On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article citing one possible solution to the increasing level of crime on the New York City Subways.
The article reports:
The Guardian Angels are resuming their patrols of the Big Apple’s subways as if it were crime-riddled Gotham in 1979, after the horrifying arson murder of a sleeping straphanger on a train last week, founder Curtis Sliwa said Sunday.
The red-beret-wearing volunteer vigilante squad is beefing up its ranks to its level 45 years ago, Sliwa said.
“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 the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station in Brooklyn where the woman was killed.
Curtis Sliwa is now 70, but he still loves his city as much as he did then. He has been a fighter for the city for a long time.
In August of 2005, The New York Times reported:
Testifying in the federal racketeering trial of John A. Gotti, Mr. Sliwa said he thought he had “hit the lottery” when he climbed into the back of the cab he had hailed near his apartment in the East Village before dawn on June 19, 1992. The driver recognized him and seemed to know that he was going to the WABC radio studios near Madison Square Garden, where he was host of a morning show. Within moments, Mr. Sliwa said, a second man popped up from under the dashboard “like a jack-in-the-box,” pointing a silver-plated pistol at his belly.
“Take this, you son of a bitch,” Mr. Sliwa recalled the gunman saying. He said he heard at least three shots, and felt blood spurting under his shirt and then searing pain in his legs, “like a knife through hot butter.”
Mr. Sliwa managed to escape the taxi and survived. Now he is back to help again.
In 1994, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton instituted what is called the Broken Windows Theory which resulted in a decrease in crime in New York City. One of my daughters was a freshman at Cooper Union in New York in 1992. The difference in the city the year she began her education there and the year she ended it was noticeable. New York City needs a mayor like Rudy Giuliani again (and the help of the Guardian Angels).