Tag Jones

Originally posted: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/248771_Seattles_Superhero-_Phoenix_Jo
By Michael Orion Powell

Seattle, Washington is a strange place. Compared to most cities, it’s pretty tame. In the area in which I live, massacres have occurred along with drive-by shootings but, unlike cities like Washington D.C. or San Francisco, it somehow is not as obvious when this occurs.
In many ways, this makes it the perfect place to try out the superhero experiment. The films have been wildly successful, from Spider-Man to The Dark Knight. These adventures speak to something deep in the psyche of its audience – a longing for law enforcers who will really bring order. In nearly all of the films, these superheroes end up labelled outlaws by corrupt kleptocrats who should be doing what they have decided to do.
Seattle has plenty of corruption. Its police have abused citizens while its public school districts have stolen money on such a grand scale as to illustrate that they didn’t worry about consequences. The situation may not be as extreme as other places in the world but it is still offensive to people who believe in justice.
From interviews and stories about the guy, Phoenix Jones seems to be fairly serious about what he’s doing. If anyone has ever read comic books, the press was often relied upon to break down the character of various superheroes. (Spider-Man was repeatedly broken down by J. Jonah Jameson, the editor in chief of the Daily Bugle.)
From the Seattle P-I:

Self-proclaimed Seattle superhero Phoenix Jones Guardian of Seattle has received international attention, but a Seattle Weekly’s published Wednesday – the most in-depth article about the man so far – says Jones’ has done far more to get attention from reporters and publicists than he has from cops.
Through May 5, the Weekly reports Jones had called police about 18 incidents, but only two led to arrests.
Regarding Jones’ claims that he’s been assaulted, he refused to give the Weekly medical records and said his doctor wouldn’t be interviewed for fear of losing his medical license.
The Weekly also reports Jones didn’t formally tell police about being shot and stabbed, and the claim that he interrupted a car theft in Lynnwood turned out to be bogus, a Lynnwood police spokeswoman said.
The Weekly’s Keegan Hamilton also reported that in late November 2010, after a seattlepi.com story told of police department-wide memo alerting officers to the self-proclaimed superheroes, a man was granted a restraining order against Jones.

It’s too early to really tell if that is how journalists are treating Jones but there does seem to be a general tone of looking at him and his colleagues as a joke. The popularity of comic books, however, comes at a time when public confidence in institutions is at its lowest, and that includes confidence in the press. Maybe it’s time for someone to save the day.

Originally posted: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-06-01/news/the-alleged-adventures-of-phoenix-jones/
By Keegan Hamilton

Trying to uncover what’s real and what isn’t about Seattle’s most famous superhero.

On a dark and drizzly night in downtown Seattle, five strangers huddle outside police headquarters awaiting the arrival of the man who calls himself Phoenix Jones. Scheduled to be here at half-past midnight, it’s now 1 a.m. and the city’s most famous real-life superhero is nowhere to be found.
Three-fifths of the group is part of a local documentary film crew that has been following Jones and his team of “Rain City Superheroes” on foot patrols for the past three months. Already familiar with Jones’ modus operandi, the filmmakers are in no hurry. “Last night they made us wait an hour,” says one, as she rummages through her purse in search of a granola bar. “Tonight I brought a snack.”
Suddenly, one of the crew spots Jones’ familiar black-and-gold mask and matching rubber suit behind the steering wheel of a passing Kia sedan. A few minutes later, Jones rounds a corner on foot and strides towards the group, trailed by two men in black neoprene balaclavas.
“Hi,” he says, in a gruff approximation of Christian Bale’s sandpaper growl in The Dark Knight. “I’m Phoenix Jones.” He stands six feet tall, with a patch of curly black whiskers protruding from the dark brown skin on his chin, which, along with his mouth, is the only portion of his face not concealed by the mask. Fingerless gloves with lead-lined knuckles augment his firm handshake, and in his utility belt he carries a protective arsenal; cattle prod, tear gas, handcuffs, and a first-aid kit.
Jones introduces his nightstick-toting associates as Ghost and Pitch Black, and then outlines the evening’s agenda. With last call approaching, the plan is to make the rounds in Pioneer Square before heading up First Avenue to Belltown. “By then it will be the crack hour,” he says, referring to the wee hours of the morning when business is booming at one of the city’s most notorious open-air drug markets. But first, with three cameramen in tow, Jones and his sidekicks plunge headlong into the mob of drunken twenty-somethings spilling out onto the streets.
Frat boys holler, “Love your work, bro!” and tipsy girls in skimpy outfits squeal “Ooh, take a picture with me!” Jones stops and mugs for dozens of camera-phone portraits with his fans while ignoring the taunts—”Hey look, it’s Joaquin Phoenix! You ruled in Gladiator, dude!”—of others.
Passing through a parking lot, he and his posse catch a whiff of marijuana smoke. “You smell that?” he asks. “That’s not a crime. Stupid, but not a crime.”
Outside The Last Supper Club, a girl trips and hits the pavement in full view of a few uniforms. Jones darts to the rescue, helping her up and reaching for his first-aid kit, but the young lady and her friends stumble off into the night before he can offer her a Band-Aid.
“In that situation we did the right thing,” Jones says to his crew. “But it doesn’t matter if the police are right there. Our job is to be where they aren’t.”
With that, the superheroes start heading north toward Belltown, making sure to stop at every crosswalk with a red light because, says Jones, he was once issued a jaywalking citation while in costume. Just inside the main entrance to Pike Place Market, Jones pauses to chat up a guy struggling to load a belligerently drunk girl into the backseat of a car. A group of bystanders stop to gawk at the spectacle.
“I don’t trust the cops, but I trust Phoenix Jones,” says one of the onlookers.
The man’s friend is incredulous. “Well, what’s he done?” she asks. “What does he actually do when something breaks out?”
“He puts himself in harm’s way. He got his nose broken before. He gets right in the middle of situations.”
“Yeah, but that’s something any other drunk person would do.”
“Well, yeah, but he’s wearing a costume.”
This back-and-forth between late-night revelers is representative of Jones’ polarizing personae. Since he began patrolling the Seattle streets in late 2010—wearing an outfit complete with bulletproof vest, “ballistic cup,” and “stab plates”—he has turned into a lighting rod for controversy not just among regular Seattleites, but also police, reporters, and, incredibly, other self-styled “Real Life Superheroes,” many of whom scoff at the notion of “fighting crime,” and instead prefer to perform good deeds while clad in comic book-inspired attire.

