
Reform is not Judaism. It is a foreign practice that has its roots in secularism of a confused sort. They ordain their leaders as Rabbis but they’re not. They are just Reform propagandists. The Reform practice a social liberalism and call it “religion”.
They are a bunch of phonies concocted by a nut in the 1800’s. Their numbers are dwindling and they will hopefully disappear altogether very soon. More than half of them are toayvas so they can’t procreate which will speed up their end. (No pun intended)
What this guy did is a chilul HaShem. Those attacking Reform are doing another.
Thank G-d he did not harm anyone (unlike the camp counselor arrested at Dora Golding today, for example).
Cool it.
To anonymous number 17:
a: you called me a worthless piece of human garbage.
I don’t think any human is worthless garbage- clearly you do.
B: I called tjis guy retarded. You took issue with that, thinking I was denigrating people with developmental disabilities.
The fact are precisely the reverse.
I don’t call people with disabilities “retarded”, but you clearly do.
I called this guy retarded, and you decided that was a slur against disabled people.
That’s YOUR problem and YOUR terminology, not mine.
C: nobody can be prosecuted for calling someone a fake rabbi, particularly in a joking way on an online forum. If you think they can, you must be, ahem, “developmentally disabled”.
Oh and btw, please identify yourself, so I can sue you for calling me a worthless piece of garbage.