Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
He shows up in a gray shirt and nice maroon tie, with wire-rimmed glasses and his hair combed straight back from a receding hairline. The look’s innocuous, perfect for a subpoena server named Brent Benson. But when he opens his mouth, you hear Brooklyn and Yiddish (Hebrew name: Dov), plus a little torque from Jersey, where he went to high school with the toughest kids around and wrote message-heavy hip-hop lyrics as MC Double B. These days, his code name on the street is Brooklyn Brick, and on weekends, he wears a red beret and a white T-shirt with winged insignia. He’s leading the new St. Louis chapter of the Guardian Angels.
• If you’re in New York or Chicago, you already have a rep. In St. Louis we have to play it a little bit safe; people just don’t know who we are.
• A lot of the older people do know the Guardian Angels. They say, “Hey, you guys are here from New York.” No, we’re the St. Louis chapter. “Oh wow, I didn’t know we had Guardian Angels.” And I’ll throw back, “Yeah, you want to join?” Older people, they’re the eyes. They’ll train like us but they may even be better than us cause they may spot things the rest of us don’t spot.
• We were here for a while in the early ’80s—[founder] Curtis Sliwa spent his honeymoon in the Vaughan projects.
• We walk Washington Avenue, Laclede’s Landing, the heart of downtown, the Loop. We do a lot of posting up: You are leaning against the wall and you’re on alert, maybe one guy to the right and one to the left.
• We’re out there to be a deterrent, not start anything.
• This was where I felt I had to go after my dad died. I was 16, and I just happened to be walking down the street, and Curtis handed me a flyer. I think the Guardian Angels have saved a lot of guys, given them a direction.
• In Queens, we were out for days, looking for a rapist in Rego Park. I went four days straight without sleep. Somebody would come down and bring you a slice. Back then, we lived off pizza, soda, and Ding-Dongs.
• We were a strong deterrent in cleaning up Times Square, just by being present, and dealing with the situations. You go to Times Square now, it’s Disney World.
• We might see an officer alone—we know he can handle it but we are just going to make sure. I’ll have my guys post up, get on one side and the other, make sure the officer is OK, he’s good until his backup comes.
• Down on Washington off Tucker, there was a big brawl, and we spotted what was going to happen. We have a very good eye for that. I sent one of my guys to go get the police. There were two officers on the street and maybe 40 of these guys, at least 20 on each side, and four or five of us. The police were waiting for backup, and we were backing them up. They saw, ‘Hey, you guys didn’t run, you guys stood by us.’ I think they understood we’re here, and we’re serious about what we’re doing.
• We carry nothing. We search each other before we go out, to make sure nobody’s carrying guns or drugs.
• Sometimes people will give me a look like, no gun? No weapons? I think you’re safest when you use your head. You think about situations and you prepare for them, train your mind and body to react. The way you react in training is probably going to be the way you react on the street, so you want to train as real as possible.
• We have our own instructors, that are part of the Guardian Angels, and we have our own trainer here in St. Louis. He trains in practicality fighting, which is doing things that work. Not “street fighting”—I don’t like that term. Just the fastest and safest way to get somebody to the ground, and from there you joint-lock. We’ve also trained with Jermaine Andre, a former kickboxing champion, and with city police detective Joe Mayberry at the St. Louis Combat Institute, in Krav Maga, which the Israeli defense forces use.
• We train in these different styles to prepare us for every situation.
• From Washington, we can walk all the way up to Grand. You see things on foot you don’t see in a car.
• We haven’t had any real scuffles, but we did detain a man. He stabbed another man, and we walked up on it. They were fighting on the ground, trying to reach the knife, and one was yelling, “He stabbed me!” We sealed the crime scene as best we could.
• People will say ‘Hey guys, thanks.” That just hits you in the heart. You are being respected; you are being valued.
• You have to always be alert; you can’t drop your guard. We take verbal abuse; we do not strike back or talk back. They can call us all the names in the world, and we just take it.
• You want to stay disciplined, you want to stay focused. People are going to yell at you, people are going to ask you for money, people are going to thump your chest. You just have to know how you’re going to handle them. When you’re on the street, you learn to sum up people real quick. And with the head also comes the heart. It takes heart to do what we’re doing.
• I’m still single, so there’s no wife at home worrying about me. But I make sure my guys stay safe. I always tell them before we go on patrol, “We came together. We’re going home together.”
• People leave bottles on the street, and if you’re a girl and you got high heels on, you can trip if you’re drunk. So we pick up bottles.
• Colors are worn on patrol or while performing functions. The T-shirts and berets—I take them home and wash them. I wash the hoodies, too.
• We’re trying to grow. We started with three members, and I’ve brought it up to about 12, from all over the metro area. I’ll just see people and start talking to them. If I overhear someone talking about boxing or martial arts, anything like that, I tell them, “We are a voluntary safety patrol.”
• Yeah, I believe that there are angels. They’re in the Hebrew Bible. But I mean, it’s a little bit different than what we’re focusing on.
For information about the St. Louis Guardian Angels, call 314-467-0434 or 1-877-781-8986.
