4: Under the Spotlight

There's really superheroes. How exciting is this? Peter Tangan isn't your average comic book fan. He's a photographer and you've probably seen his work. One of his main gigs is taking promo shots of Hollywood superheroes. He shot Christian Bail for the Batman Begins poster, Chris Hemsworth as Door, and

also Will Ferrell as Elf. He likes to mix it up, but sometimes living in the world of celebrities can feel a little fake, and at a certain point in his career, Peter longed to shoot something more real, and this article about real life superheroes gave him an idea. In a Ted talk he did in two thousand and fifteen, he remembers the moment, and it hits me right then and there, I say, I gotta figure out a way to make Hollywood quality movie posters out of these guys. So Peter

started reaching out to the real life superheroes. He got to know their work and shot them in glossy, big budget photos where they posed with steely expressions against a city backdrop. Inevitably, he decided to reach out to Phoenix Jones, the greatest superhero of them all. Not long after, Phoenix got a Facebook message from Peter and the two of them talked on the phone, but it didn't go well.

Peter had met a lot of real life superheroes by this point, and he was skeptical Phoenix's crime fighting approach. And he's like, what you're doing is kind of dangerous and actually maybe empathetical to the movement. You might want to like calm yourself down, you know. Plus, I highly doubt you're actually stopping as many crimes as you think. He's like, I've seen it, maybe ten crimes that have been stopped by realized superheroes maybe. And I was like, oh, okay,

well we're not friends. I don't like you. I'm not going to talk to you again. And go fund yourself. It's a wonder why none of Phoenix's old superhero buddies or friends with him anymore. Anyway, after this initial call, five months went by, and then Peter called Phoenix again, and according to Phoenix, this time he was full of praise you called me. He says, look, you need to come to California. I need to take photos and videos

and shoot you. Allegedly, Peter told Phoenix that he should sit down with the lesser real life superhero community and tell them it was time to hang up their costumes. You're trying to like bring them a place they should not go. You can go there if you want to, but he shouldn't, and you need to make that really clear because they'll all get killed. And then he bought me a plane ticket. I left two days later and

I flew down to California. Be Peter. The thing about Peter Tangan is that he's a big Hollywood guy and he lives in a big Hollywood house in the hills. He lives in the giant glass house. And I have a secret identity. So I wore my mask every single day all day. It was terrible. It's so ridiculous. It was in Vandis, California, and this glass house on the side of a creaking cliff looks like the Iron Man House.

Literally every wall is a wucking window, Like, why would you invite a superhero a secret identity to a place where every wall is a bucking window. It was trash. I slept in my mask. It was just horrible. As horrible as it was, it actually turned out to be a major turning point in Phoenix Jones life. Up until then, he and his team had attracted some media coverage, but according to Phoenix, he hadn't actively sought it out, and every time media would call me, I be like, no,

I don't want to talk to you. And he was like, no one knows what you're doing, who you are, what you stand for me. He's like, and everyone wants to talk to you, so just go out tell him what you mean, what you plan on doing. No one's gonna get mad at you for telling what you're doing. He's like, you're doing the dangerous work anyway, you might as well protect yourself. Phoenix agreed to the photo shoot. In the photos, he stands in a rain soaked street, fully costumed and

glares down at the camera. He'd look a lot like Batman if it weren't for the gold chevron across his chest, which glows with an unearthly yellow light. When the pictures were released, Peter's phone started ringing off the hook. Phoenix wasn't just a local news curiosity anymore. People around the country wanted to know who this mysterious crime fighter was. Peter fielded so many calls for Phoenix that he ended

up becoming his semi official spokesperson. Peter is actually how I got in touch with Phoenix in the first place, and Phoenix was going to need his pr rep. The photo shoot catapulted him to a new level of fame. Phoenix's knack for grabbing people's attention is one of his greatest assets, but it's also maybe his greatest weakness. From the team's at Novel and I Heart Radio, This is

the Superhero Complex, Episode four, Under the Spotlight. After the Peter Tangan photo shoot, journalists wanted to fly to Seattle and meet the famous Phoenix Jones. One of those journalists was the writer and broadcaster John Ronson. John and Phoenix hooked up for a piece that John was writing for g Q. John had flown over from England, and according to Phoenix, the idea had been to try and uncover a sex trafficking ring, but when they finally tracked down