But while Jones’ critics are skeptical of his motives and harrowing tales of near-death, he has scores of supporters who either like his shtick or believe him when he says he pounds the pavement on their behalf. “I’m the first superhero to come along and come as close to a comic book as possible,” says Jones. “I fight crime like you see in a comic book. I get hurt like you would get hurt in a comic book. I have an alter ego like you would have in a comic book. I’m interesting and I’m charismatic on-camera, off-camera, and in person. People want to know what I’m doing. They want to get to know me.”
So who is this masked man with the cojones to call himself the “Guardian of Seattle”? How did he engineer his faster-than-a-speeding-bullet ascent to celebrity? And, more important, has he really helped police catch any criminals?
Jones has a Los Angeles-based publicist to help hone his image as a knight in shining rubber. And to hear him tell it, he’s only in the game to do good.
“Fighting crime in the mask and rubber suit, no matter how awesome I do or how many criminals I lock up, eventually it will lose its appeal to the people,” he says. “The goal is for the people to be inspired by what I do. The goal is to inspire people to not put up with petty crimes.”
But while Jones is busy puffing up his body armor-protected chest on the nightly news, in real life he has accumulated a 22-entry-long court record filled mostly with minor violations, but also including a restraining order after he allegedly made death threats against another costumed crusader. And though police reports and 911 recordings obtained by Seattle Weekly indicate that Jones has, in fact, phoned in numerous suspected lawbreakers over the past seven months, the records show that his efforts have resulted in more amusing whiffs than actual arrests.
What kind of person dresses up like a superhero? Long before Hollywood unleashed Kick-Ass and Super—two movies released within the past year about real people who don capes and masks—Tea Krulos was asking himself that very same question.
Krulos, a freelance journalist from Milwaukee who pens the blog “Heroes in the Night” and is working on a book with the same title, has traced the “real life superhero” phenomenon back to Captain Sticky, a man who called in-costume press conferences in early 1970s San Diego in order to draw attention to causes he thought deserved more attention, like a nursing home caught abusing its patients. Because Captain Sticky was a spectacle, his exploits usually caught the attention of the press, who were always willing to put a mic in his face.
According to various estimates, Captain Sticky has now begat between 250 and 500 self-proclaimed superheroes worldwide. On the website RealLifeSuperheroes.org, the men—for that is who they are, with few exceptions—create profiles and talk shop, with threads like “Grapple Gun. Possible?” (The verdict: definitely possible, not practical.)
Krulos says that the majority of these “citizen heroes,” as they call themselves, resemble their founding father Captain Sticky in that they would rather feed the needy than bust heads. In New York, a Brooklyn man who simply calls himself Life is the co-founder of Superheroes Anonymous, a group that makes small gestures like giving fresh socks to the homeless in order to prevent foot fungus. In Seattle, more than two years before Jones first went on patrol, a man named White Baron started roaming the streets handing out food and clothing. “A lot do it because they want to help out their neighborhoods and communities and they see this as a fun, adventurous way to do that,” says Krulos.
In the back room of the Night Kitchen in Belltown, a few evenings after his Friday-night patrol, Phoenix Jones shares his own origin story. One that, in his rehearsed telling, doesn’t sound as much like a call to adventure as a call to duty.
It all began sometime last year, when Jones says a thief shattered his car window with a stone stuffed in a ski mask. (He declined to provide an exact date or month.) Jones, a married 23-year-old day-care worker with two young sons, picked up the discarded mask and threw it in his glove box, he says, without giving it a second thought.
Then, the next night, while at a club celebrating a friend’s birthday, a fight broke out between two of Jones’ friends and a larger group of men. Running to his car to retrieve his cell phone—Jones says he never keeps it in his pocket because he doesn’t want to risk damaging it when he break-dances—Jones, a cage fighter in his spare time, impulsively threw on the mask and chased down the fight’s instigator.
“Basically, I was reacting to a crime,” he says. “People might call it a strong overreaction, and I wouldn’t disagree. It’s a different reaction than most people would have.”
When police arrived and asked Jones for a name, he gave them an alias he says has “personal significance.” Emboldened by the thrill of the chase, Jones soon ditched the ski mask and upgraded his getup to include a fedora, cape, blue tights, a white belt, and a face covering.
“The first time [my wife] saw me she said, ‘Aren’t those nylons from Wal-Mart? Aren’t you going to get a real suit?’ ” he says.
Growing up in foster homes that he shared with more than 30 adopted siblings, Jones says he wasn’t a hard-core comic book fan, but a big enough one to have a favorite: Nightwing, the alter ego of Dick Grayson, the original Robin who left Batman and struck out on his own. Copying Nightwing’s style, Jones upgraded a final time when he ditched his lighter ensemble and ordered the skintight black-and-gold suit he still wears today.
Then, on Nov. 19, 2010, Jones earned his first headline when SeattlePI.com reported on an internal memo circulating among Seattle Police warning officers not to mistake a new group of do-gooders for criminals. A spooked Capitol Hill resident saw Jones and his entourage in masks outside of a gas station and called 911, assuming he was about to witness a robbery. The story included a blurry photo of Jones posing with a uniformed officer and, shortly thereafter, a viral sensation was born.

