Throwing red beret in the ring.<\/p>\n
Guardian Angels founder and talk-radio shock jock Curtis Sliwa plans to run for mayor in 2021, according to reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the only candidate with the onions to take back the city,\u201d Sliwa, 65. \u201cI have the street cred. I have bled in the streets. I\u2019ve given seven lives. I have two left. I\u2019ll use them for the City of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sliwa re-registered from a Reform Party member to Republican last month .<\/p>\n
A lifelong city resident who fires quips and zingers in his Brooklynese accent, Sliwa\u00a0 launched the crime-fighting Guardian Angels\u2019 group 40 years ago to patrol the subways and the streets in the days when Gotham was overrun by crime.<\/p>\n
He says he now worries the dark days are coming back because of soft-on crime Democratic policies, citing in particular the state\u2019s new bail-reform law, which the NYPD claims\u00a0 is responsible for this year\u2019s spike in crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took us a long time to crawl out of the belly of the beast of the 1970s through 1990s. Bill de Blasio and the Democrats are bringing us back in,\u201d said Sliwa.<\/p>\n
Sliwa\u2019s platform includes ditching the mayor\u2019s security detail and put more cops in uniform to fight crime. He\u2019d also restore \u201cpro-active\u201d foot patrols and encourage more voluntary patrols like the Guardian Angels to work with the NYPD.<\/p>\n
He also wants to keep open and refurbish Rikers Island and\u00a0 thwart plans to open jails in the boroughs, as well as opening more psychiatric facilities to aid mentally ill homeless people calling it an \u201cabsolute sin\u201d to leave them in the streets.<\/p>\n
To restore discipline and order in the public schools, Sliwa said he\u2019d toss out bullies. And open more charter, vocational and trade schools to meet parental demand.<\/p>\n
Sliwa admits he carries baggage that would come up in a political campaign, but says it\u2019s all out in the open.<\/p>\n
During the Guardian Angels\u2019 early days, he fessed up to filing false police reports of being attacked to generate publicity.<\/p>\n
He is on his fourth marriage, and his\u00a0 spats with his ex-wives and girlfriends notably Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz have landed him in the headlines.<\/p>\n
The only skeleton I left is the one under my skin, he said.<\/p>\n
The plucky pugilist has also his fair share of scrapes and bruises\u00a0 but said he\u2019s in fighting shape to take on City Hall.<\/p>\n
In 1992, Sliwa was shot and seriously wounded on the Lower East Side. He\u00a0 blamed Gambino crime family honcho John Gotti Jr. for ordering the shooting as revenge for criticism of his father on his radio show.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also survived prostate cancer, painful colitis and Crohn\u2019s disease, which he\u00a0 blamed on the gunshot wounds to the stomach. He under went stomach surgery after his weight plummeted from 220 to 140 pounds. He said he is now a healthy 200 pounds.<\/p>\n
I feel great. I\u2019m ready to go,\u201d Sliwa said. \u201cI took a licking but keep on ticking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Throwing red beret in the ring. Guardian Angels founder and talk-radio shock jock Curtis Sliwa plans to run for mayor in 2021, according to reports. \u201cI am the only candidate with the onions to take back the city,\u201d Sliwa, 65. \u201cI have the street cred. I have bled in the streets. I\u2019ve given seven lives. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1469,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-york","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13479,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13477\/revisions\/13479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}