some sex workers, things didn't go as planned. We couldn't find anything right because none of them said they were trafficked, which was a giant bust. And so instead I went on patrol with John Ronson and took down thirty armed crack dealers, you know, by myself. Phoenix and some of the other members of the rain City Crew had taken John on a patrol of the city. Instead, nothing was happening. He couldn't find any crimes to thwart, and so he pulled out the big guns. That's John. He told me

that they headed to the Belltown neighborhood. It was a sketchy pass of town tact three in the morning. There was about five or six different groups of track dealers on different street corners, and farious bires going between them. Phoenix described a fairly intimidating scene. See, I was an open cary state. Dudes walk around their guns out, They stand on the corner right and when people come out of the club, they strong armed them for money to

get their car out of parking. Lots thirty dudes with open carried weapons in a parking lot. This was clearly a dangerous situation, but John wasn't sure that the superhero's presence made things safer. The crack dealers all unified in saying, what the fuck do you think you're doing here with your superhero outfits? And one of them said this may be funning games for you, but this isn't funny games

for us. This is how we feed our families. And then one of them said, if you don't get off our block, we're going to show you what the Bernard does. And they had a point like what the funk were we doing trying to break the back player whose business was of ours? I mean, I'm saying ours? What I really made his phoenix is the way Phoenix tells it. This was a heroic standoff. I look a ghost and I said, ghost man, there's a good chance we're gonna die here, bro, are you? Are you good? Ghost is

like yep? And I looked at Jack and Jack's like, you're stupid, Jones. This is like a movie, you know. I looked at a caballero and Cabby's like, oh, I already called the car man, He's like, I hope they don't should have the cops get you. I hadn't call the cops, but John told me the danger really did seem genuine. They came back to us and they said, you are stupid motherfucker's Do you know that? Do you know that you were stupid? Motherfucker's We should shoot you.

And I've got to say at this point, I was terrified. They showed us the shape of a gun and the sweatpants. They were clearly coming up with a justification to commit an active violence against Phoenix. And they said, we should shoot you, but if you refuse to leave, I guess we're going to have to go home. And they did. They all went home, and so Phoenix one. When Phoenix told me the story, he didn't paint John in a

very favorable light. John Ronson hailed a cab and they got in the cab and told the cab to wait and was hiding in the cab and then he wanted to come back up control with us and we're like, no, you're hit in the cab. Bro like you're crazy, Like you can come back out with us? And how did a cab with a card Again, when I asked John about it. He told me he wasn't in the taxi, but he did try to hail one down. They all

had bullet proofess the superheroes, and I had nothing. I had a T shirt in the cardigan, so I was close to the cab so I could like escape for hat too, but also close to Phoenix so I could hear what they were saying so I could write it all down. But if Phoenix says that he didn't let me patrol with him the next day because I had

hailed a cab, that's not true. Phoenix was thrilled that I was there, and in fact, when I got back to the hotel like six in the morning or whatever, the first thing Phoenix did was like phone me to talk excitedly about what had just happened, and he was like hyper ventilating down the phone. That's not someone who was so annoyed with a journalist that they didn't want

them to patrol with them the next day. And the only reason why there was no patrol the next day was because Phoenix was doing a personal appearance at a comic book convention in town, and I don't think he did any patrolling that night. So the cab was true. The rest of it was not true. There really relationship was not exactly smooth sailing. But John doesn't hold a grudge. On a personal level, I liked Phoenix very much. He was my favorite of all the superheroes that I met.

He was charming, charismatic, fun odd in a kind of engaging way. I'd say the most negative thing I would say about Phoenix is that he had an odd relationship with crime fighting. It was clear that he was kind of addicted to it. It felt like there was an addiction there that he couldn't find any crimph to thwart. He was getting more and more frustrated. It's like he needs a cigarette and he can't find one. But during his time with Phoenix, John got a sense that crime

fighting wasn't the only thing he cared about. I think got our first night, we heard a woman screaming and Phoenix was like yacht Sie, running towards the Saga's family had someone in distress he could save, and that as he was running towards the sound of the woman screaming, this cop pulled up and these guys spot down the

