The UJA-Federation of New York, the largest local philanthropy in the world, announced last week that it allocated $400,000 to four all-male Haredi patrol groups in Brooklyn, even as controversies surround two of them.

The patrol groups – Williamsburg Shomrim, Boro Park Shomrim, Flatbush Shomrim, and Crown Heights Shmira – were established between the 1960s and the 1990s to offer an extra layer of protection for the community, amid concerns over antisemitic violence. They regularly assist police and community members on issues of crime and safety.

However, two of the groups, Boro Park Shomrim and Williamsburg Shomrim, have faced controversy over acts of violence and sexual abuse committed by their members.

This past July, the founder and former leader of Boro Park Shomrim, Jacob Daskal, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl. Daskal was accused of using his role at Shomrim to pressure the girl to stay silent.

After Daskal’s guilty plea, the chair of Boro Park Shomrim, Rabbi Berish Freilich, told Shtetl that the Boro Park Shomrim cut ties to Daskal, but he expressed doubt about whether Daskal had committed a crime at all. “It’s an isolated incident, if it was whatever it was,” he said.

Daskal told the New York Daily News in 2011 that Boro Park Shomrim maintained a list of 15 suspected Haredi child molesters they didn’t report to the police.

In 2022, a Brooklyn court awarded $4.5 million to Taj Patterson, a man who was beaten up by members of the Williamsburg Shomrim in 2013. Patterson said the beating caused him to go partially blind.

The UJA said it did not require the groups to show they’d responded in any way to the controversies as a condition of receiving funding. “Funding of the grant is conditioned upon confirmation that the dollars are being used for the intended purpose,” Emily Kutner, UJA’s director of public relations, wrote in an email to Shtetl.

The UJA’s funding is meant to provide a new patrol vehicle for each of the groups, plus other costs associated with increasing patrol presence in neighborhoods with large Haredi communities. The funding was allocated through the Community Service Initiative, a project of the UJA and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. A portion of the funds are provided by anonymous donors, whose names Kutner declined to share.

The UJA picked the four Brooklyn groups since they cover “areas most vulnerable to anti-Jewish attacks,” according to a press release.

“Shomrim have an excellent track record and provide critical security resources to our Jewish neighborhoods,” said Hindy Poupko, a senior vice president at the UJA, in the press release.

On Thursday, Borough Park community leaders, including Freilich, celebrated the donation, according to the news outlet Boro Park 24.