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Vigilance paid off Thursday night when four perpetrators of the “Knockout Game” were apprehended in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

The twisted Knockout Game consists of gangs seeking an unsuspecting victim who one member tries to knock out with one punch, like in a video game. Similar attacks are being reported in St. Louis, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and elsewhere but in New York recent targets have almost exclusively been Jewish.

Local Jewish patrols, known as Shomrim, have stepped up their presence in neighborhoods in the borough of Brooklyn in the wake of such attacks.

“A group of four to five men came towards a Jewish man walking on 18th Avenue and Seton Place,” Yanky Daskal of Borough Park Shomrim told VIN News. “They surrounded him and tried to knock him out but were unsuccessful. They started running away while he called Shomrim, but we followed the suspects until the police got there and they were all arrested.”

According to Daskal, the attackers were all in their 20’s and were Hispanic.

“Everyone is very concerned about the Knockout Game which is happening nationally,” an investigator at New York’s 66th precinct told VIN News. “People see it on YouTube and everyone starts to copy it, wanting to outdo each other. Victims are being picked randomly if they look like easy targets.”

The investigator described how the dramatic events unfolded.

“He called Shomrim immediately [after the attack] and they had a unit two blocks away,” said the investigator. “Shomrim saw one of our officers and told them there was an assault in progress and he jumped in his car and was there within one minute.”

According to the investigator, over a dozen officers raced to the scene.

The Knockout Game is “spreading like wildfire,” the investigator said.  “Our job is to get the bad guys and protect the community.”