Superheroes Patrol NYC for Antigay Crime

By day, they’re normal New Yorkers, but for three nights a week, a group of four self-described superheroes patrols the Village in Manhattan in an effort to stop hate crimes against the gay community. Spyder, Spectre, Dark Guardian, and Zero are part of volunteer crime-prevention group Initiative Collective. They began to plan a patrol of the streets of Greenwich Village and the West Village after gay Harlem resident Mark Carson was killed in the neighborhood on May 18. “We calm down situations,” Dark Guardian said. “If there are a bunch of people banded together, [aggressive people] are less likely to become violent.”