Guardian Angels back in Central Park
Volunteers start up patrols again after crime rate edges up.
The squad NEWYORK— in stop-sign-red jackets and berets strode through Central Park, on guard for signs of crime.
It was a familiar sight a generation ago, when New York was plagued by lawlessness that police have worked for years to dispel. Yet Guardian Angels volunteers made a pointed return this month to Central Park for the first time in over two decades, citing a 26 percent rise in crime there so far this year.
“We realize things are much better than they were” in the crime peak of the early ’90s, founder Curtis Sliwa says, but “we want it to stay that way.”
City officials stress that crime is down citywide, and the park is far safer than it once was. Still, the renewed patrols by the Guardian Angels — known for both crime-fighting and controversy over their 35 years — are bright-red signals of unease about whether New York, touted for years as the nation’s safest big city, is slipping.
Sliwa and eight other Guardian Angels, ranging from graying long-timers to a 20-year-old woman, trooped along roadways, paths and rocky trails for hours one night this week, shining flashlights into thickets, asking people whether they’d had any trouble and eyeballing four teens who quickly took off on bicycles.
Onlookers’ reactions ranged from thumbs up to raised eyebrows. “Time warp!” one passing jogger exclaimed.
“I didn’t even know they were still in business,” Harlem resident Christine Adebiyi said, but “it’s great to see them here.”
After years of celebrating crime drops, the nation’s biggest city has seen killings rise by 9 percent so far this year, though serious crime overall is down 5 percent. Forty-six percent of city voters in a recent Quinnipiac University poll said crime was a “very serious” problem, a record going back at least to 1999.
A quarter-century after the “Central Park jogger” rape case made the park a symbol of urban danger, officials boasted in recent years that the 842acre expanse was one of the safest parks of its size worldwide. Despite this year’s increase — largely a result of robberies going from 11 at this point last year to 22 so far in 2015 — overall crime in the iconic park is down more than 80 percent compared with two decades ago, the New York Police Department said. Even with the recent spike, crime is lower than just two years ago, NYPD statistics show.
Mayor Bill de Blasio says the park remains “absolutely safe” and suggests police need no help from the Guardian Angels. “The NYPD is the best-qualified force to handle the situation,” he said this week.
Police circulating in patrol cars and shining high-powered lights maintain a visible presence in the park at night. But Sliwa says officers don’t penetrate into the secluded spots where criminals could lurk.