{"id":14103,"date":"2011-05-12T17:22:55","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T00:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reallifesuperheroes.org\/?p=14103"},"modified":"2011-05-12T17:22:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T00:22:55","slug":"real-life-superheroes-now-patrolling-the-south-bronx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/2011\/05\/12\/real-life-superheroes-now-patrolling-the-south-bronx\/","title":{"rendered":"Real-Life Superheroes Now Patrolling The South Bronx"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted: http:\/\/gothamist.com\/2011\/05\/12\/real-life_superheroes_now_patrollin.php<\/a>
\nBy Ben Yakas<\/a>
\n

\"New<\/a>

New York Initative<\/p><\/div>
\nBetween the NY Press cover story<\/a> last year, the documentary<\/a> Superheroes<\/em> and the book<\/a>, “Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement,” the group of real-life superheroes known as the New York Initiative<\/a> have been getting a lot of press lately. Though we have yet to see them in person ourselves, the BBC followed them<\/a> around recently on one of their missions, and it sounded mighty…real: “Tonight, NYI members are patrolling the notorious South Bronx projects, looking for troublemakers and their victims.” <\/strong>
\nThe group, which includes costumed members Zero, Short Cut, Samaritan Prime, Battlestar, Nitro and Deaths Head, arm themselves with weapons (including a long metal torch that can be used as a club), and they have “martial arts trainers and practitioners on the team.” They gave the BBC an idea of the kinds of cases they’ve handled: We find drunks fighting out, domestic abuse, a robbery, anything like that…I stopped a rape once. A couple of guys were taking a drunk girl home with them. They were talking about all the stuff they were going to do to her. I came up and I told them to get away from her,” said Deaths Head Moth.
\nThe BBC seem kind of clueless about their origins\u2014they say at one point, “Crime fighting Hollywood film Kick-Ass<\/em> is based on them,” which is not true, seeing as how the movie is based on the comic series<\/a>…but perhaps they meant that the real-life superheroes were inspired by the film. The Brooklyn-based group released a statement on intent<\/a> on Craigslist late last year, in which they vowed to protect sex workers from the Long Island Serial Killer, but on their regularly-updated Facebook page<\/a>, they say that they’ve also been patrolling the West Village for muggers.
\nThe group has called their exploits like “a community block watch or safety patrol,” but police haven’t been as supportive of their antics: \u201cBlock watch? Naw, fuhgetabout that. You\u2019ll get shot. The guys in this neighborhood, they\u2019ll shoot you and no one will tell us who did it. There\u2019s a strong \u2018no snitching\u2019 rule out here,\u201d one officer told NY Press.<\/a> At least none of them are dressed up like Batman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OKv3b9Oi4xA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The group has called their exploits like “a community block watch or safety patrol,” but police haven’t been as supportive of their antics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[265,717,1841,1842,1875,2171,2294,2394,3017],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}