Vigilante: The Incredible True Story of Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels (2017) - full transcript

(funky music)

(police sirens in distance)

(dramatic jazzy music)

- It was a normal night,

I had my three hours

and then all of a sudden

woke up in a cold sweat

because I'm always

fearful I'm gonna be late.

And I was doing the morning radio show

at the most powerful radio

station in the nation.

So, I'm out of the house,

immediately I'm running up

to the all-night news stand

in the Lower East Side

which was part of the

Alphabet Jungle back then,

avenues A, B, C, D, I'm

able to hail a yellow cab.

And the yellow cab comes right to me.

And when I jump in the

back of the car and I say,

"Hey, Mack, Madison Square

Garden, I'm running late."

And he said, "Hey, no problem, Curtis."

It's like I hit Powerball, the Lotto, whoa.

Remember this is 1992, most cab drivers,

they were tending goats

outside of Amman, Jordan,

just three days before,

they didn't have a hack

license, they didn't

know their way around,

they didn't even know how to drive a car.

Yet somehow, they were in a yellow cab.

This guy, a white guy, a guy

who spoke English, a guy who

knew me, now I could max and

relax, read the sports pages,

I was in Seventh Heaven,

this was Nirvana for me.

And then at about 13th

Street, instead of going left

to the West Side, where

Madison Square Garden is,

he turns right and he goes

east towards the East River.

And I said, "Hey, Mack,

turn this hack around."

And now he really bares

down, and all of a sudden,

I hear strange ruffling from the front

of the car near the passenger side.

And unbeknownst to me, a guy

had been stuck underneath

the dashboard, awaiting his opportunity.

And he comes up with a

.38, he's wearing a mask,

an Irish walking cap, and

he has his ass, his tuchus,

on the back of the dashboard,

and all of a sudden,

he's aiming that .38 at my

three-piece set, and I'm not

talking about the knife,

the spoon, and the fork.

I'm gonna dive and try

to open up the door,

unbeknownst to me, they

had taken this stolen cab

to a chop shop and they had

turned it into a rolling coffin

'cause they knew I would fight back.

And they sawed off the

handles, and put 'em back on

with crazy glue, so what

happens when I grab the handle

to open up the door to

dive into incoming traffic?

The handle comes into my hand and pop!

And I see how the gun goes

back, and then all of sudden

the flames are coming right

out of the barrel of the gun.

And it's heading towards my

lower extremity, and clearly

I had been hit but I don't

feel jack diddly squat.

I had never been shot

before, shot at, yeah.

But never shot before,

and I'm assuming, wow,

I'm gonna be gripped in

pain, I'm gonna be bleeding.

But there's nothing, and

then all of a sudden,

he raises the gun and he shoots it again.

And I see the fire coming

out of the barrel of the gun.

But this time, I feel pain,

incredible pain, cramping.

The most incredible cramping

I had ever had in my life.

I can't even breathe now,

now, I had been shot twice.

So I'm bleeding like a

sieve, and the gunman

had hollow-point bullets so

when upon impact they hit me,

they started shredding everything inside

before they tried to make

their way out my back.

I used the seat behind me as a trampoline,

and I dive in the

direction of what I think

is an open window, the

gunman has now put the .38

in my back and clicked off his final shot.

And upon doing that,

pushes me out the window.

And the assumption is,

I think from the driver

and the gunman is he's dead on arrival.

There's no way he's gonna survive that.

Well, guess what, John Gotti

Junior, let me ask you this.

If you're such a man's man, alright,

you see all this damage, you see all this?

These are the bullets that

Iannotti put into me based

on your orders, from Gambino headquarters.

And he took the Code of

Omerta to protect you.

He's doing 20 years and you're

out of your ponderosa there

in Oyster Bay, Long

Island, pleading poverty

like you can't live that

you were used to living

when you were the number

one capo di tutti (boss of all bosses)

in organized crime, in

the shadow of your father,

the man who called on

me to get hit by you,

John Gotti Senior, you're all a disgrazia.

(uptempo alt-rock music)

Oh, the ugly '70s, it turned New York City

into like, the armpit of

the cesspool of crime.

I gotta tell ya, it was

an era of Uzi toting,

dope sucking, psychopathic

killing machines

laying siege to the outer

boroughs and Manhattan itself.

Various street gangs with

cut-off knee jackets,

rockets and patches, trying

to imitate the Hell's Angels

except they had no Harley Davidsons

But they were an enemy

and a menace to society.

And they were on the trains

and the trains themselves

were scarred with graffiti,

you couldn't look out

of the train windows to

even know what train station

it was coming to, with

the smell of defecation

and urine everywhere, it was

an attack on your senses.

And even if nothing

happened to you on your trip

on the subway, you just felt so violated.

- [Reporter] The

graffiti-scarred subway system,

deafening sounds, frequent

equipment failures,

three million people

jammed together each day,

riding through 230 miles

of what often can be

a subterranean nightmare, a

haven for crime and violence.

- Hey, do you have any money?

- I'm not your street pawn,

I'm not your street pawn.

- Yeah, she want

no beef right now.

- And then let's say

you were going to the Deuce, 42nd Street.

You would go right on

this great white wave,

Broadway, and you would

see theater after theater

that had no shows on it's promenade.

You go down Restaurant Row and

restaurants were being closed

because of the cretins

with chromosome damage,

and so many miscreants who were

just snatchin' pocket books,

who were pickpocketing and jostling.

Then you had these greasy-haired pimps

that looked like Super

Fly, TNT, out of those

black exploitation movies in the '70s.

And then they had their

men, women, I don't know

if they were frozen

vegetables, who were walkin' up

and down, they would sell ya their butt,

they would sell you anything you wanted

and take you 'round the

world in 80 seconds.

And naturally, like

vendors selling popcorn,

drug dealers everywhere,

so the feeling was

that when you're finished

walking through Times Square,

you needed to take like, a hot shower.

Now, some people would

get a vicarious thrill

out of that but most people

would be paralyzed by fear.

And all of a sudden, you

were living a life of fear.

You're a grown man, 6 foot

2, 220 pounds, all buff,

and some little cretin

could come up to you

who's like 4 foot 8, 80 pounds

soaking wet, and grimace,

and have a frown on their

face, and you would give 'em

all your money because you

would be afraid that they would

take your life.

$5, give ya three flicks, the

brothers would be in there

talking trash at the

screen, they'd be pullin'

their tooties out, sometimes

shooting at the screen.

And that behavior would go

right out into the streets.

It was just a seething

cesspool of crime, drugs,

prostitution, decadence, and debauchery.

This is the era of the '70s

that bled into the crack era

of the 80s, and had New York

City in the grip of decadence,

of debauchery, of

hopelessness and despair.

People who had money,

they packed their bags

and they left, people who

were living on fixed income,

like in the Bronx where I

started the Guardian Angels,

all they did was put

more bars on the windows,

more locks on the doors,

and that's the New York City

that spawned yours truly, Curtis Sliwa.

You know, in the 1960s,

all roads led to Canarsie

or through Canarsie out to Long Island,

that's one up the county,

because it was the last refuge

in the city for white ethnics.

Jews escaping Brownsville,

the public housing projects

and tenements, and Italians

from nearby East New York,

they stopped off in

Canarsie, but it was like two

totally different worlds; the

very best, the very worst.

Oh, I remember that day I

broke my mother's heart,

Francesca, I was going to

junior high school at the time,

Bildersee Junior High

School, my grades were good.

But then all of sudden,

I started chasin' skirts.

I was interested in trim,

you know, a shot of lake.

And my grades plummeted, all

you had to do was throw on

some cheap Chanel Number 5,

some toilet water, and have

a nice pear figure, and all

of sudden I went mishegoss.

And my mother said to me, "Curtis, Curtis,

what is wrong with you, you used to sleep

with your baseball glove,

now you're talking about

sleeping with girls,

we gotta get you into

an all-boys school, you gotta

go back to Catholic school."

I said, "Oi, back to Catholic school."

