Vigilante – Time-coded Script

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:01:20               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 going to be late. I was doing the morning radio show at the most powerful radio station in the nation. I'm out of the house immediately. I'm running up to the all-night news stand on 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. The yellow cab comes right to me, and when I jump in the back of the car and I say, "Hey Mac, Madison Square Garden, I'm running late," he said, "Hey, no problem Curtis." It's like I hit Powerball, the Lotto. 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:02:11               This guy? A white guy, a guy who spoke english. A guy who knew me. Now I can max and relax, read the sports pages. I was in seventh heaven. This was nirvana for me. Then at about 13 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. I said, "Hey Mac, turn this hack around." Now he really bears down. All of a sudden I hear a strange ruffling from the front of the car near the passenger side. Unbeknownst to me, a guy had been stuck underneath the dashboard awaiting this opportunity. 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. 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:02:57               I'm going to 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 because they knew I would fight back. They sawed off the handles and put them 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 handle and "pop" I see how the gun goes back, and then all of a sudden the flames are coming right out of the barrel of the gun. It's heading towards my lower extremity. Clearly I've been hit but I don't feel jack diddly squat. I've never been shot before. Shot at, yeah, but never shot before. I'm assuming, "Wow, I'm going to be gripped in pain, I'm going to bleeding," but there's nothing.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:03:39               Then all of a sudden he raises the gun and he shoots it again. 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've ever had in my life. I can't even breathe now. Now I've been shot twice, so I'm bleeding like a sieve. 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:04:13               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. The assumption is, I think from the driver and the gunman, is he's dead on arrival. There's no way he's going to survive that. Well guess what, John Gotti Jr. Let me ask you this, if you're such a man's man ... right? You see all this damage? You see all this? These are the bullets that Yannotti put into me based on your orders, from Gambino headquarters. He took the code of omerta to protect you. He's doing 20 years and you're on your Ponderosa there in Oyster Bay Long Island pleading poverty, like you can't live the life that were used to living, when you were the number one capo di tutti in organized crime ... in the shadow of your father, the man who called on me to get hit by you, John Gotti Sr. You're all disgrazia.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:05:26               Oh, the ugly 70s. It turned New York City into like, the armpit of the cesspool of crime. I got to tell you, it was an era of oozy-toting, dope-sucking, psychopathic killing machines laying siege to the Outer Boroughs and Manhattan itself. Various street gangs with cutoff Lee jackets, rockets and patches, trying to imitate the Hell's Angels except they had no Harley Davidsons. They were an enemy and a menace to society. 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. Even if nothing happened to you on your trip on the subway, you just felt so violated.

Video Clip:                           00:06:14               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.

Video Clip:                           00:06:29               Hey, sweetheart. Do I make you nervous?

Video Clip:                           00:06:31               I'm not your sweetheart.

Video Clip:                           00:06:31               Do I make you nervous?

Video Clip:                           00:06:31               Yeah! Leave her alone. Leave her alone.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:06:36               Then let's say you were going to the Dukes, 42nd Street. You would go right on this Great White Way Broadway, and you would see theater after theater that had no shows on its promenade. You go down restaurant row, and restaurant were being closed because of the cretins with chromosome damage So many miscreants who were just snatching pocketbooks, who were pick-pocketing in Joslyn. Then you had these greasy-haired pimps that looked like super-fly TNT out of those Black exploitation movies in the 70s. Then they had their men, women, I don't know if they were frozen vegetables, who were walking up and down. They would sell you their butt, they would sell you anything you wanted and take you around the world in 80 seconds. Naturally, like vendors selling popcorn, drug dealers everywhere. The feeling was, that when you finished walking through Times Square, you needed to take a hot shower.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:07:32               Now, some people would get a vicarious thrill out of that, but most people would be paralyzed by fear. 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 was like 4-foot-8, 80 pounds soaking wet ... grimace and have a frown on their face and you would give him all your money because you would be afraid that they would take your life.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:07:57               Five dollars give you three flicks. The brothers would be in there talking trash at the screen. They'd be pulling their toolies out, sometimes shooting at the screen. 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. The 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 in the doors. That's the New York City that spawned yours truly, Curtis Sliwa.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:08:51               You know, in the 1960s all roads led to Canarsie or through Canarsie out to Long Island, [inaudible 00:08:59] county. 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. It was like two totally different worlds. The very best, the very worst.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:09:18               Oh, I remember that day I broke my mother's heart. Francesca. I was going to junior high school at the time, [inaudible 00:09:25] junior high school. My grades were good, but then all of a sudden I started chasing skirts. I was interested in trim, you know, at Shadow Lake. My grades plummeted. All you had to do was throw on some cheap Chanel Number 5, some toilet water, and have a nice pair of figure and all of a sudden I went mishegas. 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've got to get you into an all boys school. You've got to go back to Catholic school." I said, "Ugh, back to Catholic school."

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:10:01               It was my dad who came to my rescue. He left the ship where he was a merchant seamen. He said, "Hey, kid. You've got three choices. Go back to school, that's the easiest. Pack your bags and get the hell out of here, I never want to see you again. Or, go out and get a job and pay $70 a week room and board." I had no negotiable skills. I saw there in the New York Daily news, "Night managers for McDonald's wanted." I heard my calling from Ray Kroc. I got on that Number 2 train to [ianudible 00:10:28], went for my interview and the next thing you know, I'm a night manager at Micky D's.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:10:33               It was a nightmare AM and a double nightmare PM. 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, McDonald's University. They wouldn't even let me go.

