The current immigration boom is feeding new crime problems, the Guardian Angels’ founder, Curtis “the Rock” Sliwa, said, and the civilian patrol group has responded by moving to neighborhoods that have two of the city’s largest immigrant communities.

“Gangs recognize that the easy victims now are immigrants, whether legal or illegal. Rob them, beat them, hit them upside of the heads. They won’t go to the cops, and if they go to the cops most of the time they don’t speak Spanish and just send them on their way,” Mr. Sliwa, who is co-host of a popular morning radio show on WABC, said. “With Guardian Angels on patrol you’re not going to get away with that.”

The Guardian Angels, famous for its red berets askew and matching shiny jackets, packed up their Times Square headquarters January 1 and relocated to Washington Heights and Sunset Park.

“Now, instead of our members having to take a train to Times Square, which is saturated with police and security anyway, we’re right in the belly of the beast,” the senior director of the Angels, Arnaldo “13” Salinas, said. Both men said another incentive is rent at the new chapters, which are to serve as headquarters for patrols in all five boroughs, is a lot cheaper than the $8,000 a month the group was paying at Times Square.

The New York Police Department rejected Mr. Sliwa’s picture of a force not responding adequately to immigrants, and the department’s CompStat figures show decreasing rates of major crime in those neighborhoods. Compared to a decade ago, in Washington Heights the number of major crimes reported has declined by more than 60% in the 33rd Precinct and about 80% in the 34th Precinct, and in Sunset Park’s 72nd Precinct it has declined by about 60%.

A spokesman for the department, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, said gang membership is relatively small in New York and the department has no shortage of bilingual officers.

“The NYPD has over 10,000 bilingual officers, more foreign-language speakers than the LAPD has cops,” Mr. Browne said in a statement, referring to the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Browne said that Spanish and Italian are the most common languages and that 450 officers speak one or more of an additional 35 languages, such as Farsi, Urdu, Fujianese, and Arabic. “We have an abundance of foreign-language speakers,” he said.

Still, according to Mr. Sliwa, the Guardian Angels, a nonprofit organization, can do what the NYPD cannot.

“I think they’re overwhelmed,” Mr. Sliwa said of the force. “People can’t understand the immigration surge in these areas,” Rather than a replacement to the police, the Angels say they see their role as “extra eyes and ears” or a “bridge” to the community.

“It’s almost like having an international group of translators at your beck and call,” Mr. Sliwa, who does not speak Spanish, said.

While bristling at the characterization, Mr. Browne said the NYPD has a good relationship with Mr. Sliwa and his group.

It’s a shift from when the Angels originally took to the streets – and the subways – 26 years ago. Then Mr. Sliwa, a Bronx McDonald’s manager who said civilians needed to take back a city on the brink, began a volunteer group of civilian patrollers. City leaders warned they could turn into vigilantes, particularly as the group quickly grew to its peak in the early 1980s, when it claimed more than 900 members in New York City.

More recently, Mr. Sliwa has returned to the headlines because the Gambino crime family scion, John “Junior” Gotti, is being held without bail on charges of trying to have Mr. Sliwa killed. In 1992 Mr. Sliwa called Mr. Gotti “Public Enemy No. 1” on his radio program.

The Angels’ move from Times Square reverses a centralizing that took place more than 15 years ago, when chapters throughout the city were consolidated at the central office in Manhattan. While numbers have decreased in New York to about 175 volunteer members today, the group has spread internationally and in other cities across America from Weldon, N.C., to Honolulu. The Angels now boasts more than 60 chapters throughout the world, including 26 in Japan alone.

The demographics of today’s New York City Guardian Angels also appear to be a factor in the move to Washington Heights, which has a very large Dominican immigrant community, and Sunset Park, which is largely Mexican.

“We seem to attract Hispanics more often than any other race or ethnicity,” the group’s senior director, Mr. Salinas, said. “And with the growing number of Hispanics, there are many that want to something for their community and to do belong. We’re very high-profile. You’ve got to be Helen Keller not to see us in our red berets and bright red jackets. When they see we speak Spanish, they want to know more.”

In December 2003 the group launched its first new New York City chapter in more than 15 years in Corona, Queens. There, a member of the state Assembly, Jose Peralta, said an exploding immigrant population and new Latino gangs had overwhelmed the police and requested that the Guardian Angels come in. The new chapter was short-lived, however, and now the neighborhood has only visits by an Angels patrol. In the past year, the number of reported crimes in the neighborhood has dropped, but the local City Council member, Hiram Monserrate, a former police officer, attributes the shift not to the Angels but to the NYPD’s increased presence there.

“To be honest with you I don’t think I’ve seen much presence at all from the Guardian Angels with respect to patrolling,” Mr. Monserrate said. “I believe that the Guardian Angels have good intentions, and any time the community is involved in making the neighborhood safer it’s a good thing, but I would never be in a position to speak of the Guardian Angels as a replacement to the need for police resources and presence.”