STREET PATROLS Angels to train crime fighters

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A neighborhood crime-fighting group wants the Guardian Angels to help patrol the streets.
Westwood Concern has found free housing and office space for a start-up team from the New York-based crime-fighting group, co-founder Mary Kuhl said. A team of about five Guardian Angels is scheduled to arrive early this summer to spend three or four months in the western Cincinnati neighborhood.
They'll leave after the local chapter is officially started and residents are trained to take over.
The Guardian Angels started in the Bronx in 1979 and now have more than two dozen chapters worldwide. This would be the first in Ohio, according to the group's Web site.
The Westwood neighborhood had more than 2,000 serious crimes reported last year, but that was down 12 percent from 2002.
Cincinnati police Chief Tom Streicher said he would prefer Westwood Concern support existing local efforts.
"I don't have any control over whether or not they do it," he said. "I'm not planning to pick a fight over it. My preference would be to go with the people who are homegrown and who live in this area."
Kuhl said Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa plans to come to town next month to meet with city officials. But, she added, Westwood Concern doesn't get public money and doesn't have to get approval, either.
"We don't get our marching orders from city hall," Kuhl said. "We'd like their support, but we don't have to have it."