According to the Lexis-Nexis news database, Jones has now been mentioned in more than 350 articles worldwide. He’s made appearances on Good Morning America and National Public Radio, and appeared on the pages of publications as diverse as People magazine and The United News of Bangladesh. His Facebook page has been friended by more than 7,000 people, and videos he and others have uploaded to YouTube have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. With his brash personality, occasionally self-deprecating sense of humor, and unwavering righteousness, Jones is a veritable sound-bite machine. As a result, nearly every story about him has been fawning, without trying to verify any of his supposedly courageous exploits, or acknowledging that they are, for the most part, completely unverifiable.
On Jan. 4, for example, KIRO aired a report on Jones that focused on an attempted car theft that allegedly took place in Lynnwood. A man who appeared on camera but refused to give his last name said he interrupted a thief trying to break into his car. Just as the man was about to dial 911, he said, Jones “came dashing in” and chased the thief away. Only when the story went national did a reporter from Talking Points Memo reach out to Lynnwood Police, who cautioned that the Department couldn’t confirm the story. Contacted recently by Seattle Weekly, Lynnwood Police spokesman Shannon Sessions goes one step further: the story “was found to be a false report—never happened.”
When The Wall Street Journal reported on Jones in April, the article’s author noted the backlash against Jones in the Real Life Superhero Community, many of whose members believe he’s less than truthful and attention-hungry. Jones’ peers are suspicious of his tales of glory, and multiple superheroes contacted for this article either turned down interview requests or made clear their doubts.
“He tells a ton of lies, makes up stories, and embellishes and exaggerates what he does,” writes Dark Guardian, co-administrator of Real LifeSuperHeroes.org, in an e-mail. “I’m very surprised no one in the media has called him out on it yet.”
When Jones debuted last November, he made it clear he wasn’t like other superheroes. Though he claims he’s donated thousands of dollars to several charities (records show he donated $500 to the international aid program Water for Africa; he also says he has contributed food and funds to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission) he insists humanitarian work should be done on personal, not superhero, time. As he puts it: “There’s no comic book where Spider-Man runs around with a bag of sandwiches.”
On this point, Jones has an unlikely ally: Agent Beryllium, Seattle representative for ROACH—Ruthless Organization Against Citizen Heroes, a group of supervillians who have emerged to poke fun at the wannabe crusaders. Beryllium—who, along with nearly everyone else in the super subculture, asked that her real name be withheld—doesn’t think the superheroes should be getting so much publicity for their good deeds.
“Just be responsible people in your everyday lives,” she says.
Then again, Beryllium isn’t too fond of Jones either.
“He’s a special case,” she says. “Being an attention whore is one thing, but almost overnight he goes from being a guy with a cape and a fedora to wearing expensive plastic molded body armor. It just smells fishy to me.”
Peter Tangen had a hand in the transformation Beryllium finds so fishy. A Los Angeles photographer whose portfolio includes the posters for Batman Begins, Hellboy, and the Spider-Man series, Tangen is also the creator of a website (RealLifeSuperheroes.com, not to be confused with the .org forum) that features summer blockbuster-style portraits of two dozen costumed crusaders from across the country. Tangen says he initially set out to shoot the superheroes for a gallery exhibition, but after learning about their altruism, he began doing what he could to help them, accepting charitable donations on his website, and, occasionally, acting as a middleman with reporters.
Jones took the superhero world by storm a few months after Tangen completed his photography project, and Tangen says he decided to help him spread his message that “the problems of this world will never be solved until people realize one person can make a difference.” Tangen is now Jones’ de facto spokesman, in charge of coordinating his many interviews and appearances. The day after his Friday-night patrol of Pioneer Square, for instance, Jones was scheduled to visit three Seattle comic-book stores in conjunction with a nationwide Free Comic Book Day event. Tangen insists there’s never a fee for Jones’ services, adding, “To my knowledge, he’s never made a penny doing this.”
“Peter has been really instrumental in shaping the way I do things,” says Jones. “I had all the natural skills and all the raw talent, but he focused it.”
Dealing with a self-described superhero and his PR guru is sometimes an exercise in absurdity. When first contacted by Seattle Weekly via email, Jones responded with Tangen’s phone number and instructions to use a code word—”Twin Brother”—when calling Tangen so that the publicist would know he had Jones’ permission to talk. Then, on the eve of Jones’ interview, Tangen emailed to ask that photos of his client be staged so as to not show a portion of his suit that had been damaged by a mysterious fire.
By all accounts, Tangen has worked wonders for Jones’ career, such as it is. Earlier this year, Jones flew to Los Angeles and appeared in full regalia at the premiere of Super, the superhero comedy starring Rainn Wilson. (Wilson, a Seattle native, also name-dropped Jones on Jimmy Kimmel Live, joking that he has “taken 197 crack pipes away from people.”) In addition, Jones claims he turned down an offer for his own reality TV show, leaving $200,000 on the table because he didn’t like the concept.
“I would like to have a TV show where Phoenix Jones travels around the world inspiring people,” he says. “I don’t want a giant house and a Lamborghini like Batman—that’s just stupid. I want to be able to say to people on the street… ‘This is the Phoenix Jones apartment complex where you can rent with no credit.’ ”
Jones is cryptic about the cause of the malfunctioning wardrobe referenced by Tangen. “It got melted, I got burned,” he says, refusing to elaborate. “It’s unverifiable, and whenever I open my mouth and say something unverifiable, it sounds like I’m lying.”
Indeed, Jones’ tales have raised eyebrows among skeptical journalists and superheroes alike.
“I can’t really ever get the truth out of Mr. Jones,” says Skyman, a Seattle-area character who focuses on homeless outreach and has twice patrolled with Jones. “The guy came in with a track record of ‘I’ve been shot and stabbed,’ but he has no proof, and we’re supposed to take him on his word.”
When pressed for evidence to verify his near-death encounters—which include the two serious claims alluded to by Skyman: one a shooting in Tacoma, another a stabbing in Seattle—Jones draws a blank. He claims to have a private doctor who treats his serious injuries, which also allegedly include getting hit with a baseball bat and punched by an attacker with keys wedged between his knuckles, but Jones says the doctor won’t agree to an interview for fear of losing his medical license. Jones also never followed through on an offer to hand over his medical records.
What’s more, neither of his two most harrowing encounters—the shooting and stabbing—were reported to police. “I was walking through an alleyway in Tacoma,” says Jones. “I wasn’t involved in any altercation. I wasn’t involved in any fight. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I got shot.”
Jones says a bulletproof vest saved his life, but nearly getting gunned down after just a few weeks on the job made him reconsider his superhero career. Jones claims he took a month off and eased back in by handing out food at a homeless camp. There, a knife fight broke out, he says, and he got cut when he intervened.