Video Clip:                           00:10:49               Courtesy is what makes it all run smoothly.

Video Clip:                           00:10:54               Thank you. Thank you.

Video Clip:                           00:10:54               Good afternoon, may I help you?

Video Clip:                           00:10:56               Courtesy that begins working for you the minute you great the customer. You've got the idea. Smile all the time. Whenever there are customers around, and even when they're not. Smiles are contagious, too.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:11:10               I came under the influence of my mentor and my [foreign language 00:11:13], 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 I'll give you a great eulogy. Or, you can do it the Don Chin way and survive to live another day."

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:11:33               He told me, "Lesson number one, you're a white boy. You're a caucasoid. You're dead meat up here where it's mostly Blacks and Hispanics. You're a suck. You have on your forehead the word 'sucker' and everyone is going to try to vic you down. They're going to try to victimize you from the time you come into the store, the time you run your shift, to the time you've got to make the drop, the bank depository drop across the street in the bank, the time you've got to leave to take the train all the way back to Brooklyn," where I was living at the time. I listened intently.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:12:08               Then I walked into the area where they prepare the burgers, fries, and strawberry shakes. Over the warmers, over the bin, Don had an array of pipes, sticks, bats, all kinds of homemade weapons. He said, "Lesson number two, is that you're going to hire a crew to cover your back. I don't care if they burn burgers on the grill. I've got to know when I go over the counter to deal with a problem in the lobby, that my crew is in solidarity. It's us and we, not I and me." That stuck with me. Time and time again I'd have to go over the counter.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:12:43               Brothers would come up to me and they'd pull the old classic trick. They'd buy a Big Mac, they'd eat 7/8 of the Big Mac, come back up front and say, "I want to see the manager." 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." I would say to them, based on Don Chin's training, "What do you think, because I'm white I'm a sucker?" They'd say, "Okay, you did it. You're going to claim that I'm ripping you off white boy? You better come over here and we'll settle our differences man to man." 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 starting pouring in from the streets.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:13:20               I can handle myself, and man I would pick them up, body slam them, and you would hear the bones in their ribcage rattle. All of a sudden I had street rep. Hey, your mad China-man Don Chin was considered number one second to none, but I was earning my stripes. I slowly but surely got to the point where I understood what Don meant. Then Don decided to give me the ultimate test. One night he was off, and he must have been in a gin mill banging back a few Irish car bombs. He loved Jameson. He comes in on his Harley, into the lobby at McDonald's. He's wielding a machete, the wild China-man. He jumps over the counter and he comes back into the grill area and he challenges me to a duel. I remember as a kid I loved Zorro. That was my hero as a little whippersnapper growing up. I grabbed my machete and it was like I was Zorro and he had the best of me.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:14:13               At one point, I was blocking his machete thrusts and he had me bent over this hot grill. Lucky for me, he snapped out of it. 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. Everyone in that McDonald's, nobody left. None of my crew members. They had my back and I made my bones. I knew from then on, I could dominate the streets and the subways in the Bronx.

Video Clip:                           00:14:46               They have reclaimed our neighborhood for us. I can now walk out in my neighborhood because of these citizens.

Video Clip:                           00:14:55               Wouldn't you feel safer, to have a gang like that walking through your streets? Of course you would, so we do too.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:15:10               Then one night things really deep-sixed. The Savage Nomads, who 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.

Video Clip:                           00:15:25               Conquered. Those are our conquered enemies right there.

Video Clip:                           00:15:28               Say which ones they are, what their names are. [inaudible 00:15:32]. Right, right.

Video Clip:                           00:15:35               I'm just explaining to them about enemies. Cool?

Video Clip:                           00:15:41               Past-tense enemies.

Video Clip:                           00:15:43               Past-tense enemies, what happened from the past.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:15:45               They come in and they start pulling the chairs out. These are metal chairs and they start smashing the front window panes. We're talking a lot of moolish moolah, a lot of ducketts, a lot of cheddar there that was going to come out of my pocket. I jump over the counter and I'm catching a beat down. My crew at first hesitated, because these guys were bad with a capital B. Then slowly but surely, I heard them jumping 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. 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 gang bangers, criminals, miscreants, or thugs or thugettes.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:16:37               I said, you know something? I should apply this to the trains. That's when I realized after watching Bronson in Death Wish, De Niro in Taxi Driver ... I wasn't going to 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. The seeds of the Subway Patrol that I created were put into place.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:17:06               Now I started to think about a uniform presence. Something identifiable. A red beret, a t-shirt. Something that would equate to people that this is organized, there's a regime, 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 two on every block.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:17:28               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. I convince them, "Come on out. Ride the trains with me at night." Slowly but surely, I was able to convince them that we could do this. Every day they would come back to renew their shift at 4:00 or 8:00 at night and work to closing, 12 or 2 in the morning. 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 in your head. You're going to be shot, killed. Who's going to care about you? No, no, no, avoid him at all costs." Yet, I would get back into their hearts, minds, and souls, and eventually we began to patrol.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:18:11               Oh, I couldn't have been more hopelessly wrong about the way this would be accepted. I thought we were going to 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 4 train, the muggers express, the number 2 train, The Beast, wearing a uniform that made you look like a popping fresh Pillsbury dough boy or dough girl in a red beret and a white t-shirt. 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 thousand. 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, 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. They're the Magnificent 13 Subway Safety." "Nah, they're like the Hell's Angels, they're vigilantes. I'm not going to let 13 young men in sneakers provide public safety in the city of New York." From that, the cops who had suffered incredible cutbacks and staffing because the city was on the brink of going Chapter 11 ... 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.

