Think of me if I were not what I claimed. The 5th gang was the Guardian Angels, & in decades since they’ve evolved into an international organization of ‘volunteers’ claiming to help poor besieged communities in many countries. Whether true or propaganda I cannot know, but I know for certain in the East New York of the early 1980s their image as protectors & Guardian Angels was total bullshit. The group was the brainchild of Curtis ‘The Rock’ Sliwa - a self-styled ‘hero’ who made a media name for himself as a teenaged community activist in the early 1970s, & saving a family from a burning building. By the late 1970s New York City’s subways were a horrorshow of crime & graffiti. Sliwa, a latenight manager of a McDonald’s, decided to take things into his own hands & formed a ‘weaponless, violence-free’vigilante group with 12 other people. The baker’s dozen patrolled the subways & Els, reputedly standing up to criminals, making ‘citizen’s arrests.’ This was the legend. Too often they were accused of harassing innocents, as the group practiced what is now called racial profiling - I know because I’d seen some of these Guardian Angels do just that a few years before I started at Franklin K. Lane. Few felt safer with the GA’s on their train, but the media-savvy Sliwa relentlessly portrayed himself a Joan of Arc savior of the subways. Within a year or 2 of their formation ‘Sliwa’s army’ grew to several 100, & the GA’s were no longer content confining themselves to the Transit System. They took to the streets.

As their size grew Sliwa’s control over the dozens of factions was virtually nonexistent - even if once nobleminded. The multifarious bands of ‘Angels’, often comprised of ex-gang members, reveled in the ‘protection’ of Sliwa’s Golden Boy image. Whenever a reporter dished up a claim a GA was accused of drugdealing, or beating some 1 wrongly, Sliwa charged the person was not a ‘real’ Angel, there were rogue elements & faux GA’s who tried to ruin his group’s name, or it was just a misunderstanding. While undoubtedly true there were people & elements dedicated to seeing Sliwa fail, it’s probable Sliwa pulled a Ronald Reagan & looked the other way at malfeasance & incompetence in his ranks. Like Reagan, Sliwa was a Teflon figure no charge of malfeasance stuck to. The truth of Sliwa’s knowledge into the filthy depths of his empire has always been subject to debate in the media - but not the people who long suffered their tyranny.

While critics rightly pointed out Sliwa’s hordes were vigilantes, & he a mediahound, no 1 pointed out the real problem was their initial mission petered out, devolving into sects of roaming gangsters who wisely hid their criminal ways under the GA’s trademark white t-shirts & red berets. Sliwa’s machine had no central control & he showed little will to be controller even if his machine had controls. The GA’s patroling the Els & streets of East New York were merely another gang - with a good PR department. They dealt drugs, carried knives & occasionally guns, beat innocents who stood up to them, collected ‘protection’ from local merchants along Jamaica Avenue, & rumbled over turf with other gangs - especially the J-Liners; their turfs naturally clashed. In addition, the GA’s always had the reputation of being racist. The few black GA’s were sellouts & Uncle Toms.

But there was 1 other main reason they were hated - Rory Tuukkanen. He was always a psychotic freak - but 1 day he lost control, went on a rampage & stabbed 6 black & Hispanic kids. Even though only 1 had any gang affiliation - the J-Liners - the attacks begged for a response from the black & Hispanic kids in the nabe. This legitimized the hatred from the Wannabes & J-Liners, & condemnation for stupidity from Mr. Hook & his Neo-Nazis. It brought a renewed vow of vigilance from the GA’s. Along with Paco’s recent piano wire assault on a black J-Liner, these incidents ratcheted up the tensions surrounding Franklin K. Lane High School - in the 1950s having over 6000 students, the largest High School in the world, its most famous alumnus ex-New York Knicks basketball coach Red Holzman, after whom the boys gym was named - simmering like the South during the Civil Rights movement. The slightest look in the wrong direction, or presumed diss, could send the school into a spasm of racial & drug violence. Waiting with delight for the impending carnage were Curtis Sliwa’s East New York band of Guardian Angels, vampires under the moon, to scrounge through the wreckage of the school as the city cheered them on, dragging out the fallen they helped push.