And it was my dad who came to my rescue.

He left the ship where

he was a merchant seaman

and he said, "Hey, kid,

you got three choices.

Go back to school, that's the easiest.

Pack your bags, and

get the hell outta here,

I never wanna see you again,

or go out and get a job,

and pay $70 a week, room and board."

I had no negotiable skills and I saw an ad

in the New York Daily News,

night managers for McDonald's,

wanting, and I heard my

calling from Ray Kroc,

and I got on that number

two train to Beast,

went for my interview, and

the next thing ya know,

I'm a night manager at Micky D's.

It was a nightmare AM and

a double nightmare PM.

And luckily, I didn't

listen to Marvin Barnes,

the general manager

that I was assigned to,

because he did everything by the book.

Oak Brook, Illinois, you

know, McDonald's University.

They wouldn't even let me go.

- And courtesy

is what makes it all run smoothly.

- Give me a filet o fish.

- Thank you.

- Good afternoon.

- And a chocolate shake.

- May I help you?

- Sure, hi, yeah.

- [Narrator] Courtesy that begins working

for you the minute you great the customer.

You've got the idea.

- Right, coming right up.

- [Narrator] Smile, all the time,

whenever there are customers around.

And even when they're not,

smiles are contagious too.

- I came under the influence of my mentor,

and my (foreign language),

my friend for life, Don Chin,

who was another night manager who said,

"You could either do it the McDonald's way

in the Bronx and six of

our employees will carry

your casket, and be at your burial.

And we'll give ya, I'll

give ya a great eulogy.

Or you can do it the Don Chin way

and survive to live another day."

(jazzy music)

And he told me,

"Lesson number one, you're a white boy,

you're a (foreign language),

you're dead meat up here."

Where it's mostly blacks and Hispanics.

"You're a sucker, you

have, on your forehead,

the word sucker and everyone

is gonna try to Vic you down.

They're gonna try to victimize you

from the time you come into the store,

the time you run your shift,

to the time you gotta make

the drop, the bank depository

drop across the street

in the bank, to the time you gotta leave

to take the train all

the way back to Brooklyn,"

where I was livin' at the time.

So I listened intently, and

then I walked into the area

where they prepare the burgers,

fries, and strawberry shakes

and over the warmers, over

the bin, Don had an array

of pipes, sticks, bats, all

kinds of home-made weapons.

And he said, "Lesson number

two is that you're gonna hire

a crew to cover your back,

I don't care if they burn

burgers on the grill, I

gotta know, when I go over

the counter to deal with

the problem in the lobby

that my crew is in solidarity."

It's us and we not I and

me, and that stuck with me.

And so time and time

again, I'd have to go over

the counter, brothers would come up to me,

and they pull the old classic trick.

They'd buy a Big Mac and eat

seven-eighths of the Big Mac,

come back up front say,

"I wanna see the manager."

And I'd come up front, and I'd look

and I'd see most of the Mac was gone.

"Hey, I want either another

Mac or I want my money back."

And I would say to them,

based on Don Chin's training,

"What do you think, 'cause

I'm white, I'm a sucker?

Nah," and they'd say,

"Okay, (stammering angrily)

you're gonna claim that I'm

ripping you off, white boy?

You better come over here and we'll

settle our differences man to man."

And back then, it was one on one.

The crowd would yell,

"One on one, one on one!"

Black and white, that's all you had to do.

And people started pourin'

in, in the streets.

And I can handle myself, and

man, I would pick 'em up,

body slam 'em, and you

would hear the bones

in their ribcage rattle

and all of a sudden,

I had street rep, hey, the

mad Chinaman, Don Chin,

was considered number one, second to none.

But I was earnin' my strikes

and I slowly but surely

got to the point where I

understood what Don meant.

And then Don decided to

give me the ultimate test.

One night, he was off, and

he must've been in a gin mill

banging back a few Irish car bombs.

He loved Jameson, and he

comes in on his Harley,

into the lobby at

McDonald's, and he's wielding

a machete, the wild

Chinaman, and he jumps over

the counter and he comes

back into the grill area.

And he challenges me to a

duel and I remember, as a kid,

I loved Zorro, that was my hero

as a little whipper snapper

growing up, so I grab my

machete and it was like

I was Zorro and he had the best of me.

And at one point, I was

blockin' his machete thrust

and he had me bent over this hot grill.

And lucky for me, he snapped out of it.

And then he started to laugh,

he had this belly laugh

in which I passed the final Don Chin test.

He hopped over the counter,

he got onto his Harley,

and he rode away, and

everyone in that McDonald's,

nobody left, none of my crew

members, they had my back.

And I made my bones,

and I knew from then on,

I could dominate the streets

and the subways of the Bronx.

(dramatic music)

- They have reclaimed

our neighborhood for us.

I can now walk out in my neighborhood

because of these citizens.

- Wouldn't you feel safer?

They're having a gang like

that walking through your

streets, of course you

would, so we do too.

(uptempo music)

- And then one night,

things really, deep six.

The Savage Nomads were

competing with the Savage Skulls

and the Black Spades to

be the number one gang

in all of the Bronx, bum rushed me

in that Micky D's.

- Conquered enemies.

Those are our conquered

enemies right there.

Which one's there or what their names are.

Hit it floor, Joe, relax, relax.

I'm just explaining to them

about enemies, compadre,

cool?

(uptempo music)

Past-tense enemies, what

happened through the past.

- So they come in and they

start pullin' the chairs out.

You know, these are metal

chairs, and they start smashing

the front window panes,

now, we're talking a lot

of moola shmoola, a lot of

duckets, a lot of cheddar there,

that was gonna come out of my pocket.

So I jump over the counter

and I'm catching a beat down

and my crew, at first, hesitated

'cause these guys were

Bad with a capital B.

And then slowly but surely,

I heard 'em jumpin' over,

they were pulling guys

off, they were hitting guys

with the bats, the sticks, and the chains

that we had assembled on the

grill area in preparation

for any kind of all-out assault.

And we fought off the Savage Nomads.

We had created a sanctuary,

we had created a zone

probably the only place

in the Bronx at that time

where you could go at

night, and be unfettered

by any gangbangers, criminals,

miscreants, or thugs,

or thugettes, and I

said, you know something,

I should apply this to the trains.

And that's when I realized,

after watchin' Bronson

in Death Wish, De Niro in Taxi Driver,

I wasn't gonna live vicariously

through these vigilante

movies that were the hits of the '70s.

It was time for me to fight back.

But I couldn't do it by myself.

And the seeds of the subway

patrol that I created

were put into place.

(dramatic music intensifies)

(rock music)

So now I started to think

about a uniformed presence.

Something identifiable,

a red beret, a t-shirt,

something that would equate to people

that this is organized,

there's a regiment,

there's a discipline,

it's not a street gang.

Because that's what the

Bronx was known for.

There were street gangs

in every neighborhood.

Sometimes there'd be two on every block.

And so I went through the preparation.

I brainwashed my closing

crew which consisted of,

lucky for me, blacks, Hispanics, whites,

and yeah, even two Chinese brothers.

And I convinced 'em, come on out!

Ride the trains with me at night.

But slowly but surely, I

was able to convince them

that we could do this, and

everyday they would come back

to renew their shift at like 4 o'clock

or 8 o'clock at night,

and work to closing,

12:00 or 2:00 in the morning,

and suddenly they would

be deflated because everyone

at home would say, hey,

that guy's a white devil, are you crazy?

He's putting nonsense into your head.

You could be shot, killed,

who's gonna care about you?

No, no, no, no, no,

avoid him at all costs.

And yet, I would get back

into their hearts, minds,

and souls, and eventually,

we began to patrol.

But, oh, I couldn't have

been more hopelessly wrong

about the way this would be accepted.

I thought we were gonna

earn the Congressional

Medal of Honor, I thought

this was the highest form

of selfless service, risking your life,

going out on patrol on

the number four train,

the muggers express, the

number two train, the Beast,

wearing a uniform that made you look

like a Pop-and-Fresh Pillsbury

Doughboy and Doughgirl

in a red beret and a white t-shirt.