Video Clip:                           00:19:46               They're inexperienced. They really know nothing about what they're doing. Someone's going to get hurt, and I think it will all come to a head, maybe when one of these kids gets killed.

Video Clip:                           00:19:56               We are prepared to die for our commitment. We get paid well, it's true. We are the representatives of law enforcement for the society, not a bunch of ragtag kids with sneakers on who have absolutely no concept of what law enforcement is.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:20:10               The call to arms for all the cops was, arrest them. You see them, cite them. Write them tickets, lock them up. Drive this idealism out of them, because we truly believe that if you scratch them right down to their bones, they're nothing but thugs and thugettes. That in fact their motivation is such that they'll just become another gang.

Video Clip:                           00:20:30               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.

Video Clip:                           00:20:42               A police officer, identified to us by the members of this patrol, badge number 891, a sergeant, Caucasian ... 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. Without one word being uttered by any of the police officers there, was shot dead. You and I who fight back, we get called vigilantes. 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 that the police have been our major adversaries in the cities around America?

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:21:31               The deck was stacked against us and Ed Koch, who had been one who had saluted us, was now doing everything he could to stick the shive in us. People were coming to the McDonald's from Brooklyn, from Queens, from other parts of the Bronx, from Manhattan and even Staten Island to join. This was great, we put them through a training program and they started subway patrols in their own areas. 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're just trying to so decompress us, so depress us that we would give up these patrols late at night into the wee hours of the morning. Then on September 4th, Labor Day of 1979, our numbers had grown so we were no longer 13.

Video Clip:                           00:22:18               The Guardian Angels. They started as 13 kids with a plan to fight street crime. Now they've grown to more than one thousand. From New York to Philadelphia , Atlanta, Los Angeles. Across the nation, the red berets are helping the cities in fear.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:22:33               We were asked to patrol Central Park because there were a series of gay bashings in the rambles. At the time, the police were very homophobic. They said, "Oh, you're a gay guy? You deserve it then." We took it upon ourselves to go in there and patrol so that the gay bashings would stop. 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 Dragnet. Oh, now we were considered like hip hop, graffiti artists, and Guardian Angels.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:23:07               I walk into this [inaudible 00:23:09] 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 involved with before that. She was top shelf, five star. A woman who had come from a privileged background in Ridgewood New Jersey, as opposed from the heart of the hood. She had a way of mesmerizing, and she was intoxicating. She walks up to me and she says, "You know, I was thinking about joining the Guardian Angels. What do I have to do to join?" I said, "Lady, you know you have to come up to the Bronx and you've got to 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 pirate. It was suicidal to join us at that time. You had to have fighting skills.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:24:05               She said, "Oh, I'm a practitioner of Goju karate. I'm a black belt." I said, "Well look, any time you're ready, come on out. Six guys on one side, six guys on the other side, and then there's a guy at the end and you've got to fight through all of them and you're going to catch quite the beat down." Guess what, she showed up on a Friday night. She was geared down. We took her in the park where we trained and she fought through the 13. She got hit, but she gave it as good as she took. She had 13 inch combat boots all the time, which I say yeah, she's hardcore.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:24:37               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 predominately Blacks and Hispanics and convinced us ... the male machismo that was pumping through our veins and arteries, that we needed to get women involved. Through her leadership she attracted so many other women and diversified the make-up of the group, and assisted me. She was side-by-side with me.

Video Clip:                           00:25:04               I joined the Guardian Angels because I wanted to help other people. Once I learned how to defend myself I thought that I could share that and make some impact on the community. I think I joined for the same reasons 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:25:20               I felt hopelessly in love with her. I mean, that was the real first love of my life. We were working together, we had a mission, we were idealistic. We had so much in common, yet 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. 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.

Video Clip:                           00:26:01               Tonight on Prisoners of Fear, the Guardians of 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.

Video Clip:                           00:26:17               These people are putting their lives on the line. They're very respectful, they don't bother anybody. They don't look for trouble, they carry on weapons. They have our full support. I feel very strongly about the Guardian Angels. I've had some experiences with them particularly late at night and I'm very happy to see them. I feel they provide a very worthwhile service.

Video Clip:                           00:26:37               I'm very glad they're around. I'm very glad they're around.

Video Clip:                           00:26:40               The person committing the crime, they think twice before they do anything because the guys are there.

Video Clip:                           00:26:45               We see them up in our neighborhood, we live up in the Bronx. They were escorting some ladies home, some old ladies. When you see something like that, that's very nice.

Video Clip:                           00:26:56               They're actually like angels.

Video Clip:                           00:26:57               Guardian angels.

Video Clip:                           00:26:58               More or less, yes.

