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Colin Hatcher
interviewed by Emma Taylor on 24 October, 1995
"If we carried guns, we'd probably have about a thousand people dead by now."
Colin Hatcher has been involved with the Guardian Angels for a number of years, and is leading an Internet-based presence called the CyberAngels Project.
Tripod: What's your position with the Guardian Angels?CH: I'm an international coordinator with the Guardian Angels, and I'm also the coordinator for our CyberAngels Internet project. Everybody calls me Gabriel.
Tripod: What is the purpose of being on the Internet?
CH: Well, basically, we see the Internet as a huge city. The work we're doing on the Net is the same work we're doing on the streets of our cities. If you imagine the Internet to be a huge city, in this case it would have the population of about 40 million people. Some of those people, needless to say, are criminals. The Internet has areas which are dangerous for children. It has red-light areas. It has neighborhoods that you wouldn't want to go down on a dark night, and it has places where sometimes people get into trouble and they wish there was someone they could turn to for help. You can experience similar kinds of problems on the Net as the problems you would experience in the city.
Tripod: How can you patrol the Net?
CH: Well, that's exactly what we do. We basically cruise the Net, and just like in the cities where we work, the Guardian Angels usually don't patrol nice areas. We choose areas where people are feeling under threat. For example, there are places on the Internet, where crimes are being committed. These are especially all the talk areas on the Internet. These are called IRC connections -- Internet Relay Chats.
Tripod: So what can you do to help people?
CH: We can do a number of things. If we're in an area and we see a problem going on, number one we can advise the victim as it happens. One of things that happens, just to give you an example, we go to an area where Christians are meeting to talk, and often ... Satanists will come and visit them. So somebody will come into the room and they will start cursing Jesus, insulting God, you know, basically praising the Devil. ... If a Satanist did that to a bunch of Christians there'd probably be a fight. But people do this on the Internet because they can't be touched. We will summon a guide from that organization to come down and discipline that person who's disrupting the talk, or we might advise the Christians how to proceed. ... For example, the major providers, like Prodigy and AOL, have a facility where if you don't like what's somebody's saying, you can make them invisible, effectively.
Tripod: There will never be enough Cyberangels to watch over every dark alley on the Web. Do you think there should be some form of censorship to reduce the need for Cyberangels?
CH: We don't want the government to get involved. The Cyber-angels like myself, just like the majority of people on the Internet, would prefer people to clean up their own neighborhood, to put their own house in order, because if we don't, the government will step in and pass legislation, which will hurt the innocent people too. Legislation will protect everybody from the criminal activities, but it will also prevent other activities from happening, which are not illegal.
We don't believe in censorship, we believe in self-censorship. But if censorship is what it takes to prevent people on the Internet trading in child pornography, then we support censorship ... but those things can be stopped without the government passing laws, if everybody who uses the Internet decides to do something about it.
Tripod: Back to the real world. Do you still patrol the streets?
CH: Me personally? Well, I've been a Guardian Angel for six and a half years. I'm still training Guardian Angels and I still patrol the streets. Right now I'm New York City, so I spend some of my time patrolling Restaurant Row and the 42nd Street, Times Square area. And the rest of the time, when I'm back from patrol, I switch on my computer and I start patrolling in Cyberspace.
Tripod: How does someone become a Guardian Angel?
CH: To be a Guardian Angel, it's very simple. You come down, and you train with us for the evening, and see what you think, and then you come out and patrol with us as a guest. ... When you join our training program properly, we take you through a three-month program which trains you in everything from the physical intervention skills, self defense skills, to communication and negotiation skills, studying the law, some psychology training, teamwork training, learning how to patrol with us, and first aid. We call it Urban Survival Skills. A whole selection of skills that you would need to be able to see what's happening around you in a big city, to be able to take appropriate action.
Tripod: How important is the issue of race for a Guardian Angel? Are there some areas of the city where you would not send a white Angel, for example?
CH: Absolutely not. That's not an issue at all. The Guardian Angels are really multi-ethnic, and when we make our patrols, we don't put all the Puerto Ricans in one patrol and send them to a Puerto Rican neighborhood, or all the black members in another patrol and send them to a black neighborhood. Our strength comes in being mixed, because what we're trying to show is that the color of your skin is not the determining factor in being able to get along with somebody else. We're not a separatist organization. So, it's important for us, if we go to a black neighborhood -- we want the kids in that neighborhood to see a mixed group. Because in a ghetto neighborhood, in a black neighborhood where people begin to develop a fear of other people, with different color skin, we want them to see that that fear is unnecessary.
Tripod: Does this ever create tension when you patrol the streets? The fact that you patrol in racially mixed groups?
CH: We find that there's no problem with this. Obviously, if we have a mixed patrol when we go to a Puerto Rican neighborhood, then the Puerto Ricans will be the first to be talking, because people will start talking to them in Spanish. People are naturally more comfortable at first looking for their own people, their own kind. It's a sad comment on human beings, but that's the way we are. People will naturally gravitate towards their own people, instinctively. If we go into a neighborhood like that, our Puerto Rican members will break the ice, and in five minutes everybody's talking, the ice is broken. And then everybody becomes friends. And so we don't find any problems.
Tripod: So the Angels are role models as well?
CH: Absolutely. In fact the more important role that we play is in being positive role models. Our two main missions are to be a visual deterrent to violent crime and to be a role model for youth. If you look at the crime level in New York City, it's rising, it's never stopping. And we're only a small group compared to the level of crime. But the impact we have on influencing youth is much greater than our influence on crime. So for us that's the more important work, to go into neighborhoods, to talk to the kids. Not just to educate and explain to them, but to show them not only how people can together with different skin, but also how people can work together, get self respect, without holding a gun, without being in a gang, without being a drug dealer. Because the role model for kids in the poor neighborhoods is often the drug dealer on the corner. They're the guys in the neighborhood with the nice clothes, and the good cars, and the women on their arms. And all the kids growing up with no jobs and no money are looking to those drug dealers as their role models. And we try to go into those areas and challenge the drug dealers' right to be a role model.