During the interview at the Night Kitchen, Jones offers to take off his suit and show his scars as proof that what he’s saying is true. Shirtless but still wearing his mask, he ignores the bewildered glances from a couple across the room and asks his partner Pitch Black to point out the remnants of several wounds on his back.
He has a few welts below his right shoulder blade, which he claims were caused by the fire that damaged his suit, and a faint, quarter-inch-long scar on his upper forearm that he says he got in the line of duty. But there’s nothing around his midsection where Jones says he was stabbed.
“Looks like that one healed up, bro,” says Pitch Black.
In an attempt to independently verify some of Jones’ alleged exploits, Seattle Weekly filed a public disclosure request with Seattle Police seeking information about every call for service that has involved Phoenix Jones and/or his real-life identity. As of May 5, there were a total of 18 incidents. Officers filed reports in seven cases, but ended up making just two arrests.
The first arrest occurred around 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 18 in the northbound lanes of I-5 at Northeast 80th Street. It is classified on the paperwork as a “pedestrian violation” but all other information is redacted from the paragraph-long report. Jones declined to discuss the encounter, except to confirm that he dialed 911 and claim that the arrest is tied to “an ongoing drug investigation.”
Other documents are more detailed. Shortly after midnight on Dec. 12, Jones was inside Pioneer Square nightclub Venom when he called the cops claiming an Asian man offered him sex with a woman for $100. Jones, the report says, “realized this was a prostitution arrangement and was concerned for the victim because it appeared that [she] could not speak any English.” The officers interviewed the alleged pimp and hooker, but didn’t arrest either of them, and Jones refuses to discuss the details of the case.
On Feb. 20, Jones reported a domestic dispute after he spotted a man “grabbing” his wife in the couple’s Rainier Beach driveway. The responding officer reported smelling alcohol on the man’s breath, and was told the argument began when the woman stormed out of the house after discovering that her husband had been mailed a copy of Sports Illustrated‘s swimsuit issue. It was just an argument, they said, and it never escalated to physical violence. Jones claims he saw the man pull the woman’s hair, but he didn’t mention this to the 911 dispatcher. Once again, police did not make an arrest.
As proof that he doesn’t embellish, Jones cites one of his more high-profile encounters. On Jan. 12, KOMO reported that Jones got his nose broken during a street brawl in Belltown. He reportedly pinned a drug dealer to the ground, but then two other attackers caught him off-guard. One held him at gunpoint and the other kicked him in the face. All three ran away before police arrived on the scene. (Records show that police responded to a 911 call from Jones on Jan. 11 at First Avenue and Madison Street, but were “unable to locate the incident or complainant” and did not file a report.)
Jones claims that KOMO had footage of the fight, but agreed not to broadcast it in exchange for an interview with him. But when reached by phone, the station’s news director Holly Gauntt says that’s not true. She says Jones put them in touch with someone who allegedly taped the incident on a camera phone. Another witness seconded Jones’ version of events, which was enough for KOMO to broadcast their story, but the video evidence never materialized. “We never saw it,” says Gauntt. “No deals were made. We wouldn’t do that.”
till, Jones won’t back down.
“If you guys want to call me a liar and say I make up stories, why don’t I win every time?” asks Jones. “Getting my nose broken was not a win.”
The only other known Jones-related arrest came on April 21, when he and Pitch Black teamed up for a drug bust in the University District. Pitch Black was out of costume when a man reportedly offered to sell him heroin. Jones swooped in and detained him until police arrived. The suspect voluntarily emptied his pockets, and was arrested after police discovered “a clear straw containing a brownish residue” and a “red, heart-shaped box,” with five oxycodone pills inside.
Jones claims he has contributed to additional arrests in Everett and Tacoma, but spokesmen for both police departments say they can’t turn up any cases involving Jones. Tangen also says there is an ongoing SPD investigation that started with a tip from Jones. It deals with “a sex trafficker,” Tangen says, repeating a story also told by Jones, “Not a guy who’s a pimp with prostitutes . . . when [police] went to his house, there were prisoners.”
Sgt. Ryan Long, a detective in SPD’s vice squad, confirms that Jones “was a complainant in something” but also suggests his role was minor. “I don’t know what he’s claiming,” says Long, “But I’ve had inquiries from other journalists in the past. I would suspect he’s shopping you guys off of each other.”
Upon hearing Long’s remarks, Jones simply shrugs. He has doubters, he says, but he does not doubt himself.
“I think there’s a healthy amount of skepticism in general with writers about what I do,” he says, “And a healthy sense of ‘We don’t want to empower this person’ that comes out of the Police Department.”
Jones says another alleged incident, one that may put his family in harm’s way, is why he demanded his real name be withheld in this story. Tangen says Jones told him about a time when “police picked up a couple of Russian women brought into Seattle for sex trafficking and they reported seeing ‘Batman’ in the area . . . so there is also a possibility that organized crime may be under the impression that he is a threat as well.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Jones claims his house was broken into a few months after he started patrolling the streets, and worries that the break-in was retaliation for his crime-fighting ways. Like most of his other claims, however, this one is also unverifiable: Jones says he didn’t file a police report because nothing of value was stolen, so once again there’s no paper trail.
The Rain City Superheroes’ Facebook page warns aspiring crime-fighters looking to join Jones’ crew that his standards are high. A military background or martial arts expertise is mandatory (according to MixedMartialArts.com, Jones real-life counterpart has an undefeated amateur fighting record in Washington); community-service experience is a plus but not required; and you must also own a bulletproof vest that is at least capable of stopping small-arms fire. Jones himself is fond of his “Dragon Skin” model, which he says he purchased for $1,500 with a loan from his mom. All applicants, he says, must also pass a background check.
Not every member of Jones’ posse has been so carefully screened. His partners Ghost and Pitch Black, for instance, are friends of his from high school, both of whom say they served in the armed forces or have other defense training. But a review of Jones’ own criminal record begs the question: Does he measure up to his group’s high standards?
A search for the man who calls himself Phoenix Jones on the Washington Courts online database yields 22 results. The majority are for minor traffic violations, mostly speeding tickets. But he has also been cited six times for driving without a license, driving without insurance, and/or driving with his license suspended. He also was booked during a traffic stop in Snohomish County for “refusal to give information to or cooperate with an officer.”
According to a police report, on Sept. 3, 2008, Jones was pulled over on a scooter between Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace after his driving, “enraged several motorists.” The officer noted that Jones “was extremely nervous” and bragged that he was “a WA state cage fighter champion.” Jones’ license was suspended at the time, so he tried to conceal his identity by using a friend’s name. Unfortunately for Jones, his friend’s license also was suspended. Jones eventually fessed up and used his real name, but still refused to give the officer his home address.