Video Clip:                           00:26:59               What is it they do? Don't you think they may be a bunch of vigilantes?

Video Clip:                           00:27:02               They stop people from harming other older people, like ladies. Females that be riding the trains late home from work. Things like that.

Video Clip:                           00:27:14               I see them more than I see cops. They be on the train. Every time I get on the train I always bump into a Guardian Angel. Not always, but as I get off the train I see one walks past.

Video Clip:                           00:27:24               They watched out for you, like a Guardian Angel.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:27:29               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. 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 Blacks and Hispanics.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:28:03               Yet with Lisa, obviously she revealed my softer side. I was a guy at the time who threw nickels 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'm down there knuckle-dragging with street folks. I approached her one time in a moment of weakness, because we were out of sight, out of mind. I took her for some dirty water hot dogs, and we had some Dr. Browns because I loved Dr. Browns, the cherry soda. We began to bond that night and I could see this wasn't beneath her. A dirty water hotdog, a Dr. Browns. I mean, it was cool that I could see that she could relate. Then 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? What would this guy be doing with Lisa?

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:29:06               She was living in the Lower East Side, right there on Avenue A and St Mark's place. 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."

Video Clip:                           00:29:21               I never see the show, I don't like the show. I'm sure the audience doesn't even like this show.

Video Clip:                           00:29:25               Howard, you're in such a bad mood today.

Video Clip:                           00:29:27               Yeah, but the reason I came on, because I like you two guys.

Video Clip:                           00:29:30               Well thank you. We're the hosts, you're supposed to be the guests. The other thing ... Wait a minute, wait a minute. No. The other thing we're going to tell you is maybe-

Video Clip:                           00:29:39               Doesn't she look great without that stupid beret? Doesn't she look great without that stupid beret? Isn't that beautiful?

Video Clip:                           00:29:41               Howard. Howard.

Video Clip:                           00:29:45               This is the first time I've seen the top of your head.

Video Clip:                           00:29:53               They were going to attempt to find out why younger and younger children are turning to crime and drugs. What's really influencing children to chose a path of crime and drugs? A group dedicated to fight crime, Curtis Sliwa.

Video Clip:                           00:30:08               Welcome to Larry King Live. Tonight, taking back the streets.

Video Clip:                           00:30:15               Here to talk about the drug crisis from the street perspective is the founder of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa. Old friend Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels Civilian Patrol group.

Video Clip:                           00:30:35               Founder and President of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa.

Video Clip:                           00:30:38               Members in this band of angels are all over 60. Let's meet them.

Video Clip:                           00:30:47               I'm Julian Hawn, age 70.

Video Clip:                           00:30:50               I'm George Glover, I'm 65.

Video Clip:                           00:30:53               I'm Hughie Goodman, age 78.

Video Clip:                           00:30:56               [inaudible 00:30:56], 80 years old. The oldest Guardian Angel in the United States.

Video Clip:                           00:31:03               Ladies and gentleman, live at the Clash of the Champions, the man who stands for law and order. Weight [inaudible 00:31:11] pounds, the Guardian Angel.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:31:26               Everyone on the periphery, everyone who 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 jet setters, the trendoids were down on the dance floor. 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 Watch Man series, attributed to the Guardian Angels.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:32:02               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 our way of life. This fight-back mentality of being independent and autonomous. 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 people's choice. Then suddenly the people who controlled the processing of the culture of our society who said, "Oh, the Guardian Angels are like hip hop, are like graffiti, are like The Clash."

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:32:45               [music 00:32:45] 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. In the basement is where a lot of our paperwork and a lot of our archiving and documents are stored. This is where all the day-to-day needs of running a non-profit are satisfied by administrators. It's also a place where Guardian Angels have come and gone. Particularly when they're visiting, they'll stay here instead of a No-Tell Motel Holiday Inn. 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. Originally, it was the home of my grandparents. Of Fidel and Nicoletta Bianchino. 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. The smallest room in the corner was mine. We all lived down here.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:34:24               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. 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?" I'd say, "Thanks for being honest, but we have to know the extent of what you were accused of and what you were found guilty of." 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. Like 500 Scott tissue papers long.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:35:11               We would tell these young men and young women, "Hey, today you start all over again. It's like you had a rebirth, 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 are going to glom onto you. They're going to want to praise you. They're going to want to beep their horn. They're going to want to pat you on the back. They're going to want to take you home and introduce you to your family, where normally if you weren't wearing the red beret and the white t-shirt and the Guardian logo, they'd be running from you scared. They wouldn't make eye contact with you because they'd believe the stereotype."

Video Clip:                           00:35:43               When I put these colors on, I walk through the streets with a lot of pride.

Video Clip:                           00:35:47               I've always wanted to join the Guardian Angels, ever since I was a little kid.

Video Clip:                           00:35:52               I have a conscious. I've always felt guilty of what I've done in my past, and I just chose to do something about it. When and old lady comes up to me and says, " God Bless you, I'm glad you're here," you can't replace that feeling with money. That's pure, that's from the heart. You can't buy that feeling.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:36:07               You have an opportunity of not just elevating yourself and redoing all the negatives you've done throughout your life, but also recasting your entire community with a different look.

Video Clip:                           00:36:22               [crosstalk 00:36:22].

