A night on patrol with New York City’s Guardian Angels

On a cold October night, four men wearing red berets and silky, matching bomber jackets gathered outside a New York subway station.

“We’ll go to 135th tonight,” said Josh Penner, the Guardian Angels’ patrol lead for the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “We generally stop at 125th, but fuck it! Let’s do that tonight.”

When he said the f-word standing in that public spot, he made sure to say it a little more softly than the rest of the sentence. The other guys, gathered around Penner, nodded. Penner, a 51-year-old finance manager, smiling, with one foot up on a concrete step, looked like a military general commanding the troops.

The Guardian Angels were started by Curtis Sliwa in 1979, when crime was trending upwards in New York City since the 50s. (It peaked in the early 90s, and has plummeted since)

When this story was reported, he was in the final days of his campaign as Republican mayoral candidate for New York City, and did not answer my interview requests.

In the 70s, Sliwa was then a high school drop-out managing a McDonald’s at night. He grabbed some of his staff, practiced martial arts in the restaurant, and hit the streets.

Their focus was subway cars. A strategy questioned by Reiko Hillyer, who in 2017, wrote a scholarly history about the Guardian Angels.

“Statistics show that crime on the subway did not occur at higher rates than on the street,” Hillyer told me.

The question of whether or not the Guardian Angels actually reduce crime at all, is one Hillyer said she couldn’t exactly answer — but gave an educated guess. “It could be hard to prove that causal link,” she said. “So, I would say no, there is no demonstrable evidence that they reduced crime, but that, according to a few studies, their presence did make people feel safer, especially on the subway.”

To my surprise, Penner agreed.

“I feel like our job is more to make people feel safe,” he said. “Than literally deterring a crime.”

But, Hillyer told me that since there is no evidence that the subways were actually more dangerous than elsewhere during this period in the 70s and 80s, that feeling of safety is problematic.

‘I REMEMBER YOU GUYS’

The Guardian Angels posing with a woman who asked for a photo. She was just leaving a nightclub, and said “you guys are so cool” while the picture was being taken. The man on the left is not a Guardian Angel but was just tagging along, Josh is second from left, and Esuke is furthest on the right.

“I remember you guys from the 80s!” a man in an SUV cheerfully said as he honked his horn and drove past Penner and his group tonight. Penner smiled, looked both ways, and went onto the street to give him a promotional card and a fist-bump.

That happened about five times in their patrol that night.

“I would say about 90% of our interactions are like that,” Penner said. “Because they know us. There are people of a certain age who remember the Guardian Angels and remember us walking around this neighborhood.”

The other 10% are bad. As we left a subway station and walked through a dimly-lit park, two men were looking down at their hands in what could have been a drug deal, or could not have been. Penner went up to them and asked how they were doing.

When one of the men in the park looked at him skeptically, Penner extended his arm for a handshake.

“You need to back up. Like WAY the fuck up,” the man said to Penner. Instead of shaking Penner’s hand, he pointed his finger in his face.

Penner quickly walked back about eight feet — so fast and smooth it looked like a Michael Jackson moonwalk.

Penner briefly explained who the group is and what they do. “We’re just trying to keep people safe,” he said.

The guy was not having it. “I ain’t never heard of you,” he said. “Not once.”

The Angels walked away, and did not look bothered at all. “That’s a very rare interaction,” said Penner.

Though he says it’s rare, there are other instances of things like this happening to them, as documented on the internet.

In a Facebook group called Upper West Side Together, a woman named Eve Apollonio posted a photo of the Guardian Angels on patrol. The caption:

“Guardian Angels on patrol tonight. 82nd & Broadway. Thank you! Curtis Sliwa. It’s just a shame when some woman walking past with her dog had the urge to remark and call them Neo-Nazis…”

That Facebook group, by the way, is part of the reason the Angels are doing more patrols on the Upper West Side.