window and it's the guy from YouTube. Can we get a picture with you and fix It's like sure, so you like stopped and took a picture with these guys and from the time they were satisfied, so that the screaming woman was nowhere to be seen ahead. According to Phoenix, his relationship with fame is practical. It's what keeps him from getting arrested or worse, and that protection is all the more important if, like Phoenix, you're trying to do

superhero work as a person of color. I'm a black guy in body armor running down the street punching white people. I need some media coverage. So what does that look like to you? Like, what's your strategy? Like what do you hope to get out of being covered with the media like that kind of stuff, not being arrested. I think what people don't know is that, um, especially currently right,

there are two different Americas. Being a six ft tall black dude in body armor running up to people who have been previously assaulted in the streets is not a solid look. People don't approach it the way that you think that they would. But yeah, but when they see Phoenix Jones, they see the symbol, the one that I set up, the one they're aware of. They know what my mission statement is they know why I'm there, and it puts them as much at ease as a costume vigilante.

Can you know, as I shouldn't use that word as a costume crime prevention specialist. That's what my attorneys told me to use. Phoenix always has an answer for everything. He always manages to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he is right and everyone else is wrong. When I spoke to Phoenix's former team members, they all brought up his relationship with publicity. Here's El Caballero. A

lot of it. I felt like Jones's heart was for protecting people, but then there was also this part that I saw was actually his ultimate self at that time, which was publicity. Midnight Jack told me that the rain City Superheroes initially started out courting the media for strategic reasons. It was a way to get a lot of attention on crime trends, to call attention to problem areas the police were not enforcing. But as things blew up that changed.

Ben was so hooked on the attention on the media following and the celebrity status and things like that that it was a problem. So then he started having us fucking not not necessarily fake footage, but kind of stage ship. When we talked about his relationship with the cameras, Phoenix never admitted to staging patrol videos, but it was an

accusation I kept hearing. Cabby told me once that you guys were doing some media interview and you started making stuff up, and he was like, too, that didn't happen, and you leaned over and he said, hey, man, the history is told by the victors, you know. Oh no, I didn't. I leaned over and I said history has written by the winners, So you were just making stuff up. Phoenix even clarified for me the story Cabby had been talking about was when the rain City Superheroes were on

Good Morning America. They're like, what's your biggest crime you ever stopped? And I was like, Arson, can you give some details? Like I can't give details. Phoenix couldn't give any details because there was no Arson, Like, we didn't have a lot of credentials at that moment, but we're I'm good going in America and we're about to go on TV. And I was like, fuck it, yeah, straight up,

and I don't feel bad about it. I wouldn't take it back, and I would do it again if you admittedly just like make stuff up to the media, like, how do I know what you're saying is true? It wasn't admittedly making that hold on. If there's a way for me to tell a story that makes it sound better and doesn't change the core facts that are on a police report, I will probably do that to Phoenix is just giving the world when it wants. I don't want to do interviews. I don't want to talk to

these people. I don't like you. I want to stop bad people from doing bad things, and I want to make people do it themselves and understand it. But the government and the world we live in would not let me. So I gave you what you wanted. You wanted a superhero, because that's what you think what I was doing was, So I gave you a superhero check. But no point in any of this was this my like idea or goal. It's these types of statements from Phoenix that I have

a hard time believing. But I wouldn't necessarily say that Phoenix is lying when he says them. I think he probably believes them to be true. And it's certainly true that as a black man trying to fight crime on the streets of America. The publicity provides him with a level of protection that any of his former team members who were white might not have needed. But I find his unwillingness to admit that he enjoyed being a celebrity

as a kind of dishonesty for what it's worth. I think Phoenix liked all the attention, and not just because it made it easier for him to catch criminals. But one thing does ring true and what Phoenix is saying here, he spends his whole life attempting to live up to a particular ideal of a superhero, and that's a lot of pressure, and not everyone has the same idea of what a superhero is. When those interpretations clashed, things got messy. That's coming up O. Well, Phoenix Jones was making the

most of his newfound celebrity. One of his many appearances got the attention of Seadellite Crystal Marks. That's her real name, by the way, So she was kind of born with a brilliant superhero alias. I've grown up in love with superheroes my entire life. My dad was a huge NERD into D and D. He was in the Navy where they played D and D all the time, and he got a friend of his to actually get my name worked into a Superman comic book. I thought that was

the coolest thing. So when I heard that someone was dressing up like one and doing something that a superhero would do, it was irresistible. When Crystal saw the news coverage of Phoenix Jones and his crew, she was immediately captivated. Late one night, she set out to see what Phoenix was really about. I ended up kind of stalking his team. The rain City superhero moved went through the streets of Seattle, watching them break up fights. Crystal didn't want the rain