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:36:28               A lot of people would always wonder, "Gee, are we just to trust you? How do we know that it's not going to go over the top, over the edge?" Well, at times it does, but that's where you had 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. You may ask, why do you search them? Because we don't trust them. This is not like the blue wall of silence with the cops. 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:37:05               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. 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 going to get sued.

Video Clip:                           00:37:22               If you're the type of person that has a hothead, 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 going to do my own thing, then there's the door.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:37:33               Have I arrived at scenes were 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. 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. More importantly, acknowledging that that was a setback for us.

Video Clip:                           00:38:20               I personally don't believe in what would be termed as para-military 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:38:34               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 sat 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 there in a one-on-one meeting they would bag and tag me as a vigilante and run me out of their respective cities. I stood up and I said, "We have the right to make a citizen's arrest like any other citizen. That's not a vigilante act."

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:39:14               The whole notion of vilified vigilantes is so reflective of how you have distorted 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. Sure, oftentimes there would be justice in which all of a sudden you were dead. A necktie hung from the nearest tree. That was the bad part of it, but the whole notion of organizing and going out there and grabbing the bad guys was good.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:40:06               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 nothing more they would mind their Ps and Qs, sit on the sidelines and not get into trouble ... we would proactively get them to preemptively stop crime, and if necessary grab the individuals responsible and be positive models. If that meant that I was going to be labeled with the scarlet letter, the big "V" of vigilante, so be it.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:40:40               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?" You forget the name. Bernard Goetz. On this particular day, Bernard Goetz, Caspar Milquetoast, geek with the pocket protector, just a really fuddy duddy ... basically with a big "V" on his head, victim, victim. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't know that on prior occasions Bernard Goetz had been victimized in the subways. One time down near Delancey Street, thugs took him and threw him through a plate-glass window as they robbed him. They degraded him and humiliated him. He said never again. He went up to New Hampshire, lie free or die, where they believe in guns. He took rapid gun response training, combat gun training. He carried that piece wherever he went.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:41:52               Then on one Saturday he's going downtown, not far from City Hall, and all of a sudden walking through that Number 2 train The Beast was Troy Canty, James Ramseur, Barry Allen, and Darrel Cabey. Oh, I remember all four of their names. We knew that they would go onto the trains on the weekends especially, first to the arcades on the Duke's 42nd Street, and would sharpen screwdrivers. They'd try to break into the machines that had a lot of coin. They would break into all the pay telephones. They were always vandalizing, broken into for the coin.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:42:27               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 that at any point they could reach out, touch them, rob them, kill them, rape them, and just completely immaculate them. When they saw Bernard Goetz sitting in front of them, oh they came out to play. They had sort of surrounded him.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:42:55               Anybody being in that circumstance would know right then you were going to get victimized. Most people wouldn't know what to do. He pulled out his gun and he fired in rapid sequence. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Then when all of a sudden one of the guys fell to the ground he said, "You don't look so bad," bang, and shot him right in the back. That's what paralyzed him. Then he fled through the cars, jumped out of the back of the train into the darkness of the tunnels and disappeared. All of a sudden, he was lionized. He was a hero. All 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. He was on the lam.

Video Clip:                           00:43:47               From WMBC TV this is News 4, New York.

Video Clip:                           00:43:51               Police are calling the gunman a vigilante. They say that he methodically shot four young men on a crowded 7th Avenue IRT express just north of Chamber Street in Manhattan. The gunman said he shot them because they were trying to rob him. Rolanda Watts has more.

Video Clip:                           00:44:08               New York City police are calling this the most serious subway crime this year. Four men 18 and 19 years olds, shot by a gunman who is still at large. A gunman who police say told the conductor of the southbound Number 2 train that the four victims were trying to mug him, and that's why he shot them. The 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.

Video Clip:                           00:44:58               I came down simply because of the uniqueness of the situation involving four people being shot in this incident.

Video Clip:                           00:45:07               This particular incident also brings to light that some citizens are carrying weapons to protect themselves, just in case there's trouble. While that's comforting to some, others are concerned.

Video Clip:                           00:45:18               If I had more bullets, I would have shot them all again and again. My problem was I ran out of bullets. I was going to gauge 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:45:32               We stood firm for Goetz. We fought for his right to fight back. Even though it turned out he was [inaudible 00:45:39], said 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. A lot of people run away because 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.

Video Clip:                           00:46:00               I hope that they clean up the streets. I think they're part of the problem. A bunch of vigilantes running around here with no badges whatsoever. If everyone did that, it would be chaos.

Video Clip:                           00:46:32               The people down here don't want them. If you get 12 people walking down the street all dressed the same, if somebody's going to do the crime, they're going to see them coming, they're going to wait until they pass and then they're going to do it anyways.

Video Clip:                           00:46:47               [inaudible 00:46:47] None of these motherfuckers fucking know what theft is all about. You get the fuck out of my way, all right? I'm a [crosstalk 0:47:03]. Get off me!

Video Clip:                           00:47:10               [inaudible 00:47:10].

Video Clip:                           00:47:11               Well, you want to know about Curtis. Excuse me, I can take a while. Usually I'm like that, but 91 years old now.

Video Clip:                           00:47:47               You're 92. 92 today, you're 92.

Video Clip:                           00:47:53               [inaudible 00:47:53].

