Comics, Crime, and Reality

People who go out in a unique persona to help others and fight crime are called real life superheroes. Much like their comic book counter-parts they actively seek people to help, people to defend, wrongs to right, and ways to make their communities better. They are not like the superheroes of the comics, but they are the closest thing there is.

In the word real life superheroes we need to put some emphasis on the word REAL. This is real life and not the comic books. If real life was like the comics, the world would be one crazy and scary place. Fortunately for us we don’t have to worry about aliens, superpowers, and super-villains.
In the comics superheroes just run into crime. Real life is nothing like that. There are a hell of a lot more police then real life superheroes and a lot of their job is reacting to crime after it has happened. As a real life superhero you can not expect to just patrol a couple hours and run into crime. I know from many many many hours of patrolling. I was patrolling 4-5 nights a week for 3-6 hours a night. Every once and a while you will come across something. You will rarely ever stumble across a mugging, rape, or robbery. Most of the time though you can at least find a way to help someone or your community while out on patrol.
Beating up a criminal, tieing them to a pole, and calling the police works in the comics, but not in real life. If a real life superhero did that they would be considered the criminal. The actual criminal will not get arrested and will not go to jail for their crimes. The real world does not work like the comic books. If you are going to stop a criminal you need to call the police and detain the person until they get there so you can actually serve justice. If you are uneccesarily rough or have no evidence of a crime you are going to be the one in trouble.
So let’s talk about the notion of a hero hiding in the shadows taking on criminals and gangs. In the comics it’s a great story, but in real life you will either get killed or arrested. If the criminals don’t kill you, the cops will find you and arrest you. No matter how much skill, money, or technology you have; you will not last. Batman is one of the most realistic comic book characters, but still very far from reality. You can not be Batman, so please don’t try.
Dont end up like this
                    
I’m not telling you a real life superhero can not fight crime. They most certainly can. Many real life superheores have succesfully fought and prevented crime.

You can deter crime, create a presence in your community, help those in need, investigate things, set up neighborhhood wathes & patrols, do surviellance work, get evidence that leads to arrests, and defend others. You can actually fight crime but it is nothing like the comics.  When you are out there please remember to keep it real.

NYC RLSH Patrol

NYC Patrol 07/31/2010 – by Dark Guardian
Dark Guardian and Team
Met up with Thre3, Life, Blindside, Tothian, Shade, Smaratin and Cameraman. We met at Washington Square Park. Good Morning Japan came out for part of the patrol. They were very friendly and I am looking forward to seeing the finished news piece which will be released exclusively on www.RealLifeSuperheroes.org .
Dark Guardian and Team
We patrolled around the park veering through the side streets. Drug dealing in Washington Square Park has been tamed down. If there is dealing goign on it is a very small amount of people and there seems to be no hard drugs. We worked our way up to Union Square Park. We helped a lot of people on the way. Life and Cameraman brought a great deal of supplies to give out. We handed out food, water, socks, shirts, tooth brushes, vitamins, razors, and more neccesities. We stopped and talk to different people as we patrolled the streets telling them about what we do. A couple people were interested in possibly doing it themselves. Nothing too exciting happened just an average patrol. Made sure some guy on heroine was doing ok on the streets. Stopping some guy from climbing over a park fence. We found a lot of homeless people staying in Union Square Park. We wound up running out of supplies. Now we know where a lot of the homeless are staying so we can go back and give aid to them. Tothian and Samaritan did a bike patrol after the group split up.DSC004753