City Superheroes to see her. I threw my hair upon a ponytail, and I wore a hat and sunglasses at night in the middle of Belltown in Seattle. It was not the wisest choice. She hid behind street corners and counted thirty seconds before creeping along behind the superheroes. I realized, like, Wow, anyone can do this, that's really cool. But I wasn't seeing the things happening that mattered to me. Homeless outreach. As a kid growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, Crystal had

some rough patches in her childhood. When I was eight years old, my biological mom and I were kicked out of my grandmother's house and we were homeless. We had nowhere to go, living in our car, we lived under a bridge, living on my mom's friends couches, and we did that for a little over six months, and that stuck with me. I was homeless as a kid, and I wanted to see people reached out to in a compassionate way. For Crystal, Phoenix's team didn't seem like the

heroes she'd been looking for. I was like, do we need to just be breaking up drunk fights? Can we be doing more? So she started looking for alternatives. It turned out Phoenix's Crew weren't the only superheroes in town. Crystal ended up joining another group called the Washington Initiative. They started out by patrolling around Belltown, that's Phoenix's turf.

It was a little bit of a not so friendly competition, but we realized very quickly after the first couple of patrols, where we were just seeing people stumbling to their cars, we weren't really making a difference. So our team, the Washington Initiatives, switched over to more homeless outreach Phoenix did not take kindly to his fellow crime fighters. Evocatus soft

Phoenix's reaction firsthand. He would get in very animated, all screeching, yelling matches about how other teams are just trying to copy us or trying to draw his Facebook likes and his fans his words away from him and ticket for their own, which didn't make a lot of sense or mean anything to me. He felt incredibly threatened by anyone else that would try to do this line of work in his city. Phoenix used his social media to rail against his new enemies. It was this feud online. If

I do this better, No, I do this better. Phoenix Jones was constantly saying, like, fine, you can say that you do homeless outreach better. I'm sure you do, but that doesn't really matter. That's not really taking care of a community as long as you acknowledge that I'm the better fighter. The feud between Phoenix and the other Seattle superheroes speaks to something I've noticed a lot in the

world of real life superheroes. There seems to be an ideological split at the heart of the community over what a superhero should actually do. Some of the real life superheroes are all about action. They want to take down criminals and stop violent crime. But there are a lot like Crystal who see real superhero work as the humanitarian stuff like homeless outreach. They are interested in getting into fights. In fact, they see the flashy, action packed crime fighting

is reckless, irresponsible. Personally, I don't understand why these two models can't co exist peacefully, but then I'm not Phoenix Jones. Among the rest of Phoenix's crew, the reaction to their superhero arrivals was mixed. Midnight Jack was more action oriented. He was all about dousing people with flour and pepper spray.

Crystal didn't think much of his tactics though. Midnight Jack as someone out on patrol, he's just not right, Like there were plenty of time so I've heard of things where he had like a flash grenade or like a smoke bomb or something, and he would set it off on accident, Like you don't carry equipment that you don't know how to use. On the flip side, Jack thought the other groups like the Washington Initiative or nothing but attention seekers for whatever reason, they don't feel secure in

themselves or maybe they hate their job. They hate how their life turned out, and so they're gonna go and dress up like Spider Man and run around take selfies and should lie down. I seen another crew kick a homeless dude awake to give him a water bottle so they could take a selfie of it, you know what

I mean, Like, I watched that happen. At the other end of the rain City Superhero spectrum, Evo had been getting tired of the media circus around Phoenix and of the constant need to seek out drama in the streets. He felt inspired by his group's new costumed rivals. Holy shit, these guys are really professional. They're on top of this. This is very different from what's been going on on our team, where it's all about the Facebook likes and

it's all about how many followers do you have. Eva reached out to the Washington Initiative and struck up a relationship. At one point, he met Crystal Marks for coffee. Phoenix fell two pieces over it, and he he wanted to pat me down to make sure I didn't have any bugs or microchips planted on me, because their entire existences around spying on Phoenix. According to him, despite Phoenix's paranoia. Eva was undeterred and he and Crystal hit it off.