Video Clip:                           00:47:57               Okay, get ready.

Video Clip:                           00:47:59               Okay, ready.

Video Clip:                           00:48:00               One, two, three. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Grandma. Happy birthday to you.

Video Clip:                           00:48:19               Oh!

Video Clip:                           00:48:37               Now what we want to do is make a wish. Let's everybody make a wish, okay? Wish something really great. You too, mom. Okay, this is a really strong wish. Now you've got to blow the candles out so the wish happens.

Video Clip:                           00:48:55               Yes! Yay!

Video Clip:                           00:48:55               Well I was born in Chicago. Her first child. 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?" Then finally my mother got pregnant. I was at Ursuline Academy and the day that he was born I went to the nuns ... this was in the Bronx ... I said, "My brother is born." they said, "How do you know it's a brother," because at that time they didn't do the checking. I said, "I know it's a brother and he's born." They said, "He's need born yet, Aleta." Sure enough, as soon as I nailed it, he was born.

Video Clip:                           00:49:44               The interesting thing is that I was going to school in the Bronx, it was the Ursuline Nuns in the Bronx, and they took him right after he was christened and placed him on the altar in 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 "Fran White", she was always Mama Angel and she was helping all the Angels. They would come into the house and my father was there. She was like the mother to many of these kids.

Video Clip:                           00:50:22               All right, let them see you.

Video Clip:                           00:50:24               Yeah.

Video Clip:                           00:50:24               See, it's a Guardian Angel.

Video Clip:                           00:50:24               Wow.

Video Clip:                           00:50:28               Like his father.

Video Clip:                           00:50:29               Are you proud of your dad, Anthony?

Video Clip:                           00:50:31               Yes I am, very much.

Video Clip:                           00:50:35               Can you tell them as to why?

Video Clip:                           00:50:37               Because he's a hardworking dad. He's a hardworking dad in everything.

Video Clip:                           00:50:42               Okay, this is good. This is good.

Video Clip:                           00:50:51               On your mark, get ready, get set, let's go.

Video Clip:                           00:50:52               [crosstalk 00:50:52].

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:50:55               This is my mom's room, and obviously when my dad was alive he was here and this is there shrine to Democrats, to Liberals, and Progressives. They had a picture up of Barack Obama, Jesus Christ, the Pope, other iconic figures in the Roman Catholic faith. This is where they would pray and they would have sort of quiet contemplative thought. 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 shun, that would be disgrazia.

Video Clip:                           00:51:46               Curtis asked me questions about crime and the corruption that's around and everything. I said we had a great backer for the American Revolution, Edmund Burke. 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." The other thing he said, "The worst kind of tyranny are bad laws." I constantly hammered 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. Most people, they talk about it but are never involved directly. They're afraid to put up, they're afraid to make a commitment.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:52:39               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. 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. I was just mesmerized. He had movie star looks. Blonde hair, blue eyes. He exuded strength. He told me what it was like, against all odds for his family to survive the Depression in Chicago. I was able to compare that with my mother's family in Brooklyn that survived Depression. Most importantly, he would straighten me out. He wasn't my war-time conciliar. He was my peace-time conciliar.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:53:32               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. All of a sudden, he's no longer lucid, he's no longer able to communicate. You could see he was trembling, he was in such incredible pain. I said to the doctors, "Why? Why are we continuing his life? He's suffering." They said, "Well there's an option. We could continue his life but we'll have to break his ribs and give him CPR." We can't do this. Dad is suffering so much. I said, "Let me take over, I'm the medical proxy." I went in that room and I stared and glared at all the doctors and the physicians and the nurses. I said, "I know what I got to do. Leave the room." They said, "We can't leave the room." I said, "Fucking leave the room!"

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:54:27               I grabbed my father's hand, it was shaking. I put my mouth right to his ear and I knew he could hear me. I said, "Dad, don't worry about it. You can do. 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."

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:54:58               His grip lessened and he began to breathe peacefully. He was no longer in that dire circumstance, where I knew it was more mental than it was physical. I knew where the magnet was because he had a pacemaker. I knew exactly what I had to do as his son. I took that magnet and I waved it over his pacemaker and it stopped his heart. He passed on to the hereafter. I felt the energy leave the body of his being here on this plane. It's almost like it transferred to me. The staff came back in and they knew what I had done and it was hush-hush, mush-mush.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:55:39               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. I know my dad is looking down on me and understanding that I carry on the torch. He passed it right on to me that day in that bed in [inaudible 00:56:01], when he drew his last breath. The two people who had the biggest influence in my life both passed away in my arms. My grandfather Fidel Bianchino at 99, and my father Chester Sliwa at 93.

Video Clip:                           00:56:28               I think it's really a question of egos and male egos, that's what it comes down to, because the Mayor of New York, the Police Commissioner of New York, as well as many many other cities have told we the people that there is nothing that can be done about this 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?

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:56:58               It was the mid-80s. It was the time when crack cocaine smashed this city's face. Crack was whack, as many people said, because the NYPD was a dollar short and a day late. They had never dealt with these kinds of dope fiends.

Video Clip:                           00:57:23               Keep the crack [inaudible 00:57:23].