In the summer of 2020, in an effort said to be aimed at reducing COVID-19 in shelters, homeless people were given rooms at the local Lucerne Hotel. This, from the perspective of some who live in the Upper West Side, caused a localized spike in crime. Statistics from the NYPD do show a 125% jump in crime in the Upper West Side from 2020–21. But, it can’t necessarily be attributed to the homeless people in the hotel. Either way, the Facebook group, originally called Upper West Siders for Safer Streets was born. It’s full of locals complaining about the perceived spike in crime, and wanting change. To this day, it has over 15,200 members. They have turned it into an organization off Facebook as well, called West Side Community Organization.

“The Facebook group is thousands of people who want something done,” said Penner. “They’ll like our posts, but nobody comes out. Nobody wants to actually do something.”

I reached out to the NYPD, NYPD union, Upper West Side Community Board, and the organization behind the Facebook group. Nobody got back to me for comment.

In the group, Sliwa, who lives in the area, posted last summer that he would be giving a talk at a nearby park, promising solutions to crime in the area. At the talk, he promoted not only his mayoral campaign, but the Guardian Angels. He announced that their patrols would pick up in the neighborhood.

Penner was in the crowd that day, and that’s when he decided to join.

GOING UNDERGROUND

Esuke and Josh talking with a man crouched over in a subway station. They asked if he needed medical attention, but he said he was just resting. (Photo: Julian Abraham)

The Angels walked into a subway station to get on the trains — a staple of their patrols.

Penner walked up to the glass box where the MTA attendant sat. He waved and pointed to the gate, meaning “please let us in.”

The lady in the box shook her head “no” with a furrowed brow. Penner looked surprised. He waved to two NYPD officers standing beyond the gates, and they smiled, jogged over, and let them in. One by one, the Angels fist-bumped the officers and said thanks.

“She doesn’t like us,” one of the Angels, Eisuke Saito, said with a laugh, pointing to the MTA employee in the box. He speaks with a slight Japanese accent, and his name is pronounced “S.K.”

I first met Eisuke on the subway in the summer. He was taking his two boys to soccer — where one of them plays at a pretty high level. They’re 11 and 13.

Eisuke, a 49-year-old stay-at-home dad who lives just outside of the U.W.S., in Harlem, says his kids inspired him to start volunteering with the Guardian Angels. “My boys noticed crime was getting bad in our neighborhood,” he said. “There was needles everywhere and people having sex between cars.”

“My boys said, ‘Daddy, you’re such a good person, why don’t you do something about it?’” he said. “So I had to do something.” He had the Angels’ business card and he decided to join.

When we got behind the gates, two of the angels stood up straight and extended their arms. The other two patted them down, searching for weapons. They did this right in the middle of the terminal, and the pat-downs actually were thorough — you could hear the patting sounds.

“We can’t carry weapons,” said Penner. “So, if we run into a couple gangs just openly dealing drugs, we can engage them, but there’s not a whole lot we can do. God knows what weapons they have on them, you know we’re not that stupid.”

As they walked down to the subway, Penner commanded the troops. “110th street!” he said. He made a 1–1–0 gesture with his hands for one of the guys in the back just in case he didn’t hear over the loud subway approaching the track.

We get on. There’s one Angel per car. They stand at the back of each train car, peaking through the windows at each other.

A man comes up and asks Penner for money. “I’m sorry, we don’t carry money on us, but is there anything else I can help you out with?” he asks. The guy ignores him and keeps walking between cars to the next, almost falling off during a bump in the ride.

“So,” Penner whispered to me with a laugh. “It’s not that we don’t carry money on us. But if we gave out money, we would literally be giving money out all the time. Some of the guys bring snacks for the guys, but there’s only so much we can do.”

Judging by the number of people who did ask them for money on patrol, it’s hard not to agree that it would be an expensive way to volunteer

We arrive at 110th street. The Angels take one step out of the closing subway doors, and stand in unison facing the train. As the train leaves the station, they pivot, following it with their eyes and eventually turning to face it as it disappears into the dark tunnel.

“In the 80s, and 90s, we lost a few guys,” said Penner. “That’s a tradition where we pay tribute to them.”

Six Guardian Angels have died during patrols: “some by gangs, and some by cops who mistook them for bad actors,” said Penner.