When the Guardian Angels patrolled New York

Back in the down-and-dirty 1980s, the Guardian Angels walked New York City’s streets and subways, a uniformed crime-fighting presence that made citizen’s arrests and sometimes crossed the line into vigilantism, according to some NYPD officials. 

Founder Curtis Sliwa and then-wife Lisa—pictured in this East Village Eye photo from 1983—split in the 1990s. But the Guardian Angels still exist, albiet with a much smaller presence in the city. Perhaps when New York goes bad again, the T-shirt and beret–clad Angels will be back in full force.

Tags: Guardian Angels, New York in the 1980s, NYPD