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:57:28               I mean, before that it was guys who 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. 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. Immediately the Guardian Angels were pressed into service in the front lines, because in a lot of the inner city neighborhoods and especially the Bronx, the cops they basically waved the white flag, they had given up. Meantime, what we decided to do was to rob the crack dealers.

Video Clip:                           00:58:10               When we get inside, you're slamming and jamming. Asking no questions. Hands on the head, paraphernalia on the floor. One of you will be scooping it up: drugs, money, paraphernalia. [inaudible 00:58:21]. We perform our little act, we destroy it, we alert the public in English, in Spanish, and then we're on our way. We don't have time to play. Are we ready?

Video Clip:                           00:58:31               Yes. Let's do this.

Video Clip:                           00:58:46               Are we blitzed?

Video Clip:                           00:58:46               Yeah.

Video Clip:                           00:58:46               All right. [crosstalk 00:58:46].

Video Clip:                           00:58:46               [inaudible 00:58:46].

Video Clip:                           00:58:53               What were you doing in that building? What are you doing in this building? You smoking crack, you're selling crack, and you're hooking. 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 hooking going on.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:59:16               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 are a few blocks away, they're spectating. They're waiting to see if the Guardian Angels are going to have to be carried out on gurneys. If they're going to have to send in the meat wagons. Luckily we were able to get out of there as the shots continued to be fired from the rooftops.

Curtis Sliwa:                        00:59:54               We would stop at certain sections in 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 drugs out on the street. We would count the money up and we would bundle it, and we would destroy the drugs in front of all the young people and put it down the sewers.

Video Clip:                           01:00:13               This is it. This is what the children of America die for. No, this is what the people of America kill for. This is what's destroying our nation, crack cocaine and dope. [crosstalk 01:00:24].

Video Clip:                           01:00:25               Right here is the main reason that the Guardian Angels do what we do. This is our future, all right? [inaudible 01:00:34] this way, maybe this damned country has a chance.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:00:37               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 type, mostly crack and heroin, and a lot of currency. We would bundle it up and we would bring it back to restaurant row where we begin 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. 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 Hansen, who was charge and his assistant.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:01:14               Who else can say in 37 years, walking amongst the oozy-toting dope-sucking psychopathic killing machines, physically getting involved ... not just being eyes and ears, which "see something, say something," that's good if you want to be passive. If you want to be proactive and aggressive and deter crime, there's got to 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. 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:01:57               I decided, okay, I don't have every fact but I'm going to 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, Butchy. He was a lush, he liked the booze. He had been at the Silver Fox which was a combination gin mill and dance hall in South Ozone Park. 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 McLaughlin, Caplin, the whole crew.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:03:05               They were looking for Danny DeSilva because Danny DeSilva, they have given a kilo of cocaine on consignment. They surrounded him and Gotti Jr says, "Hey Danny, we've been looking for you. Where's our snaps? Where's our moolish moolah?" Danny said, "Fuck you, Gotti." This is in front of all of his guys, because that's who he's dancing with, his woman. Gotti gets the shive from Rogerio, who sticks into the back of his hand. He now stabs him 46 times. He holds him up, keeps stabbing him as his homeboys hold him up. 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 Bergin Hunt, Fish, and Shoot Human Beings Club.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:03:52               Then, these guys tell him, "Hey, your son just killed this guy on the dance floor." Gotti said, "Don't worry about it. Everybody knows, they didn't see nothing." Well guess what? The DT's come and they start asking questions and nobody saw nothing. "Oh, Gotti was here? I didn't know." "What, the Gambinos? What are you talking about." "The guy must have fell on a knife." What, 46 times? "Yeah."

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:04:17               Then from the crowd emerges Danny DeSilva's best friend. He says, "I know what happened, Officers." "Oh, 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. All of a sudden he says, "Gotti, you got a problem. I've got good evidence here that your son killed Danny DeSilva. Do what you got to do, because if not I'm going to have to charge him and he's going to get arraigned." Gotti Sr says, "No problem, thanks for the heads up."

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:04:51               A few days later, this guy is found hanging from a tree, strung by his neck, but his knees were touching 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 to everyone, "Hush, hush, mush, mush." Meanwhile the coroner comes and says it was a suicide. Really? How much did the coroner get greased? Gotti Sr figured that that chapter was put to rest, until Curtis Sliwa told his story that day. That began the road to the decision that by all means necessary, they were going to whack and kill Curtis Sliwa, to silence me and having me swimming with the fishes in Jamaica Bay.

Video Clip:                           01:05:37               The hunt is on tonight, Mayor Dinkins is pledging his help to find the gunman who ambushed and shot Curtis Sliwa. The Guardian Angel's founder and leader is recovering from surgery and Bellevue Hospital tonight. Magee Hickey is there now with a live report for us. Magee?

Video Clip:                           01:05:49               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 AM near this news stand at 7th Street and Avenue A. Curtis Sliwa told police he had just gotten in 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 street.

Video Clip:                           01:06:20               He jumped out the window to get away. He's got the scrapes and bruises on the side of this leg.

Video Clip:                           01:06:26               Had this bullet gone, I would say approximately one inch higher, he might have been paralyzed for life.

Video Clip:                           01:06:33               They're out to get him. He was set up. This is not the first time he's been put upon. Several weeks ago he was attacked by fellows wielding bats.

Video Clip:                           01:06:40               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.

Video Clip:                           01:06:48               I admire Curtis Sliwa and I think that he takes his life into his own hands doing what he does.

Video Clip:                           01:06:56               I just hope everything works out for him, and that his work continues because it's not an easy thing he does. The city needs more people involved and people doing things.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:07:06               I'm laid out on the asphalt on the corner of Avenue B and 6th 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 William's Road bridge and they would chemically incinerate me at one of their chop shops and junk yards. All of a sudden, there would be no evidence. Not 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. As they stripped me of my clothes, the EMTs, and put me in the body bag and pumped it up with a bicycle pump to try to repress the bleeding ... it felt like a baby grand piano had been rested on my breastplate. I'm screaming in pain in the middle of the street and it's attracting more and more people. They throw me on the gurney and they race me to Bellevue Hospital.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:07:59               We must have hit every pothole on the way to Bellevue because I could feel my blood slushing in the body bag. I'm thinking to myself, "Hey, God as my judge, I'm too young to go. Come on man, I've got so much more to do. I can't die this way, at the hands of my enemies. Please, give me another shot." God wasn't listening. The guy who was listening was Dr. Leon Packer, because 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. Lean Packet, amazingly, that's right, all roads lead to Canarsie. Born and raised in Canarsie. Whispered in ear, he says, "Curtis, we got your back."

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:08:44               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. 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 01:09:10], who led to me being arrested 76 times on his orders. There he is, he's smiling at me. I said to myself, "This is it. I must have 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."

Video Clip:                           01:09:37               With the passage of time, everybody accommodates. They reach the point where people, including the cops, have perceived them as positive.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:09:49               They tried to get me twice. Two times up, two times they've failed. I've got a lot more in me. I've got a lot more life in me. I've got a lot more to accomplish on this plane before I cash in my tickets.

Video Clip:                           01:10:03               Curtis Sliwa has been show 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?

Video Clip:                           01:10:19               Right, the interesting thing is that they tell the whole story of when they wanted to kill Curtis Sliwa. John Alite, how do you feel sitting next to Curtis?

Video Clip:                           01:10:46               I don't blame him, obviously. If guys are trying to hurt him and kill him and I'm part of that Gambino family, I would feel the same way as him. Where's Gotti Jr now, John Alite?

Video Clip:                           01:11:04               Oh, telling tales still. He won't apologize to Curtis, and he's still free. He's free, he's running around. He's scared to come into the neighborhood. He won't go to any of the Boroughs. He knows guys want to hurt him or kill him, so he's hiding behind his attorney. They're 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."

Video Clip:                           01:11:33               What do you feel sitting opposite this guy?

Video Clip:                           01:11:35               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.

Video Clip:                           01:11:58               Set the record straight, John. Were you responsible for his shooting?

Video Clip:                           01:12:01               No. Sliwa was a situation that's very unique. Sliwa was somebody that he hoped, he prayed, he needed the Gotti's to shoot him. That's what he needed, because he built a career out of it. He was a nobody that nobody paid attention to. Once that had happened to him, once he had gotten shot, he turned around and turned it into a radio career. Making a half a million dollars a year. He became a bit of a media darling. The fact that he's [inaudible 01:12:29] every entity in New York City throughout his career really was of little matter, but the fact that he cashed in on the accusation that the Gotti's had had him kidnapped in shot ... well, that's a little different.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:12:46               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 God. I can relate to average, everyday people and the struggles that they go through. I hope, as I continue to be humble, that they maintain that love.

Video Clip:                           01:13:08               I love that he gives to New York City and he's there for the people. Anytime he has a problem with any issues that's going on, he attacks it instead of try to put it under the cover and sheets and stuff. He's there for the community, no matter what ethnicity you are. He's the truth.

Video Clip:                           01:13:21               I've been in the Angels since 1986. First time that I saw the Guardian Angels I was on the 4 Train. We had a lady getting attacked on the train, and nobody would help her. The only person that was helping this lady, were the Guardian Angels.

Video Clip:                           01:13:37               I like what he's for, serving us.

Video Clip:                           01:13:40               I'm going on 26 years now of being a member of the New York City Guardian Angels. One of the reasons why I joined in this organization was to make a difference in the communities and help those that can't help themselves.

Video Clip:                           01:13:53               I remember them from back in the day ... Come on, you've got to jump in on this one. We knew them when ... We're old. Come on, Ang.

Video Clip:                           01:14:02               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.

Video Clip:                           01:14:22               I wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Me and my family, we watch him before we 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.

Video Clip:                           01:14:36               It's preparing me for the future. I want to be in law enforcement, so this is kind of 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.

Video Clip:                           01:14:48               I was raised in the projects of [inaudible 01:14:49]. If I would have never joined the Guardian Angels, who knows where I would be today?

Video Clip:                           01:14:57               Curtis Sliwa, man!

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:15:04               We have to justify that 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 enrichment of others. That's how you're going to 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. 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.

Curtis Sliwa:                        01:15:40               People say, "What are you talking about? You're approaching retirement." I say, "Retirement? The only retirement I'm going to have is when I'm room temperature." Are you kidding? I'm going to 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, and 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 going fiscally it'll be a cardboard box at maybe Potter's field ... I hope it says one thing on my tombstone. "R-I-P. He tried, he died." Because I certainly gave it my all.