Photo: YouTube screengrab
The self-proclaimed superhero says he dresses up to ‘root out evil that police can’t reach’.
About a month ago, a Russian vigilante wearing a Batman costume declared war on drug dealers doing business in the Khimki area outside Moscow. So far, he claims to have captured around 40 criminals.
The activist’s efforts gained public attention when a taxi driver recorded the following footage of him emerging from a drug den, dropping a small firebomb on the footpath, and then striding off into the night – cape ruffling in the breeze.
It all started at the beginning of June, when a taxi driver witnessed a man dressed as Batman entering a building that later proved to be a drug den, in the middle of the night. He told police that he soon started hearing people screaming and things being thrown around inside. The mysterious man then walked out, threw some sort of fire bomb at the ground and disappeared into the shadows. A few minutes later, law enforcement arrived at the scene, entered the building and walked out with two men in handcuffs. The witness, identified only as Slava, said the men were beat up pretty badly.
Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets started a journalistic investigation and recently announced that it is in the possession of a letter sent by the masked vigilante to police in Khimki, in which he declares his one-man war on local criminals and drug dealers. Referring to himself as “Reaper – humanity’s first superhero”, the man also asked police to help him “root out evil” by sending him tips via social media.
“You don’t know me, and it is unlikely you have heard about me,” Reaper writes in his letter. “I call myself Reaper, and for the past six months I have been struggling with the disease that has long been plaguing our society – crime. I fight drug dealers, rapists and gangs.
I don’t kill or cripple, and I am not against the police or authorities, but I do root out the evil that police and the authorities can’t reach,” Reaper adds. “Their hands are tied and they have become victims of their own colleagues and criminals. I’m not looking for glory and I’m not looking for allies or imitators. I’m just asking for some help with information.” Anyone can leave him tips about local criminals on his Twitter page, @JnecReaper.
And he told The Plaid Zebra:
“I have been wounded more than once. [But] it is foolish to fear pain or injury when you know what you are doing.”
In the letter he sent police, the “Khimki Batman” mentioned that he has so far helped capture over 40 local criminals and destroyed several drug labs. On his Twitter profile, he mentions that “this is only the beginning”.
Sources:
trueactivist.com/a-real-life-batman-exists-and-hes-stepping-up-to-fight-crime-in-russia-watch/
he is a true citizen of his country
Awesome. But I think phoenix Jones was “humanity’s first superhero”
“There’s war in Gotham City. Perhaps where crime is concerned, there always has been. But seldom this open, this rabid. A madness seeping into every stratum of criminal society. Escalating like a plague, threating to surpass even the horror that created me.”
Quoted by Batman