Kitty Genovese Day 2014

Today is the anniversary of the death of Kitty Genovese. Some Real Life Superheroes (as discussed in further detail in Heroes in the Night) treat this day as a sort of memorial holiday, making sure they are out on patrol. Some hand out flyers about the incident (in which Genovese was murdered while bystanders ignored it) and for others, the date marks the first time they patrolled.

RLSH say their hope is to prevent another Kitty Genovese story from happening. Be safe out there!

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Rain City Superhero Arrest Captured on "Phoenix Cam"

Seattle-
Phoenix Jones has posted video which shows what he claims is his 32nd capture of a criminal that has led to an arrest. Jones was joined by members of his Rain City Superhero Movement and the Citizen Heroes documentary crew. The pursuit and capture of a man outside of a Seattle club was captured by the "Phoenix Cam," an ongoing video documentation of Jones and company's adventures.

Phoenix writes this description of the video (transcribed from his famous ALL CAPS style):

On patrol with Ghost, No Name, Mist, El Caballero and the Citizen Heroes documentary crew. We are on patrol in Belltown when we hear a man yelling 'DONT TALK TO MY WIFE LIKE THAT!' We see him throw the punch and that's when Ryan turns the camera on. We catch the perp running up the street and yell to him to stop. At this point the man who was assaulted is up and chasing with us (his wife is pregnant and was being harassed by the susspect previous to the video)-He runs into a parking lot and swings a punch at us, so I pepper spray him.
The chase continues and I finally tackle him in a parking lot. The police pull up so I back up. The best thing about arrest 32 is the police giving us thanks at the end.

The video follows:



Heroes in the Night author Tea Krulos will be in Portland and Seattle the first week of October.

SUPER MOON PATROL

The super moon- as photographed by The Watchman in the woods of Riverwest

Note from Tea Krulos: On Saturday, the night of the "super moon," local Milwaukee RLSHs The Watchman and Blackbird hit the streets in two neighborhoods- Riverwest and Bay View. Since I couldn't join them because of a prior engagement, I asked The Watchman to share an account of the night, which is pasted below.

Here is my summary of the patrol Blackbird and I did Saturday night:

Blackbird and I met up in Bay View around 9:30pm and went over our plans for the night. We wanted to patrol Riverwest on foot to make sure people there still knew we were around since the last couple times out there we had stuck mainly to rolling patrols and wore plain clothes while on foot. We also wanted to spend some time in Bay View because there have been recent reports of shootings and unprovoked beat downs in the area. We decided to do a short rolling patrol through Bay View before visiting the homeless camp in Riverwest.

The Watchman

The first problem of the night was an obstruction in the road. Somebody had used a large branch to prop up a wood pallet right in the middle of the road for no other apparent reason than for the sake of blocking traffic. Blackbird pulled to the side of the road and I jumped out and removed the obstruction, placing the pallet and branch up on the curb and out of the way.

From there, we went to pick up a couple bundles of firewood and headed off to the homeless camp. As we walked down the trail leading to the camp, we could hear loud voices coming from across the river, which we determined was from some young people partying in the woods. We agreed that we would go around to the other side of the river to make sure the people were being safe after stopping at the camp. Using night vision at the camp, we were able to see a few of the partiers moving around across the river, but were not able to see well enough to get a count or descriptions. By the time we checked on the homeless folks and dropped off the firewood and some water, the party broke up and left.

Blackbird

Since there was no longer anything to check out in the woods, we covered some more ground by vehicle before beginning a foot patrol up and down Center Street and surrounding areas in Riverwest. Though not real late, traffic through there had slowed down quite a bit, but the overall attitude of those who remained seemed positive. We talked to some people, allowed some of them to take pictures with us, and even saw some familiar faces. Among them were the gentleman who once repeatedly referred to Blackbird as "Blackberry" (something we still joke about) and another who once could not recall my name while being interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Both apologized for their previous errors. Afterward, we spent some time watching a couple suspicious looking characters who seemed to be scoping for lone people walking to their cars, but that went nowhere.

After that, we headed back to Bay View where we spent the remainder of the night walking around looking for signs of the types of problems reported there lately. Thankfully, it was a quiet night despite the full moon, or perhaps thanks to the "super" moon.

-The Watchman

OUT IN THE COLD Update

Night vision photo of Blackbird in the woods, taken by The Watchman

Today the streets outside here in Milwaukee were bombarded by snow and sleet, as winter continues. Last night local RLSHs The Watchman and Blackbird were on a mission to head out into the cold night. Unfortunately I couldn't join them, but just got a report back from The Watchman over the phone.

First the duo tried out some of Blackbird's new infrared camera equipment. Blackbird is always on the look out for good surveillance supplies- after some testing they discovered what bugs need to be worked out.

After that removed their masks and headed into the woods to drop off some supplies to a homeless camp in the woods near the river. After being tipped off about this, Blackbird and myself took a trek into the woods to find them, which I wrote about in an entry HERE. We had found their camp, but no one was there. Blackbird returned the next day and spoke with the group of four homeless people.

Watchman and Blackbird headed down to the camp with two bundles of firewood, pillows, socks, hats, hand sanitizer, canned food, peanut butter, and candy. No one was at the camp, although the firepit was still warm. The people were probably sleeping in their makeshift tents, hidden deeper in the woods, so they left the supplies near the base camp.

After that the two did a "rolling patrol" in Blackbird's car, cruising the streets of Riverwest and the nearby University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee campus.

"It was nice to have a specific mission to attend to," Watchman said. "It was a quiet night, pretty calm overall."