And all of a sudden,

the Warriors was debuted

by Paramount Pictures, it's

become a cult-classic film.

In which it depicted gangs on the subways.

That was February 8th of 1979,

February 13th I announced

that 13 young men would begin to patrol

the city subway system and one day

there would be 13,000,

and before I could get

that last word out of my mouth,

the guy who had befriended

us and who would actually

put us on a pedestal,

Ed Koch, that's the

new mayor, vilified us.

He put the scarlet letter on us.

He said this is vigilantism,

he would call us

the Hell's Angels,

reporters would correct him

and say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They're the Magnificent

13 Subway Safety Team."

"Aw, they're like the Hell's Angels,

they're vigilantes, I'm not gonna let

13 young men in sneakers

provide public safety

in the city of New York," and from that,

the cops, who had suffered

incredible cut-backs

in staffing because the

city was on the brink

of going chapter 11,

so they were concerned

about their colleagues

getting back on the job.

And now, all of a sudden, the

police unions were saying,

by any means necessary, stop them.

- They're inexperienced,

they really know nothing

about what they're doing,

someone's going to get hurt.

I think it all comes to a head,

maybe when one of these kids gets killed.

- We are prepared to

die for our commitment,

we get paid well, it's true,

but we are the representatives

of law enforcement for the society.

Not a bunch of rag-tag

kids with sneakers on,

who have absolutely no concept

of what law enforcement is.

- And so, the call to

arms for all the cops was,

arrest them, you see them,

cite them, write 'em tickets,

lock 'em up, drive this

idealism out of them

because we truly believe it,

you scratch 'em right down

to their bones, they're nothin'

but thugs and thugettes.

That in fact their motivation

is such that they'll just

become another gang.

- On December 30th, 1981,

Guardian Angel, Frank Melvin,

on patrol in the Dayton Street

housing project in Newark,

New Jersey, was shot once

through the heart and killed

by a Newark police officer.

- A police officer, identified

to us by the members

of this patrol, badge number 891,

a sergeant, called Kasey,

stopped Frank dead in his tracks.

Frank opened up his jacket, said,

"No need to shoot, I'm a Guardian Angel."

Exposed the shirt, no

weapon being exposed,

no threat to any police officer,

and without one word being

uttered by any other police

officers there, was shot dead.

For you and I who fight back,

we get called vigilante.

We get called, accusing of

abusing other personal rights

and privileges, who have

been the hemorrhoids

most often to Guardian Angels?

The criminals who we're risking

our life without weapons

to stop, why is it that the

police have been our major

adversaries in the cities around America?

The deck was stacked against us.

And Ed Koch, who had

been one who saluted us,

was now doin' everything he

could to stick the shiv in us.

People were coming to the McDonald's,

from Brooklyn, from

Queens, from other parts

of the Bronx, from Manhattan,

even Staten Island, to join.

And this was great, we put 'em

through a training program.

And they started subway

patrols in their own areas.

And all of a sudden, we

began to slowly grow.

But in the interim, I

was getting locked up.

Other Guardian Angels

were getting locked up,

set up by the cops, they

just try to so decompress us,

so depress us that we would

give up these patrols late

at night until the wee

hours of the morning.

And then on September

4th, Labor Day, 1979,

our numbers had grown

so we were no longer 13.

- [Reporter] The Guardian Angels,

they started as 13 kids with

a plan to fight street crime.

Now they've grown to more than 1,000.

From New York, to Philadelphia,

Atlanta, Los Angeles.

Across the nation, the

red berets are helping

the cities in fear.

- And we were asked

to patrol Central Park

because there was a series

of gay bashings in the rambles.

And at the time, the police

were very homophobic.

Ha, they'd say, "Oh, you're a gay guy?

You deserve it then," and

so we took it upon ourselves

to go in there and patrol

so that they gay bashings

would stop, and all of a

sudden we were embraced

by the counter-culture,

in fact, the Clash,

the counter-culture group of our lifetime,

actually dedicated a song to our exploits

called Red Angel Dragons, oh,

now, we were considered like,

hip-hop, graffiti artists,

and Guardian Angels.

And I walk into this Bushido,

this Japanese art gallery,

and I see this drop-dead

gorgeous statuesque woman.

Well-spoken, just radiating,

not only with beauty

but with strength, and class,

totally above what anything

I had ever been with

involved with before that.

She was top-shelf, five

star, a woman would come

from a privileged background,

enriched with New Jersey,

as opposed from the heart of the hood.

But she had a way of mesmerizing,

and she was intoxicating.

And she walks up to me and she says,

"You know, I was thinkin' about joining

the Guardian Angels, what

do I have to do to join?"

I said, "Well," I said, "Lady, you know,

you have to come up to the Bronx.

And you gotta fight your

way through an Apache line,

because that's the way

you had to earn your cred

to join us because it was considered

you were like a kamikaze pilot."

It was suicidal to join us at that time.

You had to have fighting skills.

She said, "Oh, I'm a

practitioner of Goju-ryu Karate,

I'm a black belt," and

I said, "Well, look,

anytime you're ready, come on up.

Six guys on one side, six

guys on the other side,

and then there's a guy at the end.

And you gotta fight through all of 'em.

And you're gonna catch

quite the beat-down."

Well, guess what, she

showed up on a Friday night.

She was gi'd down, we took her in the park

where we train, and she

fought through the 13.

She got hit but she gave

it as good as she took.

She had 13 inch combat

boots on at the time.

Which, I say, yeah, she's hardcore.

And from there, she earned her cred

by going out on patrols,

developed the leadership,

that obviously she was a natural

born leader to begin with.

And earned the credibility of a group

of predominantly black and Hispanics,

and convinced us, the male

machismo that was pumping

through our veins and arteries,

that we needed to get women involved.

And through her leadership,

she attracted so many

other women, and diversified

the makeup of the group.

And assisted me, she was

side by side with me.

- I joined the Guardian Angels

because I wanted to help other people.

And once I learned how to defend myself,

I thought that I could share that

and make some impact on the community.

And I think I joined for the same reason

that a lot of other kids did,

and that's we live in a rough

neighborhood, and we didn't

like what we were seeing.

- And I fell hopelessly in love with her.

I mean, that was the real

first love of my life.

Because we were working

together, we had a mission,

we were idealistic, we

had so much in common

that we couldn't have been more different

in terms of our orientation

and our upbringing.

She had gone to the best schools.

She had the pedigree, I was

the blue-collar working class

kid from Canarsie, Brooklyn,

but not only did we have

the urge to merge but

it was a spiritual bond

that helped us overcome all

the adversarial situations

that we had to face in the future

as our group began to grow and expand

throughout the country and the world.

- Tonight on Prisoners of

Fear, the Guardian Angels.

They have been described by

some as thugs, vigilantes,

amateur crime fighters,

they have been criticized

by police departments across the country

but praised by ordinary

citizens who say they feel safer

with the Angels around.

- These people are puttin'

their lives on the line,

they're very respectful,

they don't bother anybody,

they don't look for trouble.

They carry no weapons,

they have our full support.

- I feel very strongly

that the Guardian Angels,

I've had some experience

from particularly at night,

and I'm very happy to see them.

And I feel they provide

a worthwhile service.

- I'm very glad they're around.

I'm very glad they're around.

- A person committing

a crime, they think twice

before they do anything

because these guys are there.

- You know, we've seen them

up in our neighborhood,

we live up in the Bronx.

They were escorting some ladies home.

- To church.

- You know,

when you see something like

that, that's very nice.

- They're actin' like angels.

(laughing)

- Guardian Angels.

- More or less, yeah.

- [Reporter] I mean, what

is it they do, I mean,

don't you think that maybe

a bunch of vigilantes--

- They stop people from

harming other like,

older people, like,

ladies, you know, females

that be riding the trains

late from home from work.

You know, things like that.

