In a red beret and jacket, marked with a coat of arms representing an eagle with piercing eyes, Arnaldo Salinas walks the streets of a New York neighborhood where burglaries have blazed with the pandemic. He is part of the Guardian Angels, controversial volunteer patrols that have intervened in the American metropolis for 40 years, trying to adapt to the challenges of the moment.
“If we see something like a confrontation, a crime, we intervene,” said Mr. Salinas, a sturdy 58-year-old man.
Usually, these “guardian angels” can stand guard outside synagogues, with the upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks, or on the subway, campaigning against men who sexually assault women.
With the coronavirus, which has claimed some 20,000 lives in New York, emptied the subway and closed all “non-essential” businesses, their priorities have changed. The volunteers, who number 150 in New York and 5,000 across the world, focus on store burglaries – which rose 169% in April, according to police – and the homeless, increasingly visible in deserted streets and the metro.
Two or three, never armed, six groups of volunteers patrol the most affected neighborhoods, working-class neighborhoods such as upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.
The Guardian Angels do not intervene to enforce the rules of distancing: they leave this delicate task to the police, which has already given rise to some controversy.
For Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in 1979, at a time when New York was bankrupt and plunged into rampant crime, patrols nonetheless played a crucial role: the police, who at the height of the epidemic lost nearly 20% of its agents, sick or in quarantine, are ill-equipped to deal with the increase in vandalism.
Volunteers can get in touch with traders.
“They are told to call us if they have any problems. At least they feel there is someone there to protect them and their families,” said Mr. Sliwa, 66, now a famous TV host. radio.
For Sanjay Hodarkar, a 66-year-old pharmacist from Manhattan, “it’s heartwarming to know they’re here.”
Mary Gethins, 48, is part of the subway patrols. She distributes to the homeless, on a line that connects Queens to Manhattan, small packages containing wipes, a mask and some food.
It was the memory of her mother assaulted in front of her when she was 5 years old that pushed her to join the Guardian Angels 22 years ago.
– “More brain, less muscles” –
“It’s embarrassing having to do that, but it cheers them up for a few seconds,” she said.
Damon, a 67-year-old homeless man, is grateful to him: “There is not much humanity in this country, but in them there is a little.”
Guardian Angels volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds. Each new recruit follows a three-month training course, combining self-defense techniques and first aid before going out on patrol, and not everyone is accepted.
But from the start, these citizen militias have known controversy.
At first, the authorities saw them as a gang, and in 1992, Mr. Sliwa admitted to lying about alleged exploits against real criminals, to gain notoriety.
That year, he was shot five times in the back: federal justice charged John A. Gotti, son of famous mafia godfather John Gotti, with attempted murder, but he was never convicted.
More generally, critics believe that the fight against crime falls to the police and not to private groups. And some wonder why the Guardian Angels still exist when crime has dropped in New York City since the late ’90s.
Mr. Sliwa rejects these criticisms. “Currently there is a shortage of police,” he said. “We need citizens to protect the most vulnerable: the homeless, people with mental problems, the elderly, women, children”.
Arnaldo Salinas recognizes that times have changed and that today the members of his brigade must use “their brains more than their muscles”.
“The reason we’ve been here for 41 years is because we know how to adapt,” he promises.
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