In fact, a couple of years later their relationship turned to more than a superhero collaboration. You know, her hands would brush on on a patrol and like, and then he and I started dating and we got married. These days, Crystal isn't involved in the superhero movement, but she is still a public servant from She was the deputy mayor of Burian, a city just south of Seattle, and when she campaigned for office, she did not hide her past

as a real life superhero. It took me sitting down with my husband and saying, like, does this actually translate? Does this type of real world experience of breaking up fights, doing homeless outreach, does that actually translate into public office? And he helped me list out all the ways that it did, leading groups, making decisions, strategic planning, all of

this stuff. And so I ran in seen. I took out the incumbent in the primary with five people in the race, and then I came in first in the general and I became deputy mayor two years into my arm. When I interviewed Phoenix, this was one of the parts of his story. I was was interested in asking him about I'd heard stories of him referring to people like crystal marks with a derogatory term. It's a story I'd

heard from a lot of people who knew him. Apparently, Phoenix called the heroes who focused on homeless outreach real life sandwich handlers. That seemed to be one of the centers of beef around certain members of the rainsyt Haris was that, like you were like, if you want to help people, like giving them a food, like you can't be on my team anymore. That's not what I said,

say what happened. Like, for sure, if you want to take our main focus and make it humanitarian aid, then you should find another team, because we do humanitarian aid for sure. But the concept is stopping crime. No point in feeding people if the food you feed them gets robbed at their house. It's that simple. I've never seen a comic book with who runs around feeding people cheeseburgers, except for the handblurger cartoons that I got from the

McDonald's in Like the Nights. We just have different concepts apparently, of like what fighting crime is. You can definitely hand out food. You should definitely do that. There's nothing wrong with that, you don't need to wear an outfit for that at all. Actually wearing an outfit to hand out food to regular ass homeless people makes you an asshole.

Why why is that? Because you're showing up and saying, you guys are so disadvantaged to look at me and my giant suit handing you sandwiches that I made in my own house. I mean, it's absurd. I think showing up in a suit and saying, hey, I put on this armor to protect you guys because I care about you being stuck out here makes way more sense than to me saying, hey, here's a fucking cheeseburger. By the way,

look at my outfit. Amazing, insane, It's just incredible. It's like the disconnect between that in fighting crime is mind blowing to me. I don't even get it. Phoenix has a very specific vision of what it means to be a superhero, and for him, anything less than active crime fighting doesn't measure up. But when you make busting criminals your goal, it isn't just the criminals you have to

watch out for. Phoenix's daredevil crime stopping approach brought him onto the radar of a powerful To me, the Seattle Police Department. That's coming up For a while. At least, it seemed that Phoenix Jones had managed to fulfill his dream of becoming Seattle's very own Night Wing, the superhero Phoenix had looked up to as a kid. Things weren't always perfect in the rain City superhero movement, but for now, Phoenix was patrolling the streets several nights a week, chasing

down criminals and snapping photos with fans. But the more attention he got, the more he rankled the local authorities. The problem was that Seattle already had its own force of professional crime fighters, and they felt that Phoenix Jones was stepping on their toes. Police worry Phoenix has recently taste of fame, He pushes him to put himself in harm's way. They insert themselves into a potentially volatile situation and then they end up being victimized as well. Don't

insert yourself into those situations. If you see something called nine and one police, hope he stops before it's too late. A pattern began to emerge. Phoenix and his crew would make the news for their latest active costumed heroism, and the Seattle Police Department would issue an increasingly exasperated statement to the effect of, thanks, but you can leave the

crime fighting to us. I didn't know anybody who actually thought it was a good idea for then to put themselves in harm's way, put on these outfits, if you will, and make themselves a target for others. Carmen Best was the chief of the Seattle Police Department from two thousand and eighteen to two thousand and twenty. She was the

first black woman to lead the force. But before Carmen became chief, she held a lot of different roles, and she was there during the height of the Seattle superhero movement. While you truly respect what they were trying to do, I was very concerned one for their safety and two for their full motive, because we really discourage as profession

people doing what we would view as a vigilanteism. Carmen told me that the police department had been watching the superheroes out on patrol and making their TV appearances with growing concern. They don't have all the same protections that a law enforcement officer who's sworn in, who's had the training that we have in place. There was an instance when one of them was injured pretty significantly and was stabbed. You know, we definitely were coutuming them when that occurred.

