Victoria crime levels too low for Guardian Angels

Last Updated: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 | 12:07 PM PT

CBC News

Victoria doesn't need Guardian Angels, say members of the U.S-based crime-watch organization who visited the city over the weekend.

While the group says it's still interested in having a Victoria chapter, crime levels aren't high enough to warrant foot patrols.

Sebastian Metz, an organizer with the Guardian Angels, says even though Victoria doesn't need patrols, the time he spent making an assessment of the city hasn't been wasted.

"At least I've added to the conversation about crime and safety on the street, and maybe motivated somebody else to do something else," says Metz, who helped establish several chapters of the group, including the one in Vancouver.

Downtown Residents Association chairman Robert Randall, who met with the Guardian Angels over the weekend, told the Victoria Times Colonist that membership is split on the need for a local chapter.

"There is not a huge problem with violence and crime in Victoria, but we talked about behavioural problems — things like vandalism. There's a lot of stuff like that," he says.

It's not unusual for citizens to be split about the Guardian Angels. The group makes headlines wherever it goes, with critics warning it is nothing more than a posse of vigilantes provoking as much crime as it stops.

Curtis Sliwa formed the Guardian Angels in 1979 while working as a night manager of a McDonald's restaurant in the Bronx, N.Y.

Wearing easily identifiable red berets, but carrying no weapons, members of Sliwa's anti-crime patrol started out keeping order in New York City's subways. Sliwa claims some of the credit for the huge drop in the number of murders in the city since the early-1980s.

Today, the group has chapters in more than 60 cities around the world, including Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.