Valley Interview : Guardian Angels Director Says Recruits Find Training Tough
At first they were called the Rock Brigade--a handful of guys who picked up rocks from the streets to beautify the Big Apple. A year later the movement went underground where they were known as the Magnificent 13 for sweeping crime from New York City subways.
For the past 15 years they have been known as the Guardian Angels, recognized by their bright red berets and white T-shirts. Membership has reached more than 8,500, with chapters in more than a dozen countries; the newest chapter opened earlier this month at a Van Nuys strip mall at Sepulveda and Victory boulevards.
But while most people know the name, they probably know little of the Guardian Angels’ tactics, training, members and motivations. Weston Conwell, the Guardian Angels’ western regional director, told Times special correspondent Jeff Schnaufer what to expect from the new Valley chapter.
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Question: Is there a lack of protection in the Valley that warrants the Angels’ presence?
Answer: Yes, there’s a lack of protection in every city in America. In Los Angeles there were dreams of having a cop on every corner. We’ll be doing battle with Darth Vader before we have a cop on every corner.
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Q: Tell us about the new Valley chapter.
A: The Valley has always had Guardian Angels. They just have never had an office. This is just going to be their own Guardian Angels in their own office and dealing with their own problems. It won’t be fully functional until we graduate them, which will be in about three months. We have about 25 recruits in the Valley. Of that, the first wave that become Guardian Angel is 2% to as much as 10%.
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Q: That’s a low percentage. How do you screen the recruits?
A: We want to see what’s in the hearts of the recruits. It takes about two to three weeks to find that out, and sometimes longer. If we feel they are out there to bang heads or kick butt, or they are out there to settle a personal score, we don’t want them. This is where the media hurts us. They see the fad on TV or read an article about a new chapter and see they want to become a Guardian Angel. It brings out the wrong kind of recruit.
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Q: Explain the training process that they go through.
A: There are three months of classroom training and patrols. On the street one night a week, one night a week going to the classroom. There will be one member in a patrol of six who is a trainee. They will have an experienced partner who will teach them the ropes.
If something does happen on the street, the trainee steps back. He is not to take any initiative on his own whatsoever. They don’t have the communications skills. They don’t know if this is a gang member or a drug dealer, how do we deal with them. A lot of it is getting them street smarts.
In the classroom, we teach them martial arts. There are also legal training classes involving district attorneys and judges who come in and say this is what you can do and what you can’t do. On top of that, they tell us what they’re prosecuting for. That way, we don’t waste a lot of their time when we bring somebody in. There’s first aid training as well as CPR. Then they take the state government course called Powers of Arrest. It’s what every security guard has. It says when you can make an arrest, what your duties are as a private citizen. Once they complete all of this, they don’t necessarily become a Guardian Angel. This is one of our checks and balances. If somebody is not ready for it, we don’t put them on the streets. It can take and has taken up to two years for some individuals.
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Q: How would you describe the typical graduate? Their motivations?
A: Try to describe the average San Fernando Valley resident. If you told me the Valley is 60% Latino, the chapter will be 60% Latino. One common denominator they have is that they are frustrated with the crime on the streets. Above and beyond all, they will have a deep-seated need to help. The average person in the Valley will be 24, 25 years old, middle-class to poor.
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Q: Angels do not carry weapons, nor do they have official police training. Yet Angel Glenn Doser was shot to death in March, 1993, when he tried to stop two men who were robbing someone in Hollywood. And the year before, Guardian Angel founder Curtis Sliwa was attacked twice: once by three men with clubs and the other time shot in the back of a New York cab. Are Angels really prepared to deal with crime on the streets?
A: What can you do about a gun? What can police officers do about a gun? How many police officers do we bury every year? And did their police training help them? How many Guardian Angels have we buried in the last 15 years? Very few in comparison. I think seven have lost their life.
About two weeks ago, a patrol in Hollywood hears a gunshot and they respond. They go into the apartment building, find a man on the floor with a shotgun blast in his chest. Then they heard the sound of a shotgun being cocked and found the shooter upstairs. Instead of waiting for police, they took the shooter out and held him for the police. Then they went back to the victim and did first aid until the paramedics showed up. The police said that we were crazy, that we should have waited until they showed up and shot the guy. The Angels took a chance and they saved the lives of others who could have been shot by this guy. But the amazing thing is that there is absolutely no report of it.
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Q: What does that mean to you?
A: The police have always been threatened by us. But I’m not upset that they don’t recognize what we do. We’re not out there for the publicity.