Tripod: So you do something above and beyond what the police do?
CH: You put it very well. Of course, a part of what we do is hoping to be there in the absence of police, to save lives, and to prevent violent crimes. But absolutely -- more important than that is the influence that we can have on the minds of those kids, how they see the world and what they want to do in it.
Tripod: What sort of reaction do you get from the police? Do they appreciate your work or do they feel you're stepping on their toes?
CH: Well of course it varies from city to city. We're talking worldwide. Whenever we start a new group in a city, the police are always a little suspicious. They're never really sure whether it's going to be a good or a bad thing. When the Angels started here in New York City, we had major problems with the police. The police considered the group as another gang. They believed the group was going to cause trouble. So they were very hostile. But if you're talking now, 17 years later, the wall of our headquarters is covered in awards from the police. Every year the mayor of New York City gives the Angels an award. And so things have changed.
Tripod: So New York City was the first city to be patrolled by Guardian Angels?
CH: New York City was where the whole thing started, yeah.
Tripod: How did it begin?
CH: Well, Curtis Sliwa, the guy who started it, was working in the South Bronx, in a McDonald's restaurant as the night manager. It was the only place open at night, and there used to be a tremendous amount of problems there -- fighting on the sidewalk outside, people literally crawling into the McDonald's, bleeding to death. And he's never been the kind of man who'd say, "Well, I'm not paid to deal with that, I just serve hamburgers." Every time there was fighting and trouble around the McDonalds, he would jump over the counter and go rescue the person.
Because he was the manager, he basically employed people to do the same thing. So when people came for a job in his McDonalds, he didn't say, "Well, do you have any experience serving hamburgers?" He said, "If we're serving hamburgers and there's a fight outside, what are you going to do?" And if they said, "Well, I'll call the police," he said, "Sorry, can't hire you." He hired the people who said, "I'd jump over the counter and help them." He had a whole team of them in the McDonalds, and that's where the group started from. And eventually they started patrolling the number 4 train, which ran into the South Bronx, because they had to come to work from their various neighborhoods. They decided to start meeting up early and jump on the train and extend the service they were providing for people's safety, not only in the McDonald's, but also on the train itself. That's how the whole thing started, and it just grew from there.
Tripod: So how are they funded now?
CH: Well, in America, we're called a 501-C3, which is basically a registered charity. We're a nonprofit organization, which means we're funded entirely by individual private donations -- either from individuals or from businesses. And people send us money, in the post, we have mailing lists and appeals and fund-raising drives, of course, just like any charity. The majority of members are volunteers, so our overheads are extremely low. We're basically providing a voluntary service, and that's how we're funded.
Tripod: Is there a high burnout rate for volunteers?
CH: There is quite a turnover. I think since the day it started, there have been more than a quarter of a million people who've been Guardian Angels worldwide. But right now, our worldwide population is about five thousand. It tends to stay at five thousand. That's because people are joining all the time, and people are leaving all the time. One of the reasons for that is most Guardian Angels are teenagers. It's something people do in their spare time, when they have time. But as people continue to grow up, go into education or get jobs or get married and have families, assume other responsibilities, it's not something that they can do so easily.
Tripod: What about casualties?
CH: Well, if you look at the organization over 17 years, there have been five people killed. Those five people have all been killed in America. Three of them were not wearing Guardian Angel uniform when they were killed. They were going home, or just going about their daily business, and they witnessed a crime, and they went to help. They didn't go in uniform. And they were killed helping someone who was being attacked. They were killed for being good Samaritans, not for being Guardian Angels. That leaves only two Guardian Angels who've ever been killed in uniform, which is a pretty low fatality rate. We've had loads of injuries, of course, over the years, in America, especially, in dangerous areas. By that, I mean people just getting punched in the nose or people stabbed. But it's actually safer to be a Guardian Angel than a policeman.
Tripod: What do you think it is that keeps the Angels so safe?
CH: It's a combination. Number one, we carry no weapons, and everybody knows that. If we carried guns, we'd probably have about a thousand people dead by now, and rising, because we work in areas where there are people with guns. If we were armed, there would be firefights. Secondly, because we talk first. Our members know how to communicate. For example, in the two situations where guns have been pulled on me, I knew what to say and the gun was put down. So that's the second reason we don't have a high fatality rate. We're basically pretty good at saying the right thing in a crisis. And thirdly, I guess we have our own guardian angels, if you see what I mean. We believe in what we're doing and we have confidence, and that's communicated on the street. People basically respect us. Even the gangsters respect the work we do.
Tripod: What's the worst thing you see on the street when you patrol?
CH: The worst thing for me, especially in New York City, is seeing children who are crack heads. It's the worst thing I witness, because it's a whole generation of children, in America especially, whose lives are already destroyed, and they're only eight or nine years old. Kids that young are searching in the gutters for little crack vials, so they can lick out the crack. And this is America -- there are kids in New York City who are like little animals. Seeing that, and knowing what that means, and what it says about American society, that makes me very sad. It's a far worse sight than a car-load of gangsters driving by carrying guns. That's a pretty nasty sight, but it's nothing compared to seeing kids whose lives are destroyed before they've even grown up.
Would you like a few tips for staying safe on the streets? Check out Streetsmarts, Tripod's own training program.Visit the Guardian Angels' own home page at http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ericldab/ga.html
