We are elated that New York City’s Guardian Angels, a group of  volunteer vigilantes, has announced that it has decided to resume NYC subway patrols for first time since 2020 — after a recent shocking arson murder.

“The Guardian Angels are resuming their patrols of the Big Apple’s subways as if it were crime-riddled Gotham in 1979, after the horrifying arson murder of a sleeping straphanger on a train last week (Dec. 22), founder Curtis Sliwa said” on Dec. 29, the New York Post noted in a Dec. 29 news article.

The Guardian Angels squad, identifiable by its bright-red berets and matching jackets, is beefing up its ranks to its level 45 years ago, Sliwa said.

“We’re going to have to increase our numbers, increase the training and increase our presence as we did back in 1979,” Sliwa told the Post at the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station in Brooklyn, where the woman was killed.

“We went from 13 to 1,000 [members] back then within a period of a year,” he told the Post. “Because the need was there. The need is here now once again. We’re going to step up. We’re going to make sure we have a visual presence, just like we had in the ’70s, 80’s and ’90s.”

Ever since the shocking slaying, “hundreds of citizens” have requested the Guardian Angels return to patrol the subway cars, Sliwa claimed, as he slammed NYC’s “sanctuary city” policies.

.“We’re covering the actual trains from front to back, walking through the trains and making sure that everything is okay,” he told The Post on Dec. 29. “We’re doing this constantly now. Starting today. that’s going to be our complete focus because the subways are out of control.” 

In a Dec. 30 editorial, the Post noted, “Mayor Eric Adams’ office dismissed the Angels’ return as a ‘meaningless stunt,’ and it is, indeed, mostly symbolic — their patrols can only do wellness checks on the mentally disturbed and homeless, watch cars and platforms for nefarious activity and alert cops to potential problems.”

Yet, we thoroughly agree with the Post’s viewpoint that “every set of eyes helps, as does every visible source of order...” in the city’s crime-ridden subways.