Here is an update.
30-year veteran of the Guardian Angels has abruptly left his post as Las Vegas franchise leader and martial arts instructor, leaving a series of dirt-dishing YouTube videos exposing rampant corruption within the group in his wake.
Tyrone Bonds, who earned the street name Wing Chung through a street fight while on patrol with Guardian Angels in 1980, says in a series of YouTube videos that he simply could not take any more of the “immorality, lies, dissension and deceit” that he claims the group is filled with.
“I’ve bled alongside many an Angel in my day, trying to establish the group,” Bonds says. “When I joined the group I did so with the same ambitions as everyone else – I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to make a change, and I believed in the moral value of the group.”
Thirty years later, Bonds says he feels like he’s been “made to work for a pimp for free.” The Guardian Angels, he claims, is being run by “people who think they are pimping the members” who are forced to “sign away their lives” and are “out there on their own” once they do.
Bonds points to The Fallen Six, the hallowed Guardian Angels who have been killed while volunteering to go on street patrol, to prove his point.
“What has the group ever done for them? Have any of their children gotten a scholarship?,” he asks.
He also claims that a family member of one of The Fallen Six came up to him during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City one year and told him the Guardian Angels did not even send the family a condolence card.
Alex "Gemini" Makarczyk
Bonds also points to Alex “Gemini” Makarczyk, the Los Angeles franchise leader who was forced to beg online to pay his doctors bills after being hospitalized in the line of duty.
When Bonds approached Midwest Regional Director Michael “3rdRAIL” Fuentes about setting up a fund to help Makarczyk, Fuentes flatly replied, “He signed a release, he’s on his own.”
Bonds says he then asked about what would happen to Makarczyk’s family. Fuentes shouted, “Screw his family! It’s about the group!”.
“I felt like sh-t at that moment,” Wing Chung says. “But for the Grace of God it could have been any one of us lying in that hospital bed.”
Bonds says Fuentes, who has a record of entrapping young hip-hop artists into spraying graffiti and arresting them, is “the most two-faced person I’ve ever spoken to in my life.”
“I don’t know whose side of his face I was talking to,” he says.
Michael "3rdRail" Fuentes
Fuentes “is such a puppet for Curtis,” adds Bonds, that “if you told him sh-t was going to fall out of the sky on 34th Street at 2 o’clock on Sunday and Curtis said those words and said ‘go out there and catch it,’ 3rd [Rail, Fuentes] would be out there with a baseball glove because Curtis told it to him.”
Ever since breaking his ankle during karate class, Fuentes has turned into a “little old lady in front of his computer” dictating to fellow Angels what they can and cannot post on social networking sites.
Describing Fuentes as “a little man with a little man syndrome,” Bonds says the Chicago franchise leader “has truly killed the morale of a lot of people in the group. Truly.”
Bonds also claims Guardian Angels leaders are covering up rampant drug and alcohol abuse within the group.
Arno Thirteen, who was at one time the group’s second in command behind leader Curtis Sliwa, is an active cocaine addict and alcoholic whose repeated rehabs have been paid for by donations to the group.
New Zealand franchise Leader Andy “Chieftain” Cawston, is a drug-dependent, manic-depressive who is banned from speaking at the group’s yearly convention, according to Bonds.
“The only reason they don’t kick him [Andy Chieftan] out [of the Guardian Angels] is because they are afraid he would kill himself,” Bonds says.
Bonds says he was pressured not to talk about drug and alcohol abuse in the Guardian Angels or they would “crucify” him.
Curtis Sliwa
The cover-up goes all the way to the top, according to Bonds. Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa simply refers all member complaints to Fuentes, who then tells them not to complain.
“Curtis has really nothing for nobody but Curtis,” Bonds says. “How does the leader of the group [Curtis Sliwa] live in a 4.5 million dollar penthouse apartment, yet he can’t supply t-shirts and berets to the people who are out there?”.
“The only kid going to college out of the money raised for the Guardian Angels will be Curtis’ son. Not any of you, not any of your children, I don’t care what you’ve put on the line,” he says.
Bonds has gotten an unexpected outpouring of support from current Guardian Angels members and even some franchise leaders, including James Ramsey from the embattled Davenport Guardian Angels, who wrote the following:
I personally have been wrestling with the same decision.
Our Davenport chapter has had big problems in the last few months and ALL of them were pointed out by me and a few others and could have been prevented but people in the leadership did not see any need to fix anything.
I had found free training in how to deal with people suffering from mental illness or who had been sexually assaulted and was told that it was unnecessary. I had laid the groundwork for our local Red Cross branch to hold a first aid/CPR class for up to 10 of us for about 20 bucks each (To cover their expenses only) and was told “We don’t pay for training” even though that’s why we received a $1000 grant from a local civics group.
Guardian Angel James "Nitro" Steel is accused of breaking an Iraq War vet's arm
Ditto for a local citizens police academy put on by our local Police departments but was told “Why would we need it?” This academy was not to make people cops, it was to help non cops learn about the police department and learn things like citizens arrest laws and how to identify real criminal activity. I had attended it prior to becoming an angel and the people who were running it were excited at the prospect of meeting us and having an exchange of information between the angels and the police. It could have led to a better understanding of what we could do and what we could expect from the police if we called them, but again it was shot down by 3rd rail time and time again.
Our best patrols were ones where we helped people but in the last 6 months or so it started to deteriorate into constantly having to get between my chapter leader and drunks mouthing off or spending 2 or 3 hours following a former chapter member because he “might” have threatened us.. I kept thinking to myself “This is the guy that was put in charge?” and any complaints went unanswered or the members were just kicked out.
By the way, all of the above in ” ” were by 3rd rail so I am in perfect understanding with you on that matter.
I don’t want to leave the group, but it might not be long until I post my own “Goodbye” video as I’ve effectively quit, just not officially.
Whatever your future endeavors, Stay safe.
Bonds has challenged Sliwa to a public debate on his grievances with the group.
