Guardian Angels to Resume NYC Subway Patrols After Sleeping Passenger Burned Alive

Crime prevention activist and former New York City mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa has announced that his public safety organization, the Guardian Angels, will return to the city’s subway, citing how the “Daniel Penny effect” makes civilians turn into bystanders.

Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in 1979, said that his volunteers will resume subway patrolling for the first time since 2020 following the recent gruesome arson murder of a sleeping passenger, the New York Post reported.

“We’re going to have to increase our numbers, increase the training and increase our presence as we did back in 1979,” Sliwa said at Brooklyn’s Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island subway station, where the unidentified woman was burned to death just days before Christmas. 

“We went from 13 to 1,000 [members] back then within a period of a year,” he continued. “Because the need was there. The need is here now once again. We’re going to step up. We’re going to make sure we have a visual presence just like we had in the ’70s, 80’s and ’90s.”

In a video recorded on the platform with some of his volunteer Guardian Angels standing behind him, Sliwa stressed the need for his red-beret-wearing guards to collaborate with police in order to curb the violence on public transportation.

“If they are homeless or if they are emotionally disturbed, see if they’re okay. If all of a sudden we walk into a situation where there’s an episode, which oftentimes happens, we have to calm it down. A lot of times… they know of the Guardian Angels, we can have a calming effect,” he said.

“We can also bring the situation to the attention of cops on the platform… generally, that’s why we always stick our heads out at the station,” he continued, explaining how his volunteers will ride the subway with passengers and carefully observe the platforms at each stop.

Referring to the prosecution of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who put subway vagrant Jordan Neely in a chokehold for threatening other straphangers, Sliwa added, “Citizens won’t do that because unfortunately, the Daniel Penny effect has frozen them.”

“They’re not going to get involved. I’ve seen grown men who normally might have gotten involved — they’re just not getting involved any longer. We train, this is what we do, we know how to do it,” the chief Guardian Angel said.

The Guardian Angels currently has 150 members in New York City, and there are many chapters in other major American cities and internationally.

Social media users responded to the announcement positively, with several people reflecting on the nostalgia of growing up with the Guardian Angels on the subways in the 80s and 90s:

However, a representative for Mayor Eric Adams (D), to whom Sliwa lost in the 2021 New York City mayoral election, scolded the Guardian Angels founder for pulling off “meaningless stunts” in a statement to the New York Post. 

“Mayor Adams is committed to improving the lives of New Yorkers, which is why he frequently rides the subway to speak directly with everyday riders about how we can make it safer,” City Hall Press Secretary Kayla Mamalek said.

“The mayor surged 1,000 police officers per day into the subways, has brought down overall crime and transit crime, delivering real action — not theatrics — but he knows there’s still more work to be done,” she added.