- I see 'em

more than I see cops, 'cause you know,

they be on the train, they

be on the train every time

I get off the train, I always bump into

a Guardian Angel, not always,

but as I get off the train,

I seen one walks past.

- They watch out for you,

you know, like a Guardian Angel.

- Now, at the time, my

nickname was the Rock.

Because I could rock your world.

I could hit you so hard,

your mother would feel

the vibrations, and I

had a nasty veneer on me.

In fact, I would chew

nails, it was all part

of the psychology, of proving

that I was tougher than tough.

Because, again, in this urban environment,

being a white guy immediately

targeted you as a sucker,

as being soft, weak, someone

who would fold like a cheap

camera, and not necessarily be

absorbed into the street culture

that was dominated by

the black and Hispanics.

And yet, with Lisa, obviously

she revealed my softer side.

So, I was a guy at the time

who threw nickles around

like manhole covers, here

she was, an elite model.

She's doing magazine spreads,

she's with the paparazzi,

she's with the page-six

people, she's with the cultural

elite, and I am down there,

you know, knuckle dragging

with street folks, so I

approached her one time

in a moment of weakness,

'cause we were out of sight,

out of mind, and I took her

for some dirty water hotdogs

right, and we had some Doctor Brown's

'cause I loved Doctor

Brown's, the cherry soda.

And we began to bond

then, and I could see,

this wasn't beneath her,

a dirty water hotdog,

a Doctor Brown's, I mean,

it was cool that I could see

that she could relate,

and slowly but surely,

we began to work with one another.

We began to go to events with one another.

We became one of those

couples that everyone

was fascinated with because

they couldn't quite figure out

what would she be doing with this guy.

And what would this

guy be doing with Lisa.

And she was living in the Lower East Side.

Right there on Avenue

8 and St. Mark's Place.

And I moved from the Bronx

to be with Lisa 24/7, 365.

People were shocked because they said,

"Man, what happened to the Rock?"

He's become a pebble!

- So, I've never seen

the show, I don't like the show.

I'm sure the audience

doesn't even like the show.

- Howard, you're in such a bad mood today.

- Yeah, but the truth that I came on

is because I like you two guys.

- Well, thank you.

- We're the hosts,

you're supposed to be the guest.

(laughing)

The other thing, wait a minute, wait

a minute, the other thing is, no.

The other thing I wanna tell you

is maybe--

- Doesn't she look great

without that stupid beret?

(laughing)

Doesn't she look great?

(applauding)

Isn't that beautiful?

(hooting and hollering)

The first time I've seen

the top of your head.

(old pop music)

- Today we're going to attempt to find out

why younger and younger children

are turning to crime and drugs,

what's really influencing

children to choose a

path of crime and drugs,

a group dedicated to

fight crime, Curtis Sliwa.

(uptempo 80s music)

- [Announcer] Welcome to Larry King Live.

Tonight, taking back the streets.

- Here to talk about the

drug crisis from the street

perspective, is the founder

of the Guardian Angels,

Curtis Sliwa.

(uptempo 80s music)

(crowd applauding)

- Old friend, Curtis Sliwa,

founder of the Guardian Angels

civilian patrol group.

- Founder and president

of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa.

- [Reporter] Members in this

band of angels are all over 60.

Let's meet them.

(uptempo 80s music)

- I'm Julian Khan, age 70.

- I'm George Glover, I'm 65.

- I'm Henry Goodman, aged 78.

- Cleaver Vincent, 80 years

old, the oldest Guardian Angel

in the United States.

- Ladies and gentlemen,

live at the Clash of the Champions,

the man who stands for law and order,

weighing 337 pounds, the Guardian Angel.

(crowd chanting)

(uptempo music)

- Everyone on the periphery,

everyone was involved

in the artistic world, the creative world,

couldn't get enough of

the guardian angels.

I remember, there we were in Studio 54,

as all the freakazoids, the

jetsetters, the trendoids,

were down on the dance

floor, as all of a sudden,

people like Stallone wanted

to take pictures with us,

Trump, people were just coming to us.

The dark side of the

Batman, as he emerged,

we recognized this sort

of new creation of Batman.

Some of it was attributed to the effect

of the Guardian Angels in the streets.

The Watchmen Series attributed

to the Guardian Angels.

So many things I had no

idea what the origin was,

attributed to the effect

that the Guardian Angels were

having not only on our culture,

but in our way of life.

And this fight-back mentality

of being independent,

and autonomous, and it was sort

of like David versus Goliath

the Guardian Angels taking on City Hall,

the Guardian Angels

taking on the power elite,

getting arrested, getting

humiliated, getting vilified.

And yet, we were the peoples' choice.

And then suddenly the

people who controlled

the processing of the

culture of our society,

who said that, oh, the Guardian

Angels are like hip-hop,

are like graffiti, are like the Clash.

So from day one, this, the

house that I grew up in,

that my mother spent most

of her time in her life

growing up in, served as the

administrative headquarters

of the local effort and

then the global effort

of the Guardian Angels,

so, in the basement

is where a lot of our

paperwork and our archiving,

and documents are stored, this

is where all the day-to-day

needs of running a

non-profit are satisfied

by administrators, but it's also a place

where Guardian Angels have come and gone.

Particularly when they're

visiting, they'll stay here

instead of no-tell motel, Holiday Inn.

But it was also the home

of my father and mother.

My father, when he was alive,

my mother who lives upstairs,

it's her house, and

originally, it was the home

of my grandparents, of Fidel

and Nicoletta Bionquino.

They lived all in just that one room.

My two sisters lived

and slept in bunk beds

in this front room, this

was our living room,

that was our kitchen, my mom

and dad had a room to the side

and the smallest room

in the corner was mine.

And we all lived down here.

(rising music)

There was a prejudice in this city

that if you are black and

Hispanic growing up in the hood,

and especially the Bronx,

or parts of Brooklyn,

that you had a criminal

orientation, that it was in your DNA

so when we were taking in recruits,

we did something to defy the authorities.

And defy pragmatic and common sense.

If you came to me and said,

"I have a record, can I qualify?"

And I'd say, well, thanks for being honest

but we have to know the extent

of what you were accused of,

and what you were found guilty of.

And other than murder, or

arson, or selling weight

in terms of drugs, or rape,

or incest, or sexual assault,

we took you on, even if you had quite

the criminal record, you know,

like 500 Scott tissue papers

long, and we would tell these

young men and young women,

hey, today, you start all over again.

It's like you had a

re-birth, a resurrection.

You start with a fresh piece of paper

because once you get through

the training, the orientation

to become a Guardian

Angel, now all of a sudden

people were gonna glom onto you.

They're gonna wanna praise you.

They're gonna wanna beep their horn,

they're gonna wanna pat you on the back.

They're gonna wanna take

you home and introduce you

to your family where normally,

if you weren't wearing

the red beret and the white t-shirt

with the Guardian Angel logo,

they'd be running from you

scared, they wouldn't

make eye contact with you

because they believe the stereotype.

- When I put these colors on, I go through

the streets with a lot of pride.

- I've always wanted to

join the Guardian Angels,

ever since I was a little kid.

- I have a conscience,

I've always felt guilty

for what I've done in my past.

And I just chose to do something about it.

When an old lady comes up

to me and says, you know,

God bless you, I'm glad you're here.

You can't replace that feeling with money.

You know, that's pure,

that's from the heart.

And you can't buy that feeling.

- You have an opportunity of

not just elevating yourself

and redoing all the negatives

you've done throughout

your life but also recasting

in your entire community

with a different look.

(disrupting commotion)

(whistle blowing loudly)

- A lot of people

would always wanted to see, are

we just to trust you, how do

we know that it's not gonna go

over the top, over the edge?

Well, at times it does,

but that's where you have

the checks and balances,

we have no weapons,

no special powers or privileges.

Every Guardian Angel is

searched before they go out

on patrol and searched when

they return from patrol.

And you may ask, why do you search them?

Hah, because we don't trust 'em.

This is not like the blue

wall of silence with the cops.

