I don’t know, maybe this is a remnant from a story in a comic book, but don’t I remember hearing about some vigilante gang in New York that supposedly roamed the city to stop would be muggers and such?
Let me know if I need to lay off the crack…
Maybe you’re thinking of th Guardian Angels.
You’re thinking of the Guardian Angels.
Thanks guys, I knew it was some kind of Angels but I couldn’t remember what it was.
They were going to have Guardian Angels in the UK too, maybe it ended up happening. I seem to remember a guy being interview on Wogan about it, which dates the whole thing massively, but then Dom Joly used to take the mickey out of them much more recently on Trigger Happy TV. Essentially he just stood imposingly at the end of a subway carriage, dressed as a Guardian Angel (beret, shades, etc) and every few moments he’d say loudly “Everything okay? Is everybody okay? There will be no trouble here today, you may consider yourselves safe. Okay?”
It was a lot funnier than it sounds. Still maybe they were a good idea, I can think of a number of times when I’d have welcomed a large self-employed bodyguard on board public transport. Does it work? Have there been any awkward and/or entertaining mishaps? (no tragedies please, I’m too tired)
The Guardian Angels had plans for Sydney in the mid 90s. I think one or two of them may even have gone “on the beat” on the trains for a couple of days. However, the Police Commissioner just said, “Vigilantism? Nuh. Not on my patch”, and the whole thing was forgotten overnight.
My brother was actually a Guardian Angel, back when the city was really going to hell with crime in the '80’s. It’s a bit incorrect to characterize them as a ‘vigilante gang’, though; they worked with the cops, carried no weapons, and underwent extensive training and background checks before they were allowed to ride the subways. Their chief weapon was their visibility.
I’m not claiming that they never ever did anything wrong, but they were important in NY for a while and the first step in the change of thinking that ordinary citizens had the right to ride the subways without such a climate of oppression and fear.
I just saw a story on one of the local (Atlanta) news broadcasts. Apparently, the Guardian Angels want to patrol the Buckhead district (which contains a lot of trendy, ‘beautiful people’ bars and clubs). I think there have been some murders recently in the area. They met with the poilce, who basically told them thanks, but no thanks. The leader (who looks spiffy in his jacket and beret, by the way) said, in a quickie interview after the fact, that they were going to be patrolling the area anyway.
I don’t know much about the organization, besides what I have just heard on the news and read in this thread, but I hope they’re not the type to go in, and say they reduced the number of crimes, when instead the reduction may come about because the city recently changed the bar closing time to 3:00 instead of 4:00 am.