You know, it was our you know, our worst fears realized in that situation and also intervening in the manner that they did, they put themselves in some legal jeopardy as well. Carmen didn't know which would be superhero was in this instance, but Phoenix claims he's been stabbed on patrol more than once and she definitely remembers him. Of course, his name came up. He did the most amount of interviews and was pretty extroverted, if you will, and how

he approached this whole thing. In my opinion, I think the opinion of many within the police department, this seemed a little bit like fantasy work, you know, putting on a uniform or an outfit, because you're actually not a superhero. You're a person who's intervening and what can ostensibly be some pretty dangerous situations, and you can interfere in such a way that causes harm to you, not only yourself, but to the person you're trying to assist as well.

So we were very concerned about it. I understand this argument, and I think it applies to a lot of people in the real life superhero community. But I also think that this is one of the areas where Phoenix does have a point. He's not the type of Yahoo who simply put on a costume and jumped into this job without thinking about it. He actually put in the time to train. I can't imagine being a cop and not having these certain skills. You know. It's not like going

lifting weights. It's like running and training my knife disarms like I have. I do Wednesday knife disarms, right, I do Saturday hand to hand combat like that all the time, always. And he isn't only prepared for physical altercations. He also has clearly spent time studying the laws around what he can and can't do when fighting crime. Oh I don't hire a lawyer anymore because I know all this stuff. I mean, you can see I know all of the laws.

The hard part for me is filling out the paperwork appropriately. I've won them all, just be clear, every single one of them I've won, except for one I consider a win, but technically it was not. It was like a no contest. The guy just didn't show up. But I mean that's still kind of a win. A lot of the media reports and statements from the Seattle Police around two thousand and eleven seemed to speak to an underlying worry that Phoenix might use excessive force in his crime fighting or

that he wasn't accountable for his behavior. But those are the same accusations that the US Department of Justice made about the Seattle Police Department in the same year. The d j's Civil Rights Division receive the letter in two thousand and ten from the Washington a c l U and thirty four other civil rights and community based organizations. The letter requested an investigation into multiple incidents of excessive force by the Seattle Police Department, particularly force used against

persons of color. The d o J launched an investigation, and their report found that the SPD were engaging in a pattern or practice of unnecessary or excessive force, and that the chain of command does not properly investigate, analyze, or demand accountability from its subordinate officers for their uses of force. They also found serious concerns about biased policing.

To date, in April, the Seattle Police are still under federal oversight as a result of that report, though a lot of activists in the city think their reforms haven't gone far enough. It's also a reminder of what Phoenix was talking about earlier, of the additional risk that he faces because he's trying to fight crime as a black man. Phoenix talks about crime fighting like it's his whole reason

for being. It's intense, but it's also not unique. A lot of people are drawn to this line of work, but very few of them grind the nipples off a batman outfit and go around hiding trampolines and alleys. I feel like a lot of people like the more traditional path for someone who had those ideals about fighting crime would be to just join the police force. I'm curious why that was not appealing to you, because I want to help people, and you don't see the police as

being helpful. The police are very very helpful in certain situations when they understand it, and the right day, when you catch the right officer and you happen to have an open in chet situation. But that's not what I consider policing. Where police really shine is investigating crimes that have already taken place. But that is not justice to me.