And in fact, if the

cops trusted one another

so much, why do they have master locks

on their lockers in their dressing room?

Because they'll steal from one another.

And remember, you're constantly told,

no special powers or privileges,

you just have the rights

that a citizen has to

make a citizen's arrest.

But if you grab the wrong person,

you use excessive physical

force, not only will you get arrested,

but the organization,

including the grand poobah,

Curtis Sliwa, are gonna get sued.

- If you're the type of

person that has a hot head,

if you're the type of

person that thinks yeah,

as soon as I get the

t-shirt and the beret,

that's it, I'm gonna do my own thing.

Then there's the door.

- Have I arrived

at scenes where the Guardian

Angels were in the gray area?

You better believe it, have

I had to clean up the mess

in terms of what the Guardian

Angels were accused of doing?

Yeah, you have to believe

it, but each and every time

that I was able to clean

up a mess, I was able

to incorporate that into

a better training program

so as to avoid making

the same mistake again.

And more importantly, acknowledge it,

that that was a setback for us.

(steady somber music)

- I personally don't believe

in what would be termed

as paramilitary groups, I

think that if you want to help

in law enforcement and

you're not a police officer,

you should join the auxiliary police.

- I was branded with a scarlet letter,

the big V for vigilante,

couldn't shake it.

So I had reverse osmosis, I decided,

why fight the label, vigilante?

Because it's like being on a treadmill,

I was getting nowhere,

I saw with Mayor Koch,

one on one at city hall in New York.

I sat with Jane Burn in city

hall in Chicago, the mayor.

I sat with Diane Feinstein

who was the mayor

in San Francisco, all of them said,

in a one on one meeting,

they would bag and tag me

as a vigilante and run me out

of their respective cities.

And I stood up and I

said, A, we have the right

to make a citizen's arrest

like any other citizen.

That's not a vigilante

act but the whole notion

of vilifying vigilantes is so reflective

of how you have distorted the history.

You are revisionists,

vigilantes were necessary

when there was no law and order.

When there was no badge,

there was no shield.

There was no organized policing.

There were times when

settlers were moving west

in this country where

you had no law and order.

The town residents had to get together.

They called it Posse Comitatus

and they would go after the horse thieves,

they would go after the bank robbers.

They would go after the

rapists and marauders.

And sure, often times,

there would be justice

in which all of a sudden

you'd get a necktie

hung from the nearest tree, and

that was the bad part of it.

But the whole notion of

organizing and going out there

and grabbing the bad guys was good.

And so all I did was

eliminate all the negatives

and maintain the positive core.

That we would bring together

young men and young women,

the least likely to get together,

the ones that you were generally afraid

of, paralyzed of, and you would

hope that if nothing more

they would mind their P's and Q's,

sit on the sidelines and

not get into trouble.

And we would proactively

get them to preemptively

stop crime and if necessary,

grab the individuals

responsible and be positive role models.

And if that meant that

I was gonna be labeled

with a scarlet letter, the

big V of vigilante, so be it.

(funky music)

You know, the question I'm always asked

no matter where I travel around the world,

hey, Sliwa, what ever happened to that guy

in the subway, you

know, the subway gunman?

They forget the name, Bernhard Goetz.

And on this particular day, Bernhard Goetz

passed for milquetoast, geek, right?

You know, with the pocket

protector, you know,

just a real fuddy duddy, basically

with a big V on him that

said victim, victim.

But unbeknownst to us, we

didn't know that prior,

on prior occasions, Bernhard

Goetz had been victimized

in the subways, one time,

down near the Lansley Street,

thugs took him and threw him

through a plate glass window

as they robbed him, and it

degraded him, humiliated him.

And he said, never again, he

went off to New Hampshire,

live free or die, where

they believe in guns.

And he took rapid gun response training,

combat gun training, and

he carried that piece

wherever he went, and then

on one Saturday, he's going

downtown, not far from city hall.

And all of a sudden, walking

through that number two train,

the Beast, was Troy Canty,

James Ramseur, Barry Allen,

and Darrell Cabey, oh I remember

all four of their names.

We knew that they would

go onto the trains,

on the weekends especially,

first the arcades

on the Deuce, 42nd street, and

would sharpen screwdrivers.

They'd try to break into machines

that had a lot of coin,

they would break in

to all the pay telephones

that were always vandalized

and broken into for the

coin, and then, it was like

Clockwork Orange, they loved

to get a vicarious thrill,

all four of them, by coming up to people

in the subways and chumping them up.

Not always to rob them but

to show them at any point,

they could reach out, touch

them, rob them, kill them,

rape them, and just

completely emasculate them.

And when they saw Bernhard

Goetz sitting in front of them,

oh, they came out to play, and

they had sort of surrounded

him, anybody being in that circumstance

would know right then, you

were gonna get victimized.

Most people wouldn't know what do.

He pulled out his gun and

he fired in rapid sequence.

Bang, bang, bang, and

then when all of a sudden,

one of the guys fell to the ground.

He said, "You don't look so bad."

Bang, shot him right in the back.

And that's what paralyzed him.

And then he fled through the

cars, jumped out the back

of the train, into the

darkness of the tunnels

and disappeared, and all of a sudden,

he was lionized, he was a hero.

What you saw was a

silhouette on the front pages

of the newspapers of

America, everybody wanted

to know where was this subway gunman?

Because he had fought back,

he represented everyone out

there who had been victimized,

who had been taunted,

who had been humiliated, who themselves

had been emasculated,

and he was on the lam.

(uptempo instrumental)

- [Reporter] From WNBCT TV,

this is News For New York.

- [Anchorwoman] Police

are calling the gunman

a vigilante, they say

that he methodically shot

four young men on a crowded

Seventh Avenue IRT Express

just north of Chambers

Street in Manhattan.

The gunman said he shot them

because they were trying

to rob him, Rolanda Watts has more.

(first responders radio chatter)

- [Rolanda] New York City

police are calling this

the most serious subway crime this year.

Four men, 18 and 19 years old,

shot by a gunman who is still at large.

A gunman who police

say, told the conductor

of the southbound number two

train that the four victims

were trying to mug him and

that's why he shot them.

Police say the gunman then fled the train

using the subway tracks

as his escape route.

The gunman is described as a

white man in his late 30s,

blonde hair, wearing

glasses, and neatly dressed

in a gray sweater and blue jacket.

Two of his victims are in

critical condition tonight,

suffering from gunshot

wounds in the chest.

The other two shot in the

back are in serious condition.

Police say they did find

several sharpened screwdrivers

in the coat pockets of the victims,

screwdrivers sometimes used

as weapons or theft tools.

Mayor Koch was among those attending

tonight's press conference.

- It came down to simply

because the uniqueness of the situation

involving four people being

shot in this incident.

- This particular incident

also brings to light

that some citizens are carrying weapons

to protect themselves just

in case there's trouble.

And while that's comforting

to some, others are concerned.

- If I had more bullets,

I would've shot 'em all

again and again, my problem

was I ran out of bullets.

And I was gonna gouge

one of the guy's eyes out

with my keys afterwards,

you can't understand this.

I know you can't understand

this, that's fine.

- But we stood firm for

Goetz, we fought for his right

to fight back, and even though,

it turns out he was titched,

and (foreign language), and

he would chase squirrels

in the park, has he ever

gotten into trouble again?

No, he rides the subways to this day.

And people recognize him,

and a lot of people run away

'cause they think he's the subway gunman.

He's harmless but in that

moment, he became infamous

as the subway rider who

finally fought back.

(rushing train)

- I don't think they clean up the streets,

I think they're part of the problem.

Bunch of vigilantes runnin' around here

with no badge whatsoever,

if everyone did that,

it'd be chaos.

- The people down here

don't want 'em, they're

just, if you get 12 people

walkin' down the street

all dressed the same,

if somebody's going to do a crime,

they're gonna see 'em

coming, they're gonna wait

till they pass, and they're

gonna do it anyways.