The real-life Jones has been evicted twice (with three more “unlawful detainers,” as such cases are called, ending in dismissal) and had two judgments filed against him in civil court. Jones won’t discuss his poor driving record, saying it has no bearing on his character or ability to fight crime. He admits he’s had financial problems, but accurately asserts that he has always paid back his debts per the court’s orders.
On Nov. 30, a King County resident filed an unlawful harassment suit against Jones in Superior Court. According to court documents, the man told a judge that a week earlier, Jones “called me multiple times through an unknown number and made threats about my physical safety at 1 a.m.” He also stated that three days later, Jones “contacted me and threatened me with knowledge of my address and my girlfriend’s car data,” and that, “a mutually known person . . . told me that [Jones] wants to kill me.”
The court granted a restraining order, requiring that Jones pay court costs for the case and not go within 500 feet of the man or his residence. When Snohomish County sheriffs tried to serve Jones with the court order, they realized that the address he’d listed on court documents was his martial arts studio, and not his home.
Reached by phone, the man who filed the suit explains that he has spent the past decade as real-life superhero Mr. Raven Blade, purportedly doing both crime patrols and humanitarian work in the Seattle area. Raven Blade has himself received some media acclaim, appearing in a CNN story about citizen heroes. (Raven Blade, like Jones, requested that his real name be withheld for this story.) He says he was outraged by Jones’ boasts in an early news report so, using his Raven Blade identity, he posted a scathing letter to Jones on his blog.
Jones later contacted Raven Blade via Facebook message and wrote in all capital letters, “I KNOW YOUR ADDRESS AND CAR, PLEASE LETS KEEP THIS CIVIL LEAVE ME ALONE.” A few days later, Raven Blade alleges, he saw Jones drive past his house and point at him with his thumb and forefinger, “like if you’re a kid playing cops and robbers and trying to shoot somebody.” That’s when Raven Blade says he decided to file for a protection order.
Asked about the restraining order and Raven Blade’s statements, Jones initially denies having any knowledge of the situation.
“I have a legal team that handles most anything,” he says, “So if anyone filed a restraining order against Phoenix Jones, if they filed it against me, my legal team handles it and I don’t know anything about it.”
A few moments later, however, Jones backtracks and says that the “mutual friend” Raven Blade referenced in the court documents eventually retracted his statements about the death threat. Neither Jones nor Raven Blade would disclose the identity of their “mutual friend,” except to say that he too is a real-life superhero.
Jones also claims that Raven Blade suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. “I think that has a lot to do with the way he perceives me,” says Jones. “I don’t hold any grudge against him, and there’s an open communication line if he ever comes out and wants to work with me.”
Raven Blade, in turn, vehemently denies that he has Asperger’s and says there’s no way he’d ever go out on patrol with Jones.
“He’s trying to slander me,” he says. “It’s a classic tactic, you don’t like somebody so you try and make them look bad . . . He is not a superhero by any stretch of the imagination. He is, however, a very good marketer and a very good poser.”
Back in Belltown on the soggy Friday night, “crack hour” has arrived.
Standing on the corner of Second Avenue and Bell Street around 2:45 a.m., Jones and his crew are patrolling an area that’s obviously a low priority for Seattle Police—there’s not a uniformed officer, bike cop, or police cruiser in sight, and there won’t be for the rest of the night. Meanwhile, haggard addicts aggressively panhandle the few pedestrians brave or foolish enough to still be out and about. Unsavory characters stand on opposite sides of the intersection, peddling plastic baggie-packaged products as if they were legal.
Jones says he can’t confront the dealers unless he has probable cause. Accosting every group suspiciously standing on a public sidewalk would be considered harassment under Washington state law, he says, so a fight must break out in order to intervene. If they solicit him, or if he can pin down the precise type and quantity of drugs being exchanged, he will phone in a report to police. But until then, his strategy is to stand near a group and hope that his presence will intimidate them into shutting down their operation.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work out that way. “Man, you can’t arrest people,” says a young black man idling on a BMX bike. “I talked to the police about you.”
What makes the dealers a little uncomfortable, though, are the cameramen. “Yo, they snappin’ pictures!” shouts one of the men before slinking down the block to another corner. Some people remain, including a junkie nodding off in the middle of Second Avenue. Doubled over and on the verge of collapsing face-first into the pavement, the man somehow retains just enough balance to stay upright. Jones and his crew stare at the grim scene for a few minutes, trying to determine the proper course of action. Would it legally be considered harassment if they picked him up and moved him out of the street? Or should they wait until a car is coming so they’ll have a reason for rescuing him?
“This is ridiculous,” says Ghost, finally, before approaching the man along with Pitch Black, gently taking him by the arm, and guiding him to the curb.
With no obvious trouble brewing, a photographer asks Jones if he’d mind taking a break to do a photo shoot in a nearby alley. Jones obliges and spends the next 15 minutes posing. But just a few moments after leaving the alley, a man approaches asking for help. He has tattoos on his face and the backs of his hands, and says his street name is Poe. Pointing to a raspberry-colored welt on his face, Poe explains how he just got punched by one of the drug dealers. He wants Jones to track down the guy who hit him.
“When did this happen?” asks Jones.
“Soon as y’all left,” says Poe.
The irony of the superhero missing out on the only real skirmish of the evening to pose for pictures is not lost on Jones, but he tries to make the best of the situation.
“We have handcuffs,” he says. “We can citizens-arrest the guy, but when the police come you have to put your name down.”
“Nah,” says Poe. “I’d have the whole ‘hood after me if I did that.”
After getting a description of the alleged attacker, Jones heads back to the corner where the fight occurred. His plan, he says, is to wield “the Phoenix Cam” — a silver Flip pocket camcorder—and confront the assailant, provoking another altercation.
“I’m going to have to take a hit for the team,” he says. “I’ll get the guy to punch me in the face and we can press assault charges.”
“Are you aware of the concept of blocking?” asks Ghost.
“Yeah,” says Jones. “But then it’s not assault, it’s only attempted assault.”
Alas, by the time the superheroes return to the scene of the attack, the corner is empty. Jones and his crew circle the block a few more times, then decide to call it a night.
“I like that I’m not going to get punched in the face,” says Jones. “But I’m disappointed we didn’t get to take someone down.”
Still, by his standards the night is a resounding success.
“Sure other superheroes don’t like me,” he says. “Why? Because they suck at their jobs . . . Tonight we literally didn’t stop any crime. But we did definitely talk to some drug dealers, we picked up a girl who fell and hit her face on the ground, and we talked to a bunch of different people in Seattle who may now report crime because they talked to us. That’s still 100 times better than every other superhero.”
Additional links:
The (Alleged) Adventures of Phoenix Jones: The Police Reports
The (Alleged) Adventures of Phoenix Jones: The 911 Calls
The (Alleged) Adventures of Phoenix Jones: The Movie

