Knockout Reaches Boro Park, NYPD Arrests 4 Perps

But officials were disappointed that the attacker was only charged with a misdemeanor as a hate crime and then released on a small amount of bail, and the three others who goaded him to attack were not charged at all.

Councilman David Greenfield demanded that authorities charge all four suspects as felonies and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

“It is now time for the NYPD and district attorney to throw the book at these thugs and make it clear that our city will not tolerate this type of behavior, especially when people are being targeted because of their race or religion,” Greenfield, a Brooklyn Democrat, said.

With current Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes leaving office on Jan. 1, it will fall on the incoming district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, to decide how to confront the attacks.

Leaving a Yom Hatzalah event for Satmar on Motzoei Shabbos, Thompson told videographer Shimon Gifter that he will decide when he takes office how to end knockouts.

“There is not room for such outrageous conduct,” Thompson said. “Assaulting innocent people must come to an end, and I am going to deal with it when I become Brooklyn DA on Jan. 1.”

Walking on 18th Avenue and East 5th Street in Kensington, Shmuel Perl was returning from a job at about 2:45 a.m. when he heard four Hispanic teens arguing if they had the guts to knock him off. Before he was able to turn around, he was punched in the face and sent sprawling.

Knockout is what counts for fun in some minority gangs. The goal is to see if they can knock out the victim with a single blow to the head. The utter senselessness of the crime — few of the dozen victims in Crown Heights and Midwood in the past two months reported anything stolen — makes it particularly heinous.

Perl, according to a video recorded by Shomrim, overheard one member of the gang challenge another, saying, “I know you can’t do it.” Another responded, “No, you can’t do it.”

“Yeah, I can do it! Look, I’ll do it to this guy!” one of the gang, Amrit Maragh, a 28-year-old barber, allegedly shouted before punching Perl.

Perl was not injured seriously and he was able to call Shomrim, who called the police. Four suspects, who were celebrating Maragh’s birthday at a nearby bar, were arrested at the scene.

Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) praised the work of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Commander Michael Deddo of the 66th Precinct, and Shomrim, and said he hoped the “four thugs … will be treated with the severity of the law.”

Maragh, who has a lengthy rap sheet, was released on $750 bail, a small amount for a crime that has residents of Boro Park and Crown Heights terrified. The other three members of the gang were not charged.

All four denied hurting Perl.

“I didn’t knock out no Jew!” Maragh yelled to members of the media as he was escorted from the 66th Precinct on 16th Avenue and 59th Street Friday night.

“He has a lot of Jewish friends,” said Dagoberto Hernandez, 38, one of the four. “None of us touched [Perl]. He was there, and he walked away fast. Less than 10 minutes later, we were arrested.”

“We don’t play those childish kid games,” James Santa Cruz, 31, claimed.

But Kelly said that Maragh admitted to discussing the knockout game and then succumbing to a dare by the others to see if he could do it.

A slew of black elected officials in Brooklyn announced Sunday they are planning a press conference on Monday at 1:00 p.m. to denounce the knockout phenomenon.

Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Yvette Clarke, both from south Brooklyn, and Brooklyn Borough president-elect Eric Adams will “articulate steps to address it in New York City and throughout the nation” in front of the Crown Heights Youth Collective, they said in a joint release.

Even Al Sharpton, a black leader whose race-baiting was blamed for the Crown Heights riots 23 years ago, condemned “knockout” attacks. But he did not call for a rally, as he often does when blacks are attacked.

“This kind of behavior is deplorable and must be condemned by all of us,” he said at his weekly National Action Network meeting in Harlem. “We would not be silent if it was the other way around. We cannot be silent or in any way reluctant to confront it when it is coming from our own community.”

Sharpton said he will discuss with other African-American leaders how to confront race attacks by blacks against Jews.

Meanwhile, Kelly said that police were still trying to determine if knockouts were premeditated hate crimes.

“Yes, something like this can happen,” he said Friday night, “but we would like to have people come forward and give us any information they have. … We ask anyone that this has happened to to please come forward and let us know.”

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the November 25th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.