(profane bickering)

(crowds verbally altercating)

- Ain't none of these motherfuckers

ever fucking know what

stuff is all about, you get the

fuck out of my way, alright?

I'm a private citizen,

and I got ID and all.

Get off me, bud!

(crowds clamoring)

Oh don't you go taking pictures of me.

- Alright, alright.

- Call your Angels, here.

(dramatic ominous tone resonates)

(birds chirping in distance)

- Well, well, you wanna know about Curtis.

Now, excuse me if I have to think awhile.

You know, usually I'm like

that, but 91 years old now.

- You're 92, 92, today you're 92.

That's already done, here.

- But you don't have

the seeds or anything.

- We'll add one, don't worry.

- Okay, get ready.

- Okay, ready.

- One, two, three.

(group sings Happy Birthday)

(applauding and cheering)

(whistling and applauding)

- So now what we wanna do is make a wish.

Let's everybody make a wish, okay?

And wish something really

great, you too, mom.

Okay, this is a really strong wish.

Now you gotta blow the candles

out so the wish happens.

- Yay!

(cheering)

- Alright, I was born in

Chicago, her first child.

(chuckling)

And I always wanted

a baby brother so I would

ask my mother constantly

from the moment I could speak,

please can I have a baby brother?

And then finally, my mother got pregnant.

And I was at Ursuline Academy, and the day

that he was born, I went to the nuns,

it was in the Bronx, and I

said, my brother is born.

They said, "How do you

know it's a brother?"

'Cause at that time, they

didn't do the checking.

I said, I know it's a

brother and he's born.

They said, "Uh-uh, he's not

born yet, we know this."

Sure enough, (clicks tongue)

as soon as I nailed it

he was born, and the interesting thing

is that I was going to

school in the Bronx.

It was the the Ursuline Nuns in the Bronx

and they took him right

after he was christened,

and placed him on the

altar at Ursuline Academy

in the church and dedicated

him to helping mankind.

My mom was always instrumental

in helping Curtis,

she'd always jump in there, she did the PR

for the Guardian Angels,

she was wearing white.

And she was always Mama

Angel, and she was helping

all the angels, they

would come into the house,

and my father was there,

and she was like the mother

to many of these kids.

- Let them see you.

- Yeah.

- See,

he's a Guardian Angel.

- Yeah.

- He wants to be like his father.

- Mm-hmm.

- Are you

proud of your dad, Anthony?

- Yes, I am, very much.

- Can you tell us why?

- 'Cause he's a hard-working

dad, he's a hard-working

dad and everything.

- Okay, this is good, this is good.

- This is a good one, okay.

- Faster, faster, out.

- So, this is my mom's

room, and obviously,

when my dad was alive, he was here.

And this is their shrine

to democrats, to liberals,

and to progressives, because

they have a picture up

of Barack Obama, Jesus Christ, the Pope,

other iconic figures in

Roman Catholic faith.

And this is where they would

pray, and they would have

sort of quiet contemplative thought.

But you would never see Ronald

Reagan up there, or Rudy

Giuliani, or Bush '41 or

Bush '43, or any Republican.

That would be considered

a (foreign language).

(dramatic instrumental)

- Curtis asked me questions about crime,

the corruption that's

around and everything.

And I said we had a great backer

for the American Revolution, Edmund Burke.

And he wrote this one statement

that I always quote, "All

it takes for evil to triumph

is that good men remain

silent and do nothing."

And the other thing he said,

"The worst kind of tyranny

are bad laws," and I

constantly hammer that

into my children, to

understand that when you see

a crime or something wrong,

you have a right to stop it,

to get involved, because most

people, they talk about it

but are never involved directly.

They're afraid to put up,

they're afraid to make

a commitment.

- You know,

in the day and age that I grew up in,

where everyone was

hardened in their views,

my dad was a combination of a

libertarian and a Unitarian.

I know, a libertarian and a Unitarian,

because he was open-minded,

he had traveled the world

as a seaman, he would bring back books,

and he would tell me

stories of what it was like

in all of these exotic locations

that I couldn't pronounce,

and I couldn't find on a map.

And I was just mesmerized,

and he had movie star looks.

Blonde hair, blue eyes,

and he exuded strength.

And he told me what it was

like, against all odds,

that his family had survived

the depression in Chicago,

and I was able to compare

that with my mother's family

in Brooklyn that survived depression.

But most importantly, he

would straighten me out.

He wasn't my wartime consigliere,

he was my peacetime consigliere.

Soon after he was in

intensive care, heart failure,

all other kinds of problems,

and then there came

that moment in which our

family was gathered around

together and we were told he

doesn't have long to live.

And all of a sudden, he's no longer lucid,

he's no longer able to communicate.

You can see, he was trembling,

he was in such incredible

pain, and I said to the doctors, why?

Why are we continuing

his life, he's suffering.

And they said, well, there's an option.

We can continue his life but

we'll have to break his ribs

and give him CPR.

(slow music)

We can't do this, dad

is suffering so much.

So I said, let me take

over, I'm the medical proxy.

And I went in that room

and I stared and glared

at all the doctors, the

physicians, and the nurses.

And I said, I know what I

gotta do, leave the room.

They said, "We can't leave the room."

I said, fuckin' leave the room!

And I grabbed my father's

hand, it was shaking.

And I put my mouth right to his ear.

And I knew he could hear me, and I said,

"Dad, don't worry about it, you can go.

"I'll take care of mom,

I'll take care of the house.

"I promise, you were the

greatest father to us,

"all three of us, you gave us everything.

"You worked overtime,

you gave us piano lessons,

"martial arts, anything I wanted,

"parochial school education,

you were there for me

"in my time of need, you can go now, dad."

And his grip lessened, and he

began to breath peacefully.

He was no longer in that dire circumstance

where I knew it was more

mental than it was physical.

And I knew where the magnet was

because he had a pacemaker,

and I knew exactly

what I had to do as his

son, and I took that magnet,

and I waved it over his pacemaker,

and it stopped his heart.

And he passed on to the hereafter.

And I felt the energy

leave the body of his being

here on this plane, and it almost like

it transferred to me, and

the staff came back in,

and they knew what I had done.

And it was hush, hush, mush, mush.

And I know a lot of

families go through that.

And a lot of times, that's

exactly what transpires

when you have to make a

decision, what's in the best

interest of your father or your mother.

And I know my dad is lookin' down on me

and understanding that

I carry on the torch.

He passed it right on to

me, that day, in that bed,

in Maimonides, when he

drew his last breath.

Two people had the biggest

influence in my life,

both passed away in my arms, my

grandfather, Fidel Bianquino

at 99, and my father,

Chester Sliwa, at 93.

(train rushing)

(rising ominous music)

- I think it's really a

question of ego, the male ego,

that's what it comes

down to, because these,

'cause the Mayor of New

York, the Police Commissioner

of New York, and as well as

many, many, other cities,

have told we the people that

there is nothing that can be

done about the drug problem,

that it's too big to control.

Do you realize that all

across the United States,

all summer long, children

have not been able

to go out of their apartments to play

because they're afraid of getting killed

in the crossfire of drug dealers.

What kind of freedom is that?

- It was the mid 80s

and it was the time when crack cocaine

smashed the city's

face, and crack was wack

as many people say because

the NYPD was a dollar short

and a day late, they had never dealt

with these kinds of dope fiends.

- It's a crack head eatin'

a car battery, yeah.

And I'm gonna tell ya right now,

crack addict say, he's a crack head.

(stammering mindlessly)

- I mean, before that, those

guys were shooting heroin,

maybe a little bit of cocaine

mixed with the heroin.

But at some point, they would

drop off, and catch a few Z's.

But when these folks suddenly

were beaming themselves up

to Scotty in a glass

pipe, smoking those rocks,

they were catatonic, they

were going 24/7, 365.

They were crime machines to

feed their insatiable appetite

to smoke this crack, and

immediately, the Guardian Angels

were pressed into

service in the front lines

because in a lot of the neighborhoods,

the inner-city neighborhoods

and especially the Bronx,

the cops had basically

waved the white flag.

