Responding to pleas of Baltimore residents overwhelmed by drug dealing in their neighborhood, the Guardian Angels will soon be patrolling in their community.
The all-volunteer neighborhood watch organization known for their distinctive red berets and crisp uniforms, said that their two-decade hiatus from Baltimore will end in several months.
“City residents wrote our national headquarters and said they were having problems,” said Marcus Dent, chapter leader and coordinator for Baltimore.
“Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, called me, and now we?re in the planning stages,” Dent said.
Dent said that contrary to conventional wisdom, the angels, founded in 1979 in response to growing crime in the Bronx, N.Y., are not an alternative police force.
“We are not here to compete with the police,” he said. Instead, Dent said the Guardian Angels are a “community watch” organization with several differences.
“We?re uniformed, organized and better trained,” he said.
Dent said that the organization will begin recruiting efforts soon. The three-month training program emphasizes defensive martial arts, hand signaling and communication.
“You learn to talk to people. If you get into a confrontation, you can to talk them down; that?s the key,” he said.
Police spokesman Detective Donny Moses said the police department has not yet met with the organization.
One resident of Upper Fells Point, one of the first neighborhoods that the Angels plan to patrol, said that rampant drug dealing has made her life miserable.
“When the patrol car comes, all the pagers go off, and the drug dealers disappear,” said the resident, whodid not want to use her name for fear of retribution.
“The police can?t be everywhere.”
But the first night that Guardian Angels president and founder Sliwa visited her neighborhood with several angels in tow, the effect was immediate. “The reaction was amazing. It was comical, the look on the dealers? faces; they didn?t know what to do,” she said.
“When they see a police car, they know how to hide, but they didn?t know how to handle the Angels,” she said.
