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The Guardian Angels are an anti-crime organization that operate in the United States, Europe, Brazil, and Japan. It provides several community service programs, including safety and observation patrols, courses in self-defense, and urban beautification. However, legal grounds for their actions are disputed especially in Europe and Japan. Here, where crime rates are relatively low, many people also consider guardian angels to be a bigger disturbance to public order than crime itself or even regard their appearance and actions to be criminal outright.
Safety patrols are the main focal point of the Guardian Angels. Its members, who can be identified by their red berets and jackets, perform numerous patrols within many major cities, to serve as a visual deterrent to crime and to assist the police in reporting suspicious activity. They are also trained in the use of a citizen's arrest. In 1995, the Guardian Angels expanded their role to the Internet through its CyberAngels organization, which provides education about online crime and child pornography.
Since the organization's inception, six Guardian Angels have been killed so far during patrols.
Legal grounds disputable
In Germany, the use of violence is reserved to official organs like the police. Individuals may resort to violence only in case of self-defense. Actions of "pre-emptive" self-defence against "possible crime"; neither can civilians perform a "citizen's arrest".
Bad image in Japan
In Japan, which has a very low crime rate outside organized crime, guardian angels have appeared in Tokyo's amusement quarters like Roppongi and Shibuya in recent years. Their sheer presence frightens most Japanese: A group of half a dozen muscled men in red, martial uniforms with army caps must look to them more like a subsection of the Yakuza than anything else. Guardian Angels have been observed entering expensive night-clubs and asking for free (alcoholic) drinks, which only helped confirming their image of a ruthless, dangerous gang.
The eventual fate of guardian angels in Japan will also show if Michael Moore's assumption (stated in his movie Bowling for Columbine) is true: Will the strategy of a minority constantly stoking fears of imaginary crimes eventually result in the majority being afraid of crimes and finally supporting countermeasures suggested by that minority?
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