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Q: Speaking of publicity, founder Sliwa himself admitted that he faked his 1980 kidnaping and five other exploits to help the Guardian Angels survive the early years as a crime-fighting group. Why should the public trust that there aren’t going to be publicity stunts in the Valley?
A: That’s a good question. But when Sliwa did it, he had no idea how big this thing was going to get. He was struggling just to get the group going. But the L.A. group stands for itself. We don’t survive on the merits of Curtis Sliwa, we survive on the merits of the Guardian Angels in Los Angeles.
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Q: Describe the street patrols.
A: Right now, it’s a minimum of two patrols a week, Wednesdays and Fridays in the Valley. Right now we are patrolling a three-mile radius from the headquarters.
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Q: Will patrols increase after graduation?
A: That depends upon the group in the Valley. We don’t want to push them faster than what they are ready for. Generally, they take on more than they can handle off the bat, because the enthusiasm is so high at first.
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Q: What has happened during the patrols so far? Any citizen’s arrests?
A: We’ve seen a lot of activity, but we haven’t had any arrests. We’ve seen mostly gang members and drug dealers. If it was about making citizen’s arrests, the last thing I would want to do is be wearing a red beret and a T-shirt. To be honest, if you’re arrested by the Guardian Angels, you’re a fool. Six guys in white T-shirts walking down the streets, we stand out worse than a black-and-white.
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Q: What kind of neighborhood crimes will the Valley chapter focus on?
A: After we graduate the class, we’ll sit down with the Valley chapter and discuss the logistics we have, what neighborhoods are bad, what neighborhoods we will focus on. There are so many factors that are involved on starting up the new chapter, but the most important is community support.
Years ago, we used to come into neighborhoods before we had community support. That was a little arrogant. If we go in into a neighborhood and they don’t want us in, the problem will come back. If we have community support, we’ll train them on how to deal with the problems after we leave.
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Q: How is community support so far?
A: Excellent. The Valley has always been the place with the most community support than any place else in the city. We have an office in Hollywood, where we get a lot of calls from the Valley. We have a lot of contacts in the Valley. But we’re not really working with those people until we pick a neighborhood we want to focus on. Then we’ll meet with the community or some neighborhood leader, where they tell us their concerns. Our main goal is to empower the community to take it back themselves.
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Q: Once you’ve determined the target crime areas, how will you use the patrols to discourage prostitution, drug dealing, gang banging and other crimes?
A: By our presence. Who’s going to want to pick up a prostitute when there are eight Guardian Angels standing around her? We also have a reputation that we will follow through after making a citizen’s arrest. We will go to court and testify against them. The gang members know this.
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Q: Under what circumstances can you make a citizen’s arrest?
A: When there is a misdemeanor that’s been committed in our presence or when you’re beyond a reasonable doubt in a felony. For example, the guy in the shotgun arrest, we had reasonable cause to believe he had fired the shot. Had he slapped somebody, we couldn’t have made the arrest because it wasn’t a felony and we didn’t see it happen.
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Q: How much force can you use?
A: Whatever is reasonable to detain the individual. Guardian Angels are trained to take a guy down without ever hitting them. Let’s take the Rodney King incident. Remove the weapons. Each grab an arm or a limb or something. If you have 12 guys, you can get him down.
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Q: Are you saying the Guardian Angels could have done a better job than the police in apprehending King?
A: Who couldn’t do a better job? They were all arrested. Girl Scouts could have probably done better.
I’m not going to make any friends in the Police Department with this article.
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Q: Van Nuys Police Station Captain Jim McMurray said Angels have been cited within the last month for soliciting funds in the middle of the street from vehicles stopped at the intersection of Burbank and Sepulveda boulevards. Were you aware of this?
A: I wasn’t aware that they were in the middle of the street. They don’t interfere with traffic. That’s why Guardian Angels haven’t been arrested. That’s our fund-raising technique. We find that it works better than paying somebody $100,000 to raise funds. With the Guardian Angels, 100% goes into the organization.
Frankly, I’m impressed if that’s the only thing the captain is worrying about. I know other things we should be focusing his attention on, like the child molester in the streets who hasn’t been caught. I’m sorry we’ve occupied his time worrying about people in the street.
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Q: At what point will you know you have been successful in deterring crime?
A: Response from the community. When we see the looks in people’s eyes when they get up in the morning and realize there were no stabbings in the neighborhood, that they don’t have to step in a pool of blood to go to work. But our effort will last as long as the people of the Valley want it.
‘Years ago, we used to come into neighborhoods before we had community support. That was a little arrogant. . . . If we have community support, we’ll train them on how to deal with the problems after we leave.’