Amidst Calls To ‘Defund The Police,’ The Guardian Angels Are Patrolling NYC’s Neighborhoods

As crime soars and calls to defund the police continue, New York City’s neighborhood vigilante group “Guardian Angels” are helping to patrol the streets.

Guardian Angels “is an unarmed, volunteer safety patrol” that exists in 13 countries and 130 cities, the group’s founder, Curtis Sliwa, told the Daily Caller. “But, we will physically intervene, we will make citizens arrests, we are not just eyes and ears. You know, see something say something – we take action on the spot.”

A combination of ongoing unrest following the death of George Floyd, the coronavirus pandemic, and rising crime has left the group “overwhelmed.”

Sliwa said that the Guardian Angels have seen “the most dramatic increase in requests that we’ve had in 41 years.”

“In terms of people wanting our presence where they feel there’s a void because there’s no police because of defunding, and also because I think in some instances the police have taken the attitude ‘okay, you want to see what your world is gonna be like without police? We’ll give you a little sample,'” Sliwa said.

“And people are basically saying … enough, we need police,” he added. “But in the interim, as this battle continues, they need something. So they’re reaching out to the Guardian Angels.”

Sliwa started the group in 1979 to patrol the areas of New York City’s subways that didn’t have a police officer assigned to them because of budget cuts. The community was grateful for the group’s presence, he said, but the police were not – it wasn’t until Rudy Guliani was elected mayor in 1993 on a law and order platform that the Guardian Angels’ relationship with the police became friendly.

“We haven’t had any problems from the police since,” Sliwa said.

The group faced controversy in 1992 after Sliwa admitted to faking six crimes for publicity, the New York Times reported. Several former co-workers claimed that there wer... (Read more)

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