Two days after a Bronx man got into an altercation with the Guardian Angels in Times Square, the group’s leader, Curtis Sliwa, came under fire Thursday from a broad swath of elected officials and everyday New Yorkers.
Sliwa, who erroneously identified the Bronxite as a Venezuelan migrant during a live interview Tuesday night on national TV, admitted to the Daily News Thursday he could have been “milder and calmer” during the episode caught live on FOX News cameras.
But his group’s actions during the attack and Sliwa’s on-camera comments sparked anger and outrage across NYC Thursday.
“Washed-up comic book villain instructed his herd of wannabe vigilantes to beat up a guy they decided ‘looked like’ a migrant. A hate crime,” Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan wrote on X. “Live on TV. Violence of any kind, whether against cops or innocent people in Times Sq, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“The wheels of justice must move at an appropriate pace. We don’t have the luxury to do what we saw Curtis Sliwa did,” Mayor Adams, Sliwa’s opponent in the 2021 mayoral election, said at an unrelated press briefing with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “To see someone on the corner and, based on their ethnicity, automatically identify them as a migrant or asylum seeker, and not a long-time Bronx resident — that is not what we can do. We have to get it right.”
Adams and Brannan were far from the only ones to tag Sliwa.
On CNN Thursday morning, Gov. Hochul said no one should take the law into their own hands.
“This is not the Wild West. This is New York State,” Hochul said.
Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and possible Democratic mayoral candidate in 2025, described Sliwa’s antics as “racism” and said he looked forward to meeting him on the debate stage.
“This kind of racism has no place in our city. Unfortunately, Curtis Sliwa went to his usual worst instincts,” Stringer said. “I look forward as a potential Democratic nominee to debating this warmed-over MAGA Republican in 2025.”
While some politicos claimed the attack was motivated by hate and racism, Bragg was not ready to call it a hate crime but did call the incident “disturbing.”
“We’re going to do what we do on all of our matters, right?” Bragg said at the briefing with Adams. “So I think there are people speculating and using a legal phrase in [using] ‘hate crime.’ We don’t make assumptions, we investigate and look at the evidence, so we’ll do what we do in all the other matters — follow the facts.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards chalked the incident up to Sliwa’s typical fear mongering.
“This is classic Curtis Sliwa: in the mud, stoking division in New York City. And it’s shameful that he would believe that because someone speaks Spanish, they’re a migrant,” Richards said. “I’m hoping people like Curtis realize our diversity is our strength.”
In an afternoon press conference at City Hall, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the “actions by Mr. Sliwa and his group” amounted to “fear-mongering” against migrants.
“Seeing incidents and occurrences like that certainly does not help the climate of the city right now. It actually does a lot of harm, creates a lot of confusion, a lot of anger,” she said.
Everyday New Yorkers also slammed Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in the 1970s when crime was raging in the Big Apple and has been one of the more vocal critics chiding the city over its handling of the migrant crisis.
Desiree Joy Frias, a mutual aid volunteer, said she wasn’t surprised by the fracas or that Sliwa was wrong about the man’s background.
“This is not new behavior. They used to take down Black and brown people all the time in the 70s and 80s,” she said. “That people feel that they can handle things extra judiciously — that’s terrifying.”
Sliwa, who spoke to The News before going to a dermatologist appointment, didn’t seemed too fazed about all the controversy.
“All of these folks, I understand, they’re looking to dance on my grave. I take enough shots at them all the time, so it’s fair. But let’s get real here, guys” he said. “Let my haters know it’s not going to stop us from doing what we’ve done for 45 years — although on this one — my mistake. The rhetoric I used, I should not have used in that moment.”