Orignially posted: http://akzia.ru/lifestyle/14-03-2011/2876.html

English Translation
by Daniel Nash on Friday, March 11, 2011 at 12:37am
I was really excited to see this published after writing it last month. The PDF of my interview with Phoenix Jones was posted online yesterday. But if you don’t know Russian, there’s no easy way to translate it. So here is the English version. It’s severely cut down considering the length of our conversation: this is probably 10 minutes of an hour-and-a-half long interview, not counting almost three hours patrol time. Additionally, the information that did make the cut is pretty basic if you have followed the American coverage, but I wanted to make sure this was a solid introduction of who Phoenix is to an overseas audience. I’m trying to find the time to transcribe the whole interview so I can try to sell a fuller version of this story to an American publication.
Some of the answers are cut down, but I tried to avoid cutting in such a way that the quotes would lose context. I eliminated some questions and answers I really wanted to include because I couldn’t minimize them without losing the spirit of the answer.
The version published in Akzia included some mini-profiles of other superheroes, such as KnightOwl of Oregon, Geist of Minnesota, Nyx of New Jersey, etc. Since I didn’t write that portion, I don’t have the English immediately at hand, but I’ll try to translate it over the weekend as a courtesy to the superheroes who appear.
Hope you all enjoy.
Curriculum Vitae
Name: Phoenix Jones
Secret Identity: Withheld
Age: 22
Occupation: Fighter
Tools: 10,000-volt stun baton, pepper spray, tear gas, Bluetooth phone.
Phoenix Jones is a real life superhero living in Seattle, Washington. Five nights a week, he patrols the streets looking for crimes not already being handled by police, joined by any number of the other 10 members of the Rain City Superhero Movement he founded.
Guardian of Seattle
By Daniel Nash
I was met by superheroes Ghost and Pitch Black just inside the entrance of Trabant Coffee and Chai in the University District. They demanded my name and press affiliation. I told them, and offered them a seat.
Ghost waved my suggestion away: “Phoenix will decide all that when he gets here.”
When Phoenix arrived moments later, he explained his colleagues were ensuring his safety against anyone who might use an interview as a ruse to attack him.
On patrol with the Rain City Superheroes, there was no denying that public response was mixed enough to make security understandable. Many passersby asked to take a photo with Phoenix, a request to which he readily obliged. Some laughed at the novelty of a man walking the street in a rubber suit, while others openly shouted “You’re not a superhero,” or, “You’re a fraud.”
Whether hero, novelty or overzealous attention seeker, what follows is Seattle’s superhero in his own words.
AKZIA: I know you have a day job, and you get out on patrol five nights a week. I guess my first question is, when do you find time to sleep?
PHOENIX JONES: I take naps. Lots of naps. I get off patrol maybe five in the morning, and I don’t start work until about eight-ish (8 a.m.) so I’ll get some time in there, and I get off around four, so I’ll sleep a little bit there. But I try to spend as much time with my kids as I can. And I get to bed about eight, so from 8:15 p.m. to midnight I usually sleep.
A: You’ve mentioned in the past that your kids are part of the inspiration for how you got into this. I remember you specifically mentioned a car break-in that occurred, and the glass hurt your son.
P: Yes. I went to Wild Waves [water park] and we didn’t have anything that we took… just [swim] shorts. We go running back to the car and as we go back, he slips and falls in glass near my car. And he cut his knee open pretty bad. I didn’t realize where the glass was coming from at first, so I just held his leg shut, saying “Someone call 911.” I looked up and realized my car window [had been smashed]. Some guy comes running over to me with a phone. So I say “Call 911,” and he says “I can’t.” I say “Why?” and he says “It will ruin my YouTube video.” And I thought, does anyone help… anyone?
So I was cleaning the inside of my car and I find this rock inside a mask. And the mask is what [thieves] used to swing and break the window open. I kept it as a symbol that bad stuff happens, and I put it in my glove box and thought that would be that.
A week or so goes by and I’m at the club with my friend. A guy comes in and says, “Hey isn’t that your friend outside?” I say “Yeah, he’s out there, what’s going on?” and he says somebody hit him with a stick. I go out there and his nose is turned all the way sideways
The guy who did it had 50 friends with him. I go, “Great, nobody can do anything. It’s 50 to one.” I go back to my car to my glove box because I had a first aid kit and a couple other things there and I see the mask is still there. I picked it up and I kind of got this idea. No one knows who I am with the mask on, so I ditched the shirt, put the mask on, chased him around the block. The police pulled us both over and I was able to get him arrested. I asked if I needed to [be a] witness and they said “We don’t really need a witness, we have the guy assaulted and we have the other guy, so we don’t really need you, other than your name.” I asked “Does it matter what my name is?” They said, no not really, so I said, “My name’s Phoenix Jones.”
[NOTE: There is some contention as to the exact details of Jones’s origin story as he has told it to the press. In a November interview with author Tea Krulos for his blog, Heroes In The Night, Jones stated he went looking for his friend’s attacker the night after the incident, but never found him. A story in the Capitol Hill blog of KOMO News reversed the car break-in and assault altogether.]
A: When you began intervening in crimes you did it as yourself at first, yes?
PJ: Yeah, that was way before Wild Waves. My brother and a couple friends liked to go down to drink at different clubs. I wasn’t 21 and I don’t drink anyway. So I decided I would go and charge them money to drive them downtown. I was kind of stuck there, though, depending on when they wanted to leave. So my friend goes, “Why don’t we just, you know, break up bar fights?” So we went around and broke up bar fights. But six months of doing that and people start recognizing your face. And you’re out there and people just try to attack you. My wife became pregnant at that point and I realized I need to quit this or I’m going to get in trouble. So that’s why, when the second part rolled around, I’ve been so careful about my identity and who I talk to.
A: How old were you?
PJ: I started at 18.
A: What made you decide on your current suit?
PJ: Mobility. When I first designed the suit, I really wanted a full rubber suit. But it was like wearing a rubber band; it just wasn’t practical. So I started cutting things off the original suit.
A: What’s your martial arts background?
PJ: Black belt in tae kwon do, black belt in judo. I should have a black belt in kendo, but I found out the teacher wasn’t accredited. But I fought other black belts and in kendo tournaments I did very well. I have over 30 mixed martial arts fights and I’ve won all of them but two, and I lost by [judge’s] decision. I’ve never submitted or finished. And then I have a couple years of ROTC.
A: How did you decide on the name Phoenix Jones?
PJ: My official answer is “Phoenix,” because it rises up from the ashes and I hope that if I stop doing this or something happens to me, someone else takes up the idea. And “Jones” because Jones was the most common last name the year I was born.
A: I want to talk a moment about your broken nose [in January].
PJ: That really made me mad when they played it that way in the press. Because there’s a whole other part of the story people don’t think about. Let’s review what we do know: My nose got broken by a guy with a gun in a parking lot. But let’s answer the questions: Why was I in a parking lot with a guy with a gun? Because he was assaulting citizens. I did what superheroes do. I ran in to stop the situation and I actually did. I effectively got the guy on the ground, I was holding him. I called the police and they didn’t show up for 17 minutes. The whole incident took 22 minutes and I was winning for 19 of them.
Then out of nowhere his friend comes up and draws on me. Everyone else is gone, so it’s just an ego situation. My ego, what am I going to do? [He imitates a gruff voice] “I’m not going to let him go!” Come on. At that point no one is in danger, so I let him go. When I did, he kicked me in the face and broke my nose.
A: Do you ever worry about your kids losing you?
PJ: I think about that sometimes, but you know what I think is worse? My kids being alive. They’re living in this world that no one seems to want to change. Everybody seems to be pretty happy with the way things are going. And I think that me attempting to change this is much more important than it would be for me to be around longer. Do you know what I mean? They’re going to be in a world that’s getting progressively worse. The urgency is so great that they maybe won’t grow old if I don’t do this.
A: You have a Bluetooth under your mask, don’t you?
PJ: Yes. [He laughs] A lot of people don’t get that. People always try to pick apart my story and ask “How can you hold a guy down and call 911?” [He points to his earpiece].
A: So as soon as you see a crime, you make the call, and then you intervene?
PJ: I try not to intervene most of the time. The best thing I can do is record it. And I have a headcam that goes on the [mask] right here. So a lot of the time I’ll see a crime and then I’ll just videotape it and wait for the police to show up. And if he tries to leave the scene or hurt people, then I jump in.
A: Do you have religious beliefs?
PJ: I do, and I believe in God, but I feel like it ruins the message of being a superhero. It’s interesting how religion was originally brought in to bring hope, but today a word like “mundane” comes to mind, or “fake.” When you see a Union Gospel mission bring food to the homeless, you think, “That’s for points in Sunday school,” or “That’s because you think you’re going to heaven and not because you’re a nice person.” But you see a dude just randomly giving stuff to the homeless you think, “Wow, that’s really nice.”

Phoenix Jones Fights Villains With a Taser, But Zetaman Thinks That’s None Too Safe
Originally posted: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703408604576164641263773656.html
By ASHBY JONES

“Superhero’ Phoenix Jones, top, uses a cell phone to help monitor possible crimes.