That's legalized retribution. I think if you're a police officer or a crime fighter, your job is intervened between the incident and the person at the moment of that incident, not to investigate afterwards, like investigating afterwards is what you've done when a plan fails. Talking to Phoenix, the biggest beef he seemed to have with the cops was that he thinks they aren't effective at stopping crime. But Phoenix saw that as an opportunity, a gap the cops weren't

able to fill, but a superhero might. Cabby also saw the rain City Superheroes as a way of making up for the police's ineffectiveness. They show up after a crime has happened, and a lot of things happened in between when a crime is happening and when law enforcement actually arrives or medical services arrived to actually deal with the problem. That in between space was where the rain City Superheroes

saw work to be done. But even at their most intrepid, they always got law enforcement involved, despite their own bivalent relationship with the cops. In fact, on their patrols, Evil told me there was even a role dedicated to police liaison. I started being all one, which means if we saw an actual crime happen, we would call Seattle Police, right away. That was like step one was called them always know

where we're at, the street corners and the intersections. You know exactly where we're at so we can report it. But when the police did show up, things could get tense. Cabby told me a story about a patrol when things went south. We rolled up in Belltown and saw this guy harassing this man and woman who were a mixed race couple, and instantly we knew, like we felt like this guy was racist, like trying to attack this couple.

According to Cabby, one of the other rain City superheroes, Captain Karma, approached the man and told him to leave the couple alone. And this guy, like Butterfly, kicked him running the chest and threw him out in the street, and I was like what the Cabby says, he ran over and pin the guy in a wrestling hold until the police finally arrived. They pull up and they pull out their guns. They're like, let him go, let him go. We're like, we want to press charges. This guy just

attacked a couple with their baby. We think he's a racist or whatever. Like they're like let him go, and like this guy's violent and they're like let him go. So the rain City Superheroes did what they were told, and they let the guy go. When he runs up and he punches the cop in the face. So then all of a sudden, the cops, who have their weapons drawn, are wrestling with this guy and the guns are pointing around like to all these different people, putting everyone's life

in danger. And so I grabbed the guy again. Cabby claims he broke the guy's wrist. The police demanded that the superheroes unmasked and hand over their footage, which they agreed to, but then the police let the guy they had just subdued go free. I'm like, nope, I want to press charges. Sorry, we can't press charges against him, Like why is that? Because that's crazy, and they're like

diplomatic community, he's from the Russian embassy. So they ended up letting him fucking go pardon my language, and we're there looking like dumbasses like guess, I don't know, sitting there with their mass of like hands on the hood, like we were criminals Russian diplomats. Aside, there are a lot of videos that showcase the dysfunctional relationship Phoenix and his crew had with the Seattle police and Phoenix became

increasingly vocal online with his criticisms of the cops. Let's make sure I understand this guy assaults person, the guy walks away clean and free. Nothing happens. Police won't take my statement, won't take my paperwork. I am pretty piste off right now. Phoenix had a couple of favorite targets to beef with. Seattle has lost its mind when it comes to what a real crime is. Has lost its mind, and part of that is Pete Holmes and his inability to do his job. Phoenix is talking about former Seattle

City Attorney Pete Holmes. Me and Pete Holmes have a history of hatting each other. To the distric attorney of Seattle is a complete joke because trash trash from Holmes was in charge of all misdemeanor prosecutions in Seattle. He has sandy gray hair parted at the side and glasses, and he embraced a lot of left leaning policies when he was in office. He declined to be interviewed for this series, but he's gone on record multiple times telling

Phoenix to stand down. Holmes once said to the press quote, Mr. Photor is no hero, just a deeply misguided individual. He also argued that Phoenix couldn't rely on Seattle's Good Samaritan laws to protect him. He said, quote, our state's Good Samaritan statutes are designed to protect individuals who happened upon, rather than actively seek out opportunities to render assistance to others.

These laws are not designed to protect a branded, costumed character, his roving video crew, or their copyrighted videos from the reach of torte plaintiffs. It's not surprising that Phoenix and Pete Holmes kept butting heads the first couple of times.

The first like ten or twelve times, it was just me pleading with him to actually charge the criminals and him explaining to me how I'm not a police officer, and me being like, yeah, no, ship idiot, I don't need to be a police officer, and him saying, well, it draws a weird precedents. No, which draws a president is a guy running around a rubber suit and actually finding crime that draws a precedence. Maybe should do your job.

