January 30, 2026
A New York Republican membership hosted a seminar dwelling on vigilante fantasies in one of many nation’s most secure cities.
The scene exterior a 2017 subway derailment in New York.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Photos)
On a latest freezing evening in Manhattan, visiting a historic Higher East Aspect townhouse, I plopped right into a folding chair close to a large American flag and drank Cherry Coke from a purple plastic cup as a retired FBI agent defined why he most well-liked to sit down in a restaurant close to the kitchen going through the entrance door. In line with a mailer promoting his look, the previous agent, Rob Chadwick, was right here to coach an viewers on the Metropolitan Republican Membership, one of many metropolis’s oldest conservative associations, about “the unfold of ANTIFA-style political violence from Portland to NYC.”
The latest violence in Minnesota, the place ICE officers killed two protesters in broadly filmed tragedies whose situations the federal authorities repeatedly lied about, was within the air—however largely within the summary. A Metropolitan Republican Membership official who launched Chadwick complained of “coordinated assaults” towards federal regulation enforcement in Minnesota. The advert for Chadwick’s speak promised he would handle “the escalating wave of focused political intimidation and terror.”
It seems, in accordance with the narrative favored by aged Manhattan Republicans and retired FBI brokers turned private safety gurus, that any wave of political terror that may be roiling America is usually focused at Republicans and individuals who use lethal power to defend themselves.
“Ask the ICE brokers we’ve seen on TV. Their life is over,” mentioned Chadwick, with out mentioning that a few of these brokers had the truth is killed folks—eight in the last month alone, who died both by taking pictures or whereas in immigration custody. “These are human beings who wish to go dwelling to their households.”
Chadwick held a wide range of roles with the Bureau earlier than retiring and transitioning to a profession lecturing the lay public about private safety whereas appearing as an adviser to the US Hid Carry Affiliation. (The relative strictness of New York’s gun legal guidelines was a recurrent criticism from Chadwick and viewers members.) Now he was standing at a lectern in a constructing the place conservative New York politicos had convened for many years, instructing the viewers the identical expertise he had taught members of FBI SWAT groups. “I would like you to consider tonight as your coaching,” mentioned Chadwick. It was largely about mindset, he defined—a method of growing a bias for motion when the subsequent mass shooter might be simply across the nook.
An viewers member requested about Daniel Penny, the subway vigilante who strangled Jordan Neely to demise earlier than being discovered harmless of all costs and shifting on to a profession in enterprise capital. “Nineteen months they tortured that hero,” an aged man mentioned to rumbles of settlement from the room.
Present Difficulty
One other man, leaning on a cane, described an assault he had suffered 23 years earlier, during which he had fought again. “He didn’t make it,” he mentioned. But when the attacker had survived, the questioner questioned, “may he sue me?”
There was a shared sense that the world had gotten irremediably extra harmful in recent times, particularly in New York and different massive cities. “We’ll make it by way of this,” mentioned the membership’s president earlier than Chadwick’s speak. “We’ll make it by way of Mamdani.”
“Sadly, you guys dwell in a really harmful metropolis,” mentioned Chadwick, referring what’s, by some statistical measures, the most secure massive metropolis in america, the place violent crime particularly has been on the decline for years. (Nationwide, in the meantime, homicide charges are at their lowest point in more than a century.)
Somebody requested how one can be secure on New York Metropolis’s crowded streets. “Crowds are very harmful,” mentioned Chadwick, earlier than encouraging folks to have a longtime “rally level” with mates in the event that they go to a protest or ballgame and discover they need to flee.
An aged girl requested about how one can keep secure on mass transit. “Mass transit is extraordinarily harmful,” mentioned Chadwick, the creator of a e book referred to as The Sensible Information to Private Safety, which one may order by scanning a QR code on a pill on a merch desk. He mentioned that each time he went on the subway, he walked across the subway automotive and scoped out the passengers. If he didn’t like what he noticed, he received off the prepare to catch one other one which didn’t set off his Spidey sense. He defined additional that he utilized an identical heuristic virtually each time he was in public—for instance, describing the most secure time and place to get fuel (daytime, huge fuel stations doing regular enterprise, when your tank is half full).