They had given up,

meantime, what we decided

to do was to rob the crack dealers.

When we get inside, you're slamming

and jamming, asking no questions.

Hands on the head, you pass

them down beyond the floor.

One of you will be scoopin'

it up, drugs, money,

paraphernalia, we're right outside.

We perform our little act, we destroy it,

we alert the public, English and Spanish.

And then we're on our way,

we don't have time to play.

So, are we ready?

- Let's go.

- Are we bricks?

(chanting in agreement)

- Alright.

- Yeah, yeah!

(chaotic yelling)

- I'm gonna fuck you up!

- Get up, get off me!

(chaotic yelling)

- What were you doin' in that building?

What are you doin' in this building?

You're smoking crack,

you're selling crack,

and you're hookin'.

(uptempo music)

You know how many complaints we've had

about this building from the

people in this community?

They're tired of seeing this crap go on.

They're tired of seeing crack,

crime, and hookin' goin' on.

Somehow, they sniffed out

that we were in the area

doing recon, and this time when I called

upon the raid to take

place, we were entrapped,

we were surrounded, the drug

dealers were shooting off their

guns, the muscle heads were

outside, they were flexing.

Got into the back of the

truck, and as we tried

to make our getaway, guys and gals

were coming at us with

bats and pipes, and sticks,

and hatchets, meantime, the

cops were a few blocks away,

they're spectating, they're

waiting to see if the Guardian

Angels are gonna have to

be carried out on gurneys,

if they're gonna have to

send in the meat wagons.

Luckily, we were able to get outta there

as the shots continued to

be fired from the rooftops,

we would stop at certain sections

and which we would see a huge

gathering of young people.

We would step into the streets,

we would empty the drugs

out of the fanny packs,

the money on the street.

We would count the

money up, and bundle it,

and we would destroy the drugs

in front of all the young

people and put it down the sewers.

- This is what the children

of America dying for.

No, this is what the

people of America kill for.

You know this is what's

destroying our nation,

crack cocaine and blow, you know,

I don't want you doing this.

(chanting crowds)

Right here is the main reason

that the Guardian Angels do what we do.

This is our future, alright,

when we leave drugs this way,

maybe this damn country have a chance.

- And naturally they were aghast,

they couldn't believe this,

we're talking about thousands,

tens of thousands, hundreds

of thousands of dollars worth

of narcotics of all time,

mostly crack and heroin,

and a lot of currency,

and we would bundle it up.

And we would bring it

back to Restaurant Row,

where we began our Crackdown on Crack

near the Great White Way, Broadway,

when we liberated Times

Square from the menace

of the crack dealers and the crack users.

And there was a Lutheran

Church which had the largest

soup kitchen in Manhattan at that time,

and we would hand it over to the pastor,

Pastor Hanson, who was in charge.

And his assistant, who

else can say in 37 years,

walking amongst the Uzi-toting,

dope-sucking psychopathic

killing machines,

physically getting involved,

not just being eyes and

ears, which, you know,

see something, say something, that's good

if you wanna be passive, but

if you wanna be proactive,

and aggressive, and deter

crime, there's gotta be a little

bit of oomph in terms of what you do.

Only one lawsuit, six Guardian

Angels shot and killed

in the line of duty, 36 seriously

injured including myself,

and when you look at the other

ledger, who's been seriously

injured, who's been

killed, who's been maimed?

I think the ledger suggests

that we've maintained quality

control to the best of our ability.

(uptempo funky music)

(ominous music)

I decided, okay, I don't have every fact

but I'm gonna talk about the murder

that John Gotti did, that

would get him triple life

without parole that nobody had

ever talked about publicly.

It had been related to

me by my cousin, Butchie.

Hey, he was a lush, you

know, he liked the booze.

He had been at the Silver

Fox which was a combination

gin mill and dance hall

in South Ozone Park.

And who rolls in that night, as

a lot of the young

ladies and men are on

the dance floor, but Gotti and his crew.

There was Rogerio, there

was McClaughlin, Caplin,

a whole crew, and they were

lookin' for Danny D'Silva.

Because Danny D'Silva they

had given a kilo of cocaine

on consignment and they surrounded him,

and Gotta Jr. says, "Hey, Danny,

we've been lookin' for

you, where's our snaps?

Where's our moola-shmoola?"

(dramatic music)

And Danny said, "Fuck you, Gotti."

Now, this is in front of all of his guys.

'Cause naturally, he's

dancin' with his woman.

So, Gotti gets a shiv

from Rogerio who sticks it

into the back of his

hand, and he now stabs him

46 times, he holds him

up, keeps stabbing him

as his homeboys hold him up,

and then, when he's laying

on the ground, he's stabbing

him over, and over, and over

in a psychotic rage, he

has to be dragged away

and taken back to his father's social club

on 101st Avenue, the Burgen Hunt, Fish,

and Shooting Human Beings Club.

And then these guys tell,

"Hey, your son just killed

this guy on the floor

there, the dance floor."

And Gotti says, "Don't worry about it.

Everybody knows they didn't see nothin'."

So, guess what?

The DT's come and he

starts asking questions.

And nobody saw nothin', oh,

Gotti was here, I didn't know.

What, the Gambino's, ah,

what are you talking about?

Eh, the guy must have fell

on a knife, what, 46 times?

Yeah.

And then from the crowd

emerges Danny D'Silva's

best friend and he says, "I

know what happened, officers."

"Well, come with us,"

he goes to the precinct

and he says, "John Gotti Jr.

stabbed my friend 46 times.

He murdered him," the

call goes up to the Queens

District Attorney, John Santucci.

And all of sudden, he says,

"Gotti, you got a problem.

I've got good evidence here that your son

killed Danny D'Silva,

do what you gotta do

because if not, I'm

gonna have to charge him

and he's gonna get arraigned."

So, Gotti Senior says, "No problem.

Thank for the heads

up," a few days later,

this guy is found hanging from

a tree, strung by his neck

but his knees were touchin'

the sidewalk in Ozone Park.

A clear signal to everyone,

he didn't hang himself.

He was killed and then hung out to dry.

A message that everyone,

hush, hush, mush, mush.

Meantime, the coroner comes

and says it was a suicide.

Really, how much did

the coroner get greased?

And so, Gotti Senior

figured that that chapter

was put to rest until Curtis Sliwa

told a story that day,

and that began the road

to the decision that

by all means necessary,

they were gonna wack and kill Curtis Sliwa

to silence me and have me

swimmin' with the fishes

in Jamaica Bay.

(dramatic music)

- Well, the hunt is on

tonight and Mayor Dinkins is

pledging his help to find the

gunman that ambushed and shot

Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian

Angels founder and leader is

recovering from surgery at

Bellevue Hospital tonight.

Magee Hickey is there now

with a live report for us.

Magee?

- Chuck, Curtis Sliwa

is still in critical

condition at this hour

after undergoing more

than six hours of surgery

to remove five bullets, he's expected

to recover fully from his injuries

in a shooting that took place this morning

at exactly the same place

where he'd been attacked

by three men with baseball

bats two months earlier.

It happened just after 5:00

AM, near this news stand

at Seventh Street and Avenue

A, Curtis Sliwa told police

he had just gotten into this

cab to head to his morning

radio show when he was shot five times

in the thigh and lower

abdomen by someone he said

was crouching in the front seat.

- He jumped out the window to get away.

He's got the scrapes and

bruises on the side of his leg.

- Had this bullet gone,

I would say approximately

one inch higher, he might've

been paralyzed for life.

- They're out to get him, he was set up.

This was not the first

time he's been put upon.

Several weeks ago, he was attacked

by fellas wielding bats.

- Later, police determined

the cab had been stolen the day before.

Police say Sliwa's two white assailants

switched into a white

town car, a few blocks

from the shooting.

- I admire Curtis Sliwa

and I think he places his

life into his own hands

doing what he does.

