Curtis Sliwa

Curtis Sliwa (born March 26, 1954) is an American activist, radio talk show host, and founder and chief executive officer of the Guardian Angels, a nonprofit crime prevention organization.

Sliwa was the Republican nominee for the 2021 New York City mayoral election, which he lost to Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams.

Curtis Sliwa was born on March 26, 1954, into a Catholic family of Polish and Italian descent, in Canarsie, Brooklyn.

He has two sisters.

He attended Brooklyn Prep, a Jesuit high school from which he was later expelled.

He graduated from Canarsie High School.

In his youth, he worked as a delivery boy for the Daily News, where he was awarded the title of "Newsboy of the Year" and a trip to the White House after he saved several people from a burning building while on a paper route.

Prior to founding the Guardian Angels, he was night manager of a McDonald's restaurant on Fordham Road in the Bronx.

In May 1977, Sliwa created the "Magnificent 13", a civilian group dedicated to combating violence and crime on the New York City Subway.

At the time, the city was experiencing a crime wave.

The Magnificent 13 grew and was renamed the Guardian Angels in 1979.

The group's actions drew strong reactions, both positive and negative.

Most of the Guardian Angels members were either Black or Hispanic.

Unarmed, the group required training in karate and fulfillment of legal requirements for citizens' arrest for all members before they were to be deployed.

Sliwa's red beret is a component of the Guardian Angels' uniform.

In the early 1980s, he expanded operations to Buffalo and was often critical of local police policies and practices.

In 1981, then-Mayor Ed Koch, a critic of Sliwa and the organization, launched an investigation into the Guardian Angels, which, according to The Washington Post, proved "so positive that the Guardian Angels will soon be awarded some sort of official status."

Then-Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo was a rare early advocate of the organization, being quoted saying "[t]hey are a better expression of morality than our city deserves".

One incident involved Guardian Angels member Frank Melvin, who was fatally shot by a Newark police officer in December 1981 after an officer claimed they mistook his unzipping of his jacket – to display his Guardian Angels emblem – as a threat.

Sliwa claimed that the killing of Melvin – an African American – was racially motivated, and had been done by a White officer who was being protected by the police department, rather than by the Hispanic officer identified as the shooter.

An Essex County grand jury cleared both officers of charges related to Melvin's death.

Sliwa has been a radio broadcaster for three decades, most of that time on WABC-AM, where he began his career in 1990.

In 1992, Sliwa admitted that he and the Guardian Angels faked heroic subway rescues for publicity.

He also admitted to having claimed falsely that three off-duty transit police officers had kidnapped him.

On June 19, 1992, Sliwa was kidnapped and shot by two gunmen after entering a stolen taxi in Manhattan.

The taxi picked up Sliwa near his home in the East Village, and a gunman hiding in the front passenger seat jumped up and fired several shots, hitting him in the groin and legs.

The kidnapping was foiled when Sliwa leaped from the front window of the moving cab and escaped.

Sliwa underwent surgery for internal injuries and leg wounds.

Federal prosecutors eventually charged John A. Gotti, the son of Gambino crime family leader John Gotti, with attempted murder and a raft of other charges.

Prosecutors claimed that Gotti was angered by remarks Sliwa had made about Gotti's father on his radio program.

Some, including Sliwa, have suggested that he was given access to the station by newly elected Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom he had supported in the 1993 mayoral race.

Sliwa has become a conservative radio talk show host.

In 1994, the then city-owned and operated WNYC hired Sliwa, whom WABC had released.

Since 1996, he has hosted various radio programs on WABC, and in 2000, he became the co-host, with an attorney Ron Kuby, of the long-running Curtis and Kuby in the Morning.

The show lasted eight years before Citadel Broadcasting replaced the team with Don Imus.

After three attempts to try him, on September 20, 2005, three separate juries could not agree to convict Gotti on any of the charges brought against him, and the charges were dropped.

Jurors later told reporters they believed he had a role in Sliwa's shooting.

Prosecutors declined to re-try Gotti and dismissed the charges against him.

Sliwa said he would seek damages in civil court.

Michael Yannotti, a Gotti associate, was also charged with shooting Sliwa in the incident but was acquitted.