The Guardian Angels, “a private, unarmed crime-prevention group,” will begin patrolling the streets of Brooklyn and and other majority-Jewish neighborhoods, it says, following a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in New York City, culminating in a mass stabbing that took place Saturday night at a Hanukkah party in a suburb of the metropolis.
The group, led by Curtis Sliwa, is best known for patrolling the streets of downtown Manhattan in the 1980s, when crime in the city was at an all-time high, and places like Times Square were hubs of adult entertainment and beehives of crime. The Guardian Angels, clad in embroidered red satin jackets and red berets, became a fixture of of the subways, which they rode to and from NYC’s high crime areas, where they conducted their surveillance.
They now feel compelled to help protect the Orthodox Jewish communities, under seige by anti-Semites. The group told NBC News that they plan on starting patrols at “noon in the Crown Heights neighborhood and [will] expand to Williamsburg and Borough Park later in the day.”
Sliwa actually made the announcement before an anti-Semitic attack in Monsey, New York, Saturday night that left five people critically injured. A man, wielding a machete, broke into a rabbi’s private residence where he was hosting a party for the seventh night of Hanukkah. The man stabbed several partygoers before being scared off, then tried to break into the synagogue next door. Occupants of the synagogue locked the doors and the man took off in a silver sedan. He was captured in New York City after his license plate triggered a reader on the George Washington bridge. – READ MORE