- I just hope everything

works out for him, and

that his work continues

because it's not easy, what he does,

and the city needs more people involved,

and people doing things.

(fading into ominous tone)

- So, I'm laid out on the asphalt

on the corner of Avenue

B and Sixth Street,

after being shot multiple

times, diving out of that cab.

The original plan was,

they would shoot me up,

I would bleed out, they

would drive me over

the Williamsburg Bridge, they

would chemically incinerate

me at one of their chop

shops and junkyards.

And all of a sudden there

would be no evidence.

Not of any of my DNA anywhere.

Well, there was a problem,

I decided to thwart

that plan even though I didn't

know what the ultimate goal

was and dive out of the car

after being shot multiple times.

And as they stripped me

of my clothes, the EMT's

and put me in the body

bag, and pumped it up

with a bicycle pump to try

to repress the bleeding,

and it felt like a baby

grand piano had been rested

on my breastplate, and

I'm screaming in pain

in the middle of the street,

and it's attracting more

and more people, and they

throw me on the gurney,

and they race me to Bellevue Hospital.

And we must've hit every

pothole on the way to Bellevue

because I could feel my blood

slushing in the body bag.

And I'm thinking to myself, hey, God,

as my judge, I'm too

young to go, c'mon, man!

I got so much more to

do, I can't die this way,

at the hands of my enemies,

please, give me another shot!

But God wasn't listening,

the guy that was listening

was Dr. Leon Pachter 'cause as

they wheeled me into the ER,

as they were already getting the scalpel

and cutting the first slice into me

because they had to operate El rapido

because I was expiring quickly.

Dr. Leon Pachter, amazingly,

all roads lead to Canarsie.

Born and raised in Canarsie,

whispered in my ear,

he says, "Curtis, we got your back."

So, the machine is keeping me alive.

They're monitoring my vital signs.

I'm slowly coming out of, well,

being in a deep, deep, deep,

REM sleep, something

I've never had before.

And all of a sudden, as I look to my left,

I see the image of the

former mayor of the city

of New York, Ed Koch, who

had been my lifelong enemy,

my nemesis, who had called us vigilantes,

who had made my life (foreign language),

who led to me being arrested

76 times on his orders.

And there he is, he's smiling at me.

And I said to myself, this is it.

I must've gone straight to

hell without an asbestos suit

and here he is, it's Lucifer

welcoming me into the furnace.

He was there to suddenly

say, you know something?

Let bygones be bygones, if anything,

the Guardian Angels are like chicken soup

when you have a cold,

it certainly can't hurt,

it can only help.

- With the passage

of time, everybody

accommodates, and they reach

a point where people, including the cops

who perceive them as positive.

- They tried to get me

twice, two times up,

two times they failed,

I got a lot more in me.

I got a lot more life in

me, and I've got a lot more

to accomplish on this plane

before I cash in my ticket.

- Curtis Sliwa has been showed photos

of about 15 members of young Gotti's crew.

If there is any validity to this theory,

why would the son of a powerful mob boss

take out a contract on

the high-profile leader

of the Guardian Angels?

(suspenseful instrumental)

- Right now, the interesting thing is that

they tell the whole story

of when they wanted to kill

Curtis Sliwa, so, John,

today, how do you feel

sitting next to Curtis?

- Well, I don't blame him.

Obviously, if guys are trying to kill him,

and hurt him, and I'm part

of that Gambino family,

I would feel the same way as him.

(suspenseful music)

- Where's that Gotti Jr. now, John White?

- Well, tellin' tales still,

he won't apologize to Curtis.

And he's still free, he's

free, he's runnin' around,

he's scared to come into the neighborhood,

he won't go to any of the Boroughs

and he knows guys will

hurt him or kill him.

So he's hiding behind his attorney.

And still spinning tales

instead of being a man

and apologizing to this

man sitting next to me.

I'm actually denouncing that life.

And I'm out running around

trying to tell kids,

follow Curtis, follow guys like yourself,

and become men.

- So what do you feel

sitting opposite this guy?

- The fact that he testified

in the fourth trial

against John Gotti Jr.,

hoped to put him away, he's

trying to square the deal.

In terms of will I ever shake his hand?

Hell no, if he slips and

falls and breaks his neck

in the bathroom, God's done justice.

(dramatic music)

- [Interviewer] Set the

record straight, John.

Were you responsible for his shooting?

- [John] No, Sliwa was a

situation that was very unique.

Sliwa was somebody that he

hoped, he prayed, he needed

the guys to shoot him,

that's what he needed.

Because he wanted to

build a career out of it.

He was a nobody and nobody

paid attention to him.

But once that had happened to him,

once he had gotten shot, okay?

He turned around, turns

this great radio career,

making half a million dollars a year,

and he became a bit of a

media darling, you know.

The fact that he's irritated every entity

in New York City throughout his career

really was of little nada but

the fact that he cashed in

on the accusations the

Gotti's had him kidnapped

and shot, well, that's a little different.

(heartfelt music)

- Nothing compares to the love that I have

for this city of New York that birthed me.

My baptism in fire was

in the city of New York.

I'm a Borough boy, I'm

not a Manhattan guy.

I can relate to average, everyday people

and the struggles that they go through.

And I hope as I continue to be humble,

that I maintain that love.

- I love that he gives

to New York City, and

he's there for the people.

And anytime he has a

problem with any issues

that's going on, he attacks it

instead of trying to

put it under the cover

and sheets and stuff, and he's there

for the community no matter

what ethnicity you are.

And he's the truth.

- Been in the Angels

since 1986, first time that

I saw the Guardian Angels,

I was on the Four Train,

had a lady getting attacked

on the train and nobody would help.

The only person that was helping this lady

was Guardian Angels.

- I like what he's for.

Servin' us.

- I'm goin' on 26 years now

of bein' a member of the New

York City Guardian Angels

and one of the reasons why I joined

in this organization

was to make a difference

in the community and help those

that can't help themselves.

- I remember them from back in the day.

C'mon, you gotta jump in on this one.

'Cause we knew them

when, 'cause we're old.

C'mon, Ed.

- I joined in 1982.

I was 18-years-old, I'm

52 years old right now.

The Guardian Angels have

been everything to me.

Curtis has been a great role model.

I didn't have a father when I was younger

so I always looked up to him.

- I wake up 4:30 in the morning

and you know, me and

my family, we watch him

or go to work, my grandma

loves him especially.

I don't know his name but

he says some funny things.

I see a lot of the people

in the subway too.

- It's preparing me for the future.

I wanna be in law enforcement,

so this is kind of,

a step, it's a process, it's

getting me more used to

what I have to do in the future,

what I want to do in the future.

- I was raised in the

projects of East Harlem.

If I would have never

join the Guardian Angels,

who knows where I would be today.

(crowds bustling)

Curtis Sliwa, man.

(upbeat music)

- We have to justify the

time that we were allowed

on this earth, what did you stand for,

what did you do, what did you contribute?

Not to the demise of

others but to the support

and maintenance, and to the enlightenment,

and the enrichment of others, that's how

you're gonna be defined, I

hope that's how I get defined.

And I know the millennials,

I have faith in them.

I have faith in all

people, will actually leave

a better mark on society than

my baby boomer generation did.

And nowadays, what I'm most fearful of

is that I haven't done enough.

I have so much more that

I'm capable of doing.

You can say, "What are you talking about?

You're approaching retirement."

I say, retirement, the only

retirement I'm gonna have

is when I'm room

temperature, are you kidding,

I'm gonna work till the day that I die,

on this, what I'm most passionate

about, the Guardian Angel

principles and concepts,

which are global and local.

When all of a sudden it's

my time to take a dirt bath

then boy, I will be

wrestling the grim reaper,

as I have on many previous occasions.

When I'm six feet under, in a pine box,

or at the rate I'm goin fiscally,

it'll be a cardboard box,

it may be potter's field,

I hope it says one thing on my tombstone.

RIP, he tried, he died, because

I certainly gave it my all.

(uptempo music)

(alt-rock music)