‘They got gangs here’: How Sydney got caught up in New York’s mayoral race

Compare the two great cities of our age: New York and Parramatta.

One is a gang-infested, crime-ridden hellscape where all but the brave or foolish fear to tread. The other is New York City.

At least that’s how Curtis Sliwa, the beret-wearing 71-year-old running as the Republican candidate for mayor of New York, remembers the city when he came here to establish a vigilante force.

“Took me an hour to get all the way out to the suburbs, I go, how bad could it possibly be? And then when I walked around – oh, they got gangs here,” he told independent West Australian blog The Last Place on Earth on Monday.

As polls close on Tuesday night (US time), Sliwa is set to come dead last, with Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani the likely winner. Standing on the 14th Street subway – a station that has been the site of a stabbing and a bomb scare this year alone – Sliwa also told the outlet about his experience with Australian cuisine.

“I hate Vegemite with a PASSION!” he said. “The Aussies love their Vegemite, so naturally, when you’re in Australia, you have to eat it and act like you like it.”

The Last Place on Earth’s Jesse Noakes said staking Sliwa out for an interview was a mission.

“Being interviewed in his natural environment on the subway made Sliwa feel safe enough to tell us how he really feels,” he said.

But what was Sliwa doing in Parramatta?

Newspaper archives reveal Sliwa came to Sydney in 1992 to establish an Australian chapter of the Guardian Angels, the red beret-wearing volunteer vigilante group he founded in 1979 to conduct “safety patrols” on New York’s subways.

His attempts to mirror the group’s impact in New York in Sydney were less successful. The state’s police minister at the time described the group as “loonies”.

Liberal Ted Pickering said he would “come down on them like a ton of bricks if they step out of line”.

“We don’t need your kind of assistance and as far as I am concerned you can go home. Anyone who takes the law into their own hands can clearly be described as loonies and will be dealt with according to the law,” Pickering said, according to a news report from 1992.

The group staged a protest outside NSW parliament in a last-ditch attempt to gain official recognition. Sliwa left Sydney the next day.

In their brief time in the city the “Angels” could be seen “trudging through carriages and hanging out of doors at each stop”, the Herald reported.

Parramatta Lord Mayor Martin Zaiter was a child living in the suburb of Harris Park when Sliwa visited. He said that “there may have been little youth groups” but he had never witnessed any gangs on the streets.

“You can’t compare the Parramatta of today to the one of 1992,” he said, inviting him to visit.

“It won’t take one hour to get here any more. With our improved public transport it’s only half an hour away.”

And when Metro West is finally operational in 2032, the Sydney CBD will be about 22 minutes away.

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