SEATTLE—Life isn’t easy for the self-proclaimed superhero who calls himself “Phoenix Jones, Guardian of Seattle.” A 22-year-old day-care worker by day, he dons a black-and-gold costume by night to harass drug dealers and break up street fights.
But he’s having a harder time dealing with his latest nemeses: members of the “Real Life Superhero” (RLSH) movement.
This world-wide collection mainly of grown men with names like Zetaman, Knight Owl, Dark Guardian, and Mr. Raven Blade, have taken to grumbling about Mr. Jones, who has recently been getting more publicity than they do, partly because of his aggressive style.
The RLSHers, many of whom stick to charitable works like delivering food to the homeless, are concerned that Mr. Jones’s physical approach might not reflect well on the superhero community, which has worked hard to convince people that it isn’t just a group of comic-book geeks with inflated notions of their own importance but, rather, a force for good in the world.
“For the first time, we have someone who agrees with our overall purpose but doesn’t agree with our methods,” says Knight Owl, a Portland, Ore., member of the RLSH world who, like the others, refuses to give out his real name.
“I suppose it was bound to happen, but it’s definitely a growing pain within the community.”
Mr. Jones, who declined to allow his real name to be published but whose back story checks out, dismisses the criticism. “I may be eccentric, but I’m not crazy,” he says. “I really am here to help the people of Seattle.”
Real Life Superheroes, who seem to favor masks and dark clothing—sometimes emblazoned with homemade logos (like the Superman “S”)—exist in pockets all over the world. Some, like Knight Owl and Thanatos, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, typically focus on charitable activities.
Others, such as New York’s Dark Guardian, patrol areas known for drug activity—a bit like the city’s old subway-riding Guardian Angels. Dark Guardian shines lights and takes videos to try to deter crime nonviolently, and he makes emergency calls to 911.
“Mostly, they’re relatively normal people trying to help out and have a little fun along the way,” says Tea Krulos, a Milwaukee writer working on a book about them.
Phoenix Jones is different. In the 10 months since he became prominent, he has shown a willingness to thrust himself into dangerous situations.
A mixed martial-arts fighter, he broke his nose last month while breaking up a fight, and he says he has been shot and stabbed, too. He often travels with a posse, sometimes carries a Taser nightstick and tear gas, and repeatedly has himself been mistaken for a criminal.
One Friday night, Mr. Jones and several sidekicks—two quiet men called Buster Doe and Pitch Black; a young woman named Blue Sparrow; and a superhero-in-training called Ski Man—spent several hours making the rounds on the streets of Seattle.
Mr. Jones posed for the occasional cellphone photo with revelers outside night spots in several popular neighborhoods. But, he says, the attention “distracts me from my mission.”
Outside a bar, Mr. Jones chastised a man for yelling at a downtrodden passerby.
“Let’s keep it cool; let’s all have a good night,” he said to the man, who quickly backed down.
From there, Mr. Jones chatted up late-night loiterers in areas known for drug dealing. “Stay safe tonight,” he said. “Stay warm.”
Later, the superheroes ran after a swerving car, suspecting a drunk driver, but the car raced away and, alas, they can’t fly. Capes, also, are unfashionable in the superhero world: “They get caught on everything,” says Mr. Raven Blade.
Little crime-fighting took place that night. “That’s the thing,” concedes Mr. Jones. “When there’s nothing going on, you feel pretty silly in this outfit,” he says, referring to his costume, which he says is equipped with the latest body armor.
Detective Mark Jamieson, spokesman for the Seattle Police Department, applauds citizens’ willingness to get involved in their communities and says the department has received 911 calls from Mr. Jones.
But he worries about things getting out of hand. “Our concern is that if it goes badly, then we wind up getting called anyway, and we may get additional victims.”
It’s that kind of scenario that frightens other RLSHers.
“Whether intentionally or not, he’s representing the [superhero] community now,” says Knight Owl. “And that makes some people nervous.”
Mr. Jones says the RLSH group initially resented his quick move into the spotlight, and blackballed him when he later tried to make nice. So Mr. Jones ultimately started his own group, called the Rain City Superheroes. He says the group’s mission is decidedly different from the agenda of the RLSH gang.
“Handing out food to the homeless is an entirely worthy thing to do,” he says. “But it’s not what superheroes do. If you’re going to drive a fire truck, people are going to expect you to put out fires. If you dress up like a superhero, people are going to expect you to fight crime.”
Last month, in an effort to patch things up, members of the two groups met up in Seattle and went on a late-night patrol of the city.
According to Mr. Jones and others present, the night didn’t go entirely smoothly. At a coffee shop following the patrol, Mr. Jones and Zetaman, a Portland superhero, argued over Mr. Jones’s approach. Zetaman declined to comment. But on his blog, he recounted telling Mr. Jones: “[A]ll of us are afraid of one day someone is going to get killed and it’ll be all over.”
Added Zetaman: “I don’t need this kind of macho c— in my life and I don’t need to prove myself to anyone, least of all to Phoenix Jones and his Rain City Superhero Movement.”
The night of the patrol, Zetaman left the group early and went back to his hotel.
Responds Mr. Jones: “I don’t see the point in handing sandwiches to homeless people in areas in which the homeless are getting abused, attacked, harassed by drug dealers.”
Since then, the two groups—the Rain City Superheroes and the Real Life Superheroes—have pretty much gone their separate ways.
“We’re not one giant family,” says Knight Owl. “After all, we’re a colorful collection of individuals. We’re superheroes.”
Write to Ashby Jones at [email protected]

Originally posted: http://oneplusonedirect.com/tag/phoenix-jones/
Seattle has a costumed superhero patrolling the streets of their city looking for crime and the criminals that commit them.
A vigilante by the name of Jones, wears a costume of gold and black, and walks a beat in Lynnwood, population 35,000. He costume consists of a bulletproof vest with stab shield beneath the outfit. He also wields pepper spray and a Taser stun gun.
His budget is much less than Batman and so he doesn’t have a bat mobile or other fancy vehicle. He is instead driven around in a Kia, by a faithful female sidekick who does not leave the vehicle.
Jones revealed to a local Television network that he started fighting crime about nine months ago and in that time he received stab wounds and had a gun pointed at him more than one time. However, he said, “When I walk into a neighbourhood, criminals leave because they see the suit. The average person doesn’t have to walk around and see bad things and do nothing.”
He just lately interrupted and diverted a car theft, and chased the criminal away who had been trying to break into the car. The car owner was shocked and said “From the right, this guy comes dashing in, wearing this black and gold suit, and starts chasing him away.”
Seattle Police comment that Phoenix Jones belongs to a nation-wide organization that call themselves the Rain City Superhero Movement. It has a website that says: “A real life superhero is whoever chooses to embody the values presented in super heroic comic books, not only by donning a mask and costume, but also performing good deeds.”
Police urge citizens to think twice about becoming vigilantes in comic book costumes, and they are extremely fortunate to not be mistaken as the very criminals they are trying to defend against. They add that it is extremely dangerous for citizens to place themselves in harms way by emulating comic book heroes.

