The Guardian Angels is a non-profit international volunteer organization of unarmed citizen crime patrollers. The Guardian Angels organization was founded February 13, 1979 in New York City by Curtis Sliwa and has chapters in 15 countries and 144 cities around the world. Sliwa originally created the organization to combat widespread violence and crime on the New York City Subways. The organization originally trained members to make citizen’s arrests for violent crimes.