It was important, Chadwick repeatedly emphasised, to belief one’s instinct. Make sure you put “time and distance” between your self and a possible attacker, he mentioned. It didn’t matter should you had been being overly cautious or appeared irrational. Something may occur. “On the finish of the day the precedence must be you going dwelling to your family members,” he mentioned.
Sporting a striped blue jacket, denims, white Oxford shirt, and sneakers, Chadwick confirmed himself to be a elegant speaker, comfy on the podium, mixing horrific accounts of mass shootings (a few of which he investigated as an FBI agent) with the occasional joke. He described an America during which the “safety state of affairs” has worsened, notably since 2019. “The defund-the-police motion was devastating,” he mentioned—regardless of the truth that police budgets in most main cities have continued to spike since then.
However Chadwick insisted that, due to the burgeoning threats of their path, civilians want to arrange themselves for the worst. Though he praised native police forces, Chadwick lamented that 911 response occasions had elevated. Many individuals, he mentioned, would possibly name for assist and discover themselves on their very own. He performed a recording of a disturbing 911 name during which a dispatcher informed a girl, whose abusive ex-boyfriend was at her door, that she couldn’t ship an officer to assist. The group on the Metropolitan Republican Membership groaned. “This isn’t an remoted incident,” mentioned Chadwick. “That is occurring in every single place.”
Chadwick talked about responding as an FBI agent to the mass taking pictures at Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2017. He was struck that “no one in that room moved,” even because the shooter repeatedly reloaded. The ethical of that episode, he mentioned, was that folks wanted to consider the potential for being caught in a mass taking pictures and put together their minds to react—ideally, to flee. “It should occur to you,” Chadwick mentioned. “You will need to cease outsourcing your private safety. You will need to. It’s a silly factor to do.”
Throughout the Q&A portion, an aged man requested whether or not he may purchase a Byrna gun, a “much less deadly” firearm, in one other state after which convey it into New York Metropolis, the place they’re unlawful. He then started a second query, asking about ICE taking pictures Alex Pretti. He wasn’t aggressive, the questioner mentioned, referring to Pretti. It was the only observe of dissent in a night of practiced paranoia, and the query, which provoked some sad murmuring within the crowd, was rapidly picked up by Chadwick, who declined to reply the nonagenarian’s different question concerning the doubtlessly unlawful trafficking of less-lethal weapons.
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Chadwick didn’t cross judgment on the taking pictures of Pretti, as a substitute falling again on the 1989 Graham v Connor Supreme Court docket resolution, which helps decide authorized requirements in police shootings. “What did that officer understand fairly?” requested Chadwick. “It appears to be like tough however we’ve got to step again” and await an investigation to play out. (Not too long ago an FBI agent resigned after attempting to analyze the ICE killing of Renee Good and hitting main roadblocks throughout the company.)
The purpose was to respect authority, which was apparently infallible till somebody violated its precepts.
“Everybody we’ve seen killed on digicam over the past couple weeks can be alive in the event that they’d simply complied,” Chadwick mentioned at one level. “Any regulation enforcement interplay is harmful. Go into it considering that. Your job is to outlive it.”
The occasion ended with hearty applause and Chadwick mingling amongst admirers. I left the 83rd Road constructing, which was being guarded by two NYPD officers for the event, and received on the subway for an hour-long experience again to Brooklyn. I didn’t scope out the automotive for threats. A pair, carrying matching Air Jordans, motioned for me to take out my ear buds. They had been falling over one another a bit, possibly a bit of drunk. They mentioned one thing about my footwear—soiled Converse high-tops. It was loud and arduous to listen to, however they had been smiling. I mentioned I preferred their footwear. He mentioned I ought to get some. It was a cheerful, low-stakes alternate, the prosaic variety that helps sew collectively the threadbare communal material. I felt good about it. If I had listened to Chadwick’s recommendation, I most likely would have run away.
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