Originally posted: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2011/01/12/Seattles-superhero-suffers-broken-nose/UPI-39361294857957/
SEATTLE, Jan. 12 (UPI) — Seattle’s real-life masked crime fighter said one man pointed a gun at him and another broke his nose when he intervened in their argument.
The caped crusader known to the public as Phoenix Jones said he was attempting to stop a heated argument between two men from turning violent during the weekend when one of the men pulled a gun on him, ABC News reported Wednesday.
Jones said the other man struck him, breaking his nose, before both suspects fled.
Police said dressing up like superheroes is not illegal in Seattle, but they worry about the safety of those who heed the call to Justice, like Phoenix and his colleagues in the Rain City Superheroes.
“Our concern is if it goes badly, then we end up getting called anyway, and we may have additional victims,” Detective Mark Jamieson said.
Jones said he began dressing up and patrolling the streets after his young son was injured by broken glass from some teenagers attempting to break into his car.
“Teenagers are running down the street, breaking into cars, and no one does anything? Where’s the personal accountability?” he said.

Originally posted: http://b4manconsulting.com/?p=133
In the past few weeks, I’ve seen a few news stories about real life superheroes. There is even a website. One particular costume-clad, caped crusader has been visible in the national media. His name, Phoenix Jones. Our hero has evoked strong opinions about his role in being a crime fighter. Law enforcement agencies worry that he could cause volatile situations to get worse. Imagine a group of buddies that have had too much to drink, and this guy shows up to keep them from driving until police arrive. The hosts of morning talk shows have interviewed and laughed at the prospect of heroes like Phoenix, Green Reaper, Buster Doe or Thunder 88 trying to stop crime in their fair city.
The other reaction is to understand from where these Do Gooders come. Why are they placing themselves in harm’s way. Unlike Marvel Comic’s heroes, these are ordinary people who cannot leap a tall building or stop a runaway locomotive. A well placed bullet or repeated blows to the head can kill them, just as it would you or me. So why? The Real Life Superheroes website says this:

“The Real Life Superheroes work to make the world a better place by doing civic activities, charity work, public safety patrols, hospital visits, school talks, distributing wanted and missing person fliers, helping the homeless, community clean-ups, and more. From crime fighting to charity work real life superheroes seek to help make a positive difference in their communities.”

These are noble ambitions and ones that I think most of us can appreciate. So how do we respond when one of these masked men becomes the victim. Earlier in January, that very thing happened to Phoenix, who in real life, kisses his children as he puts them in bed and then heads out for patrol. Two men assaulted Jones at gunpoint. One trained the gun on him, while the other broke his nose.
As I watched the story unfold and reader responses to it, there were many who laughed at Seattle’s guardian, while others applauded his heroism. Another hero came to mind though, this one much less likely, but one who’s name is often evoked.
The Good Samaritan crossed cultural stigmas of classism and religious legalism to rescue a stranger he found left for dead in a ditch. The Gospel writer Luke tells the parable in Chapter 10. After being beaten and robbed, a man was left in a ditch. Two different religious leaders left the man there, even crossing to the other side of the road to avoid him.  Their reasons were solely those of religious doctrine. The third man, a Samaritan, stepped in to save the day. This hero is unlikely because the people reading this parable would consider the Samaritan the least worthy of such honor in a story. Samaritans were viewed as ethnically and religiously inferior to the ruling class Jews. Not only did he bandage the man, but he also paid for his care at a local inn.
At the end of telling the story, Jesus tells his audience to go and be as merciful as the Samaritan had been.  So what do a Samaritan and Real Life Superheroes have in common? Read the quote from the RLS website again. Perhaps too much has been made of one vigilante’s noble (or insane) quest to protect the city. The real heroic action has been in the community service of the heroes: visiting hospitals, community clean-ups, missing person flier distribution, work with the homeless.
That work defines the real superhero to me. People who give their time and energy to their passions without hope for recognition, quietly preparing meals at a homeless shelter, visiting at hospital bedsides, making a playground safe for children, etc. People who lead their organizations to provide from the richness of their resources to improve the lives of those without basic needs being met. Community organizers who work tirelessly to know the needs around them and call upon the assets of the community to meet them. There are millions of real life superheroes out there. You can identify some from your own life story.
So what is our call to action? To go and do likewise!

Superheroes have leapt from four color entertainment to the evening news. As a member of this community I follow related developments closely.
Phoenix Jones seems to be our break out person- the one deemed a standard bearer for what the media calls real life superheroes ( RLSH ).
As I always preach, simply doing creative good doesn’t mean you’ll be well received. Alongside unprecedented coverage come haters and folks with legitimate concerns. Jones has plenty of both, even within his own extended real life superhero community.
Many of us have done this for years without fan fare. Some are rubbed the wrong way by his notoriety while others, myself included, are enjoying his experience from afar. Whenever you stretch reality the way we do, raw nerves are bound to be exposed.
Much has been made of the intervention where his nose was broken. It serves notice to supporter and skeptic alike that risk is part of the real life superhero experience. The same holds true for public safety professionals; private security security and anyone who has potentially combative encounters.
Phoenix Jones may be a standard bearer for the real life superhero community. Meanwhile there are hundreds of us doing the same and, like Jones, hopefully inspiring fellow citizens to help out.
That’s a standard worth bearing in these uncertain times and for that alone Phoenix Jones deserves considerable credit.
Also, it appears he’s also an African-American beneath his mask. The fact this hasn’t been emphasized implies more concern with what he does, as opposed to who he is.
Not bad considering the state of race relations.
NADRA ENZI AKA CAPT BLACK promotes crime prevention and self-development. http://www.captblack.info

Originally posted: http://www.wtsp.com/news/watercooler/story.aspx?storyid=168610
(USA Today) — Seattle’s self-proclaimed crime-fighting “superhero” got his nose broken over the weekend while trying to break up a fight while making his nightly rounds in mask and costume, KOMO-TV reports.
Phoenix Jones, the pseudonym of the caped crusader who leads the band of superheroes, tells KOMO that he had called 911 and was holding a man in a headlock when a second man pulled out a gun.
When Jones released the first bad guy, that man promptly kicked Jones in the face.
KOMO says some police officers are uneasy with the superhero gang and have confused some of them with real criminals. To avoid a mixup, Seattle police put out a bulletin in November to alert officers.
Police say they would prefer that the superheroes simply call 911 if they spot a crime in progress and not try to tackle it themselves.
“Does Superman get his ass kicked?” one detective said to KOMO. “These people should not be called superheroes.”
Jones, who claims that his team has either military or police training, started his crime-fighting ways after a friend of his was beaten up on the street.

Originally posted: http://www.newser.com/story/109534/thugs-beat-up-real-life-superhero.html
Life imitates Kick-Ass in Seattle

(Newser) – Self-proclaimed superhero Phoenix Jones could have used some superpowers, or at least some tools from Batman’s arsenal, over the weekend. The costumed vigilante, who patrols the streets of Seattle several times a week, had his nose broken and was threatened at gunpoint after he tried to break up a fight, the Telegraph reports.
Jones—leader of the real-life “Rain City Superheroes” group that also includes Buster Doe, Thorn, Green Reaper, Gemini, No Name, Catastrophe, Thunder 88 and Penelope—says the attack was no big deal, but police say that he and his fellow masked vigilantes should call 911 instead of taking on criminals. “They insert themselves into a potentially volatile situation and then they end up being victimized as well,” a police spokesman tells KOMO News.