BOOT THE ‘DOPES’
Sliwa enters mayoral fray to ‘take back city’
With just over three months until the mayoral primary, Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, kicked off a quixotic Republican run for City Hall on Monday morning, promising to crack down on rising crime and revive a police force he said has been rendered “impotent.”
Sliwa, known for his radio shows and his striking red beret, called on every mayoral hopeful to join him in demanding that Gov. Cuomo resign, and also bashed Mayor de Blasio as the “worst mayor” of his lifetime. He called both leaders “dopes.”
“We’ve got to take back this city,” Sliwa, 66, declared at Penn Station. “Crime is completely out of control.”
The leader of the public safety patrol group had been expected to mount a campaign, and he laid out a platform in the fall that promised financial austerity and a reshuffling of the NYPD’s responsibilities.
His law-and-order appeal arrives after a year in which shootings in the city surged and New Yorkers flooded streets to protest police brutality.
In June, Sliwa said he sustained a fractured jaw while
jousting with looters in SoHo.
“We have to refund the police — not defund, even in tough fiscal times,” Sliwa told the Daily News on Monday.
“I know what over-the-top police tactics can do. But I also know we have to have police. It’s a balance.”
This winter, he said the Guardian Angels would ramp up their presence on the subway, which
has proven controversial after a startling video shared on social media in February showed a Guardian Angel, identified only as Dan, karate-kicking state Assembly hopeful Patrick Bobilin.
Sliwa grew up in Canarsie, Brooklyn, and early in 1979, the 24-year-old high school dropout formed the Magnificent 13, a volunteer patrol that rode the No. 4 train at night, known to cops and riders alike as the Muggers Express.
He renamed the group the Guardian Angels and today, it has grown to approximately 300 members.
In the early 1990s, he admitted that he had staged fake crimes for publicity, and has since apologized.
He left his radio show on WABC as he races for City Hall. He said he filed to run for mayor last month, driven by anti-police rhetoric and the state of violent crime in the city.
Sliwa also wants to ramp up care for the homeless, increase public bathroom access, and halt the killing of dogs and cats in shelters.
While the Democratic primary winner on June 22 will be the strong favorite in a city where Democrats far outnumber Republicans, the race for the Republican nomination will be competitive, too.
Sliwa has secured endorsements from the Brooklyn and Staten Island Republican parties.
Fernando Mateo, a restaurant owner and spokesman for the state Federation of Taxi Drivers and United Bodegas of America, has nods from the Republican parties in the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens.