Dressed up in matching outfits like the Guardian Angels, Baltimore's Shormrim patrol group takes to the streets to snuff out crime before it happens in the city's northwest neighborhoods.
But relations between the Jewish group and black residents are strained, because a member of the group was accused of roughing up a 15-year-old black boy and telling him he didn't belong in the neighborhood.
Police arrested Eliyahu Werdesheim (pictured), 23, a former Israeli special forces fighter, for assault, reckless endangerment and false imprisonment for the scuffle with the boy, who suffered a broken wrist and head lacerations.
Werdesheim claims the boy tried to hit him with a stick and sustained his injuries as Werdesheim defended himself. Shomrim leaders said Werdesheim has been suspended as an internal investigation continues.
Early reports of the incident say the boy was walking on a roadway, when a Shomrim patrol drove next to him for a distance and then jumped out of the van and surrounded him. The boy was then allegedly jumped on by Werdesheim and another man.
Shomrim means "watchers" in Hebrew and was started in 2005, after a series of robberies in Baltimore's Orthodox community.
Perhaps this Werdesheim character should face charges and maybe do a little jail time for his overexuberant patrolling with the 15-year-old.
But that does not mean that Shomrim should be disbanded or looked at in a negative light by blacks in the community.
There is nothing wrong with organized groups patrolling their community when police fail to do the job. After all, that is how the Black Panthers started in Oakland in the 1960s.
It sounds like Shomrim had a bad apple among its group -- not unlike every police department in the nation.
As long as Shomrim provides some better training to its members and sticks to the definition of its name and "watches" before getting physical with members of the community, everything should be fine.
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Dressed up in matching outfits like the Guardian Angels, Baltimore's Shormrim patrol group takes to the streets to snuff out crime before it happens in the city's northwest neighborhoods.