Arrest marks growing pains for superhero movement

Ben Fodor, cen­ter, a self-styled super­hero who goes by the name “Phoenix Jones” talks to reporters as he stands next to one of his attor­neys, Matt Hart­man, right, after Fodor appeared in court, Thurs­day, Oct. 13, 2011, in Seat­tle. Pros­e­cu­tors have not yet filed charges against Fodor after he was arrested Sun­day after police say he pep­per sprayed a group of peo­ple down­town as they left a night­club. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Asso­ci­ated Press | Ted S. Warren)

GENE JOHNSON

MANUEL VALDES

Asso­ci­ated Press

SEATTLE — Fabio Heur­ing was stand­ing out­side a Seat­tle night­club on a Sat­ur­day night and smok­ing cig­a­rettes with a friend when a man bolt­ing from a bouncer ran into them. The enraged man ripped off his shirt in the mid­dle of the street and pre­pared to give Heuring’s buddy a beating.

Just then, in swooped a bizarre sight: a self-proclaimed super­hero in a black mask and match­ing muscle-suit. He doused the aggres­sor with pep­per spray, much to Heuring’s shocked relief.

A cou­ple hours later, though, the super­hero ended up in jail for inves­ti­ga­tion of assault after using those tac­tics on another group of club­go­ers, send­ing pangs of anx­i­ety through the small, eccen­tric and mostly anony­mous com­mu­nity of masked crime-fighters across the U.S.

The comic book-inspired patrolling of city streets by “real life super-heroes” has been get­ting more pop­u­lar in recent years, thanks largely to main­stream atten­tion in movies like last year’s “Kick-Ass” and the recent HBO doc­u­men­tary “Super­heroes.” And as the ranks of the masked, caped and some­times bullet-proof-vested avengers swell, many fret that even well-intentioned vig­i­lantes risk hurt­ing them­selves, the pub­lic and the move­ment if they’re as aggres­sive as the crime-fighter in Seattle.

Some have gone so far as to pro­pose a sanc­tion­ing body to ensure that high super-hero stan­dards are maintained.

“The move­ment has grown majorly,” said Edward Stin­son, a writer from Boca Raton, Fla., who advises real-life super­heroes on a web­site devoted to the cause. “What I tell these guys is, ‘You’re no longer in the shad­ows. You’re in a new era. … Build trust. Set stan­dards. Make the real-life super­heroes work to earn that title and take some kind of oath.’”

It’s not clear how many cos­tumed vig­i­lantes there are in the U.S. The web­site www.reallifesuperheroes.org lists 660 mem­bers around the world. They range from mem­bers of the New York Ini­tia­tive in New York City and the Shadow Corp in Sag­i­naw, Mich., to a char­ac­ter named Night­bow who says he has patrolled the streets of Carlisle, Eng­land, for three years.

Some take on their fic­tional iden­ti­ties while doing char­ity work.

Ben­jamin Fodor, bet­ter known as Phoenix Jones, is the most promi­nent face of the Rain City Super­hero Move­ment, a col­lec­tion of vig­i­lantes who appeared in Seat­tle over the past year. Early on Oct. 9, about two hours after he saved Heur­ing and his buddy, the 23-year-old man charged a group of peo­ple leav­ing a down­town night­club as a video­g­ra­pher trailed him.

From the shaky cam­era work, it appeared there may have been some kind of dis­tur­bance in the group. Fodor insists he was break­ing up a fight when he hit the crowd with pep­per spray; the peo­ple who got sprayed told police there had been no fight. He was briefly booked into jail for inves­ti­ga­tion of assault, but pros­e­cu­tors haven’t charged him yet. He appeared in court last week while wear­ing his super­hero cos­tume under a button-down shirt.

“Recently there have been increased reports of cit­i­zens being pep­per sprayed by (Fodor) and his group,” the police report noted. “Although (Fodor) has been advised to observe and report inci­dents to 911, he con­tin­ues to try to resolve things on his own.”

Fodor remained unapolo­getic after the court appear­ance, say­ing he’s just like any­one else except that “I decided to make a dif­fer­ence and stop crime in my neigh­bor­hood.” He invited mem­bers of the pub­lic to join him on patrol Sat­ur­day night.

Heur­ing, a 27-year-old shut­tle dri­ver from Auburn, is a fan.

“With­out a ques­tion, there was a fight going to hap­pen,” he said. “It could have ended ugly had he not come in. He used good judg­ment in our case. He saw who was insti­gat­ing it and who he needed to defend.”

But many in the vig­i­lante com­mu­nity point to Fodor’s arrest as a water­shed moment: As more peo­ple — often, young peo­ple — fash­ion them­selves into super­heroes, they risk find­ing them­selves in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions where they wind up hurt­ing inno­cent mem­bers of the pub­lic or being shot, stabbed or beaten them­selves. Such neg­a­tive atten­tion could doom the move­ment, they say.

Stin­son, who is 40 and says he has a mil­i­tary back­ground, said that if the move­ment is to con­tinue to grow, it needs to do a bet­ter job polic­ing itself. He envi­sions a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion that would have depart­ments devoted to fundrais­ing and build­ing com­mu­nity trust and alliances. He also thinks there should be tac­ti­cal super­hero train­ing — includ­ing how to take con­trol of a volatile sit­u­a­tion and defuse it.

Film­maker Michael Bar­nett fol­lowed 50 real-life crime fight­ers for 15 months for his doc­u­men­tary “Super­heroes.” Many have great inten­tions, he said, but that doesn’t mean their meth­ods are proper.

“The police by in large appre­ci­ate an extra set of eyes, but they really, really want these guys to do it accord­ing to the law,” Bar­nett said.

Masked cru­saders began appear­ing in the 1970s with San Diego’s Cap­tain Sticky, who used his Superman-like cos­tume to fight against rental car rip-offs and for ten­ant rights, Bar­nett said. They spread through­out the coun­try in the 1980s and 1990s, and became more pop­u­lar thanks to the faster com­mu­ni­ca­tions and online sup­port com­mu­ni­ties of the Internet.

Bar­nett said he met plumbers, teach­ers, cashiers and fire­fight­ers who leave their day jobs behind every night in the name of secu­rity. Their weapons include pep­per spray, stun guns and batons. Rel­a­tively few have any com­bat train­ing or any for­mal knowl­edge of how to use their arse­nal, he said.

That con­cerns the pro­fes­sional crime-fighters.

“If peo­ple want to dress up and walk around, knock your­self out,” said Seat­tle police spokesman Mark Jamieson. “Our con­cern is when you insert your­self into these sit­u­a­tions with­out know­ing the facts, it’s just not a smart thing to do. If you think a sit­u­a­tion war­rants call­ing 911, call 911.”

Not all of the vig­i­lantes take a con­fronta­tional approach. A 53-year-old man in Moun­tain View, Calif., who calls him­self “The Eye,” keeps a low-enough pro­file that offi­cers there have never booked any­one arrested with his help.

“The only rea­son I know him is because he’s my neigh­bor,” said police spokes­woman Liz Wylie. “He’s a neigh­bor­hood watch block cap­tain, a very good one at that.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 17 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.