Throughout things were getting increasingly tense between Phoenix and Seattle's law enforcement, and while his fellow superheroes didn't necessarily disagree with him, they worried that Phoenix's outspokenness would provoke a backlash. Jones really instigated the hatred of SPD. That's Cabby. He was just always like an interviews anything, He's like, cops, if they would do their job, blah blah. I was like, dude, I mean, that's not really how it is. He's a

total dick to them, which I understand. A young black dude, I get it, And I'm not an apologist for law enforcement. Basically, people call and they show up afterwards. It's like trash collectors. It was like, you deal with it afterwards. But at the same time, we got all put under the whole blanket. Oh, these guys think they're vigilantes. They're taking the low their

own hands. It's like, no, we're not. In the early hours of October nine, two thousand eleven, Phoenix was out in downtown Seattle patrolling with Ghost, a videographer named Ryan McNamee, and the journalist t Krulos. And we met back in episode one. It had been a long night and Phoenix was nearly ready to wrap things up. Then he says one of his crew spotted a fight outside of bar. Phoenix looked out and I take off running towards because I could see these eyes are kicking this person on

the ground, just beating him up. When they're kicking each other, punching each other, that's tea pushing each other down the street. Phoenix ran at full tilt and leapt into the middle of it. I'm like, breaking up, fight, breaks up, everything's cool. Then they start yelling about getting a gun and all kinds of other stuff. They take up to their car. They try to chase me around. The guy chased me comes at me, so I just spotted with pepper spray.

No big deal. He pepper sprays them, and the pepper spray dissipated into the air and everyone was coughing and rubbing their eyes. In the midst of this chaos, a woman started attacking Phoenix with her shoes. I have body armors, all, okay, but I started and then she fell on her face. The minute she fell, those dudes went crazy and he started coming back at us. It all sort of grouped together, and then they rushed us. What Jesus and attacked us. I actually got punched in the face, and I was like,

don't don't punch me. We were in a very kayak situation. I was genuinely very afraid for my safety. Seriously, your camera put your camera camera is up. At one point it looked like they might be looking for a gun. Phoenix pulled out his trusty pepper spray again and gave the attackers another dose. Ghost got kicked and fell over our trash can busted his finger up. I have hand surgery from how bad you are its hand. We're not. They started throwing rocks at us and then tried to

run us over with a car. Finally the cops showed up, and they were pissed. The first thing this officer said was Phoenix Jones, I'm tired of playing these games with you, man, I'm tired of this game. We're about this rest the whole bunch of year clean. According to both Tea and Phoenix, the police officers were not interested in hearing what Phoenix had to say. They wouldn't look at our video, they wouldn't listen to us. They're like, we've had enough, you stupid.

You've already pupiseday three people today, which is true, but you arrested the other two. Like maybe you don't understand how this works, you know, And then your cop was saying stuff about like, you're not a police officer, you don't have any authority. You guys are really arrogant that you can make a difference, and I was like, yeah, it's crazy to think you can get into a car, drive to a crime and make a difference, right, douche. The cops arrested Phoenix and took them away in their car.

The people who Phoenix said had been fighting would let go, and the other Rain City superheroes melted into the night. He was left standing on the street corner alone, and that's when I looked down at my hands, and I saw that my hands were shaking from the adrenaline of what had just happened. I've always liked Phoenix personally, and I think that he's done some good things for the city of Seattle. But it made me realize that the

real life superhero thing could be really dangerous. And in that circumstance, I think that his intention was to help save people because he saw people fighting, but that's his interaction made the situation a lot worse. The pepper spray made everyone angry, and it turned the scene into total chaos. The tables had turned on Seattle's comic book crusader. This time it was Phoenix who ended up behind bars. Phoenix Jones was arrested by saddle P d on suspicion of assault.

Officers st Jones told them he spotted two men fighting, but could not explain why four people, including two women, got pepper spray. Pepper sprayed priest reports of citizens being pepper sprayed by Jones and his group pepper Spray, No big deal, pepper sprayed made everyone angry. The officer wrote that Jones had a history of injecting himself in these incidents. No deal. Everyone was coughing and rubbing their eyes, and

deal turned the scene into total chaos. Jones has been advised to observe and report incidents to only smokes that man. I bet this never happens to you. What's a superhero to do when his back is against the wall. That's coming up on The Superhero Complex. The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by Me, David Weinberg and reported by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Shortland and Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are

executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision

by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed by Paul Housden and special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso, Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shenkman, and all the team at U t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio m