Angels Night

## Angels' Night, an Ares corporate holiday

Angels’ Night is an Ares  corporate holiday celebrated the evening before Halloween in communities with a strong Ares presence. Celebrations are generally sponsored and organized by the local Ares offices’ community liaisons as a brand-building and public relations exercise.

Angels’ Night has its origins in the midwestern tradition of “Mischief Night” or “Devil’s Night”. The night before Halloween (October 30th) was traditionally a night of pranks and mischief in much of the Midwest and some of the northeastern United States, but in Detroit , it was referred to as Devil's Night and was a tradition almost as long as the city has existed.

An old Irish holiday, in the United States, the holiday morphed into a night of soaping windows and toilet-papering trees. In other words, October 30th was the “trick” to Halloween’s “treat” and gave suburban kids a night of rebellion and anarchy. By the last quarter of the twentieth century the vandalism had escalated to more destructive acts such as arson. The crimes became more destructive in Detroit's inner-city neighborhoods, and included hundreds of acts of arson and vandalism every year. The destruction reached a peak in the mid- to late-1980s, with more than 800 fires set in 1984, and 500 to 800 fires in the three days and nights before Halloween in a typical year.

Devil's Night arson in Detroit had not declined by the early 1990s. After a brutal Devil's Night in 1994, then-mayor Dennis Archer promised city residents arson would not be tolerated. In 1995, Detroit city officials organized and created Angels' Night on and around October 29–31. Each year as many as 50,000 volunteers gather to patrol neighborhoods in the city. Many volunteers kept a high profile, patrolling neighborhoods with magnetic-mount flashing amber beacons on their personal vehicles, along with communicating with command centers via CB radios or by cellular phones to report any suspicious activity. Incidences of arson and other crimes declined, a success largely attributed to the Angels' Night volunteers.  As a result of the efforts, fires plunged to near-ordinary levels in the first decade of the 21st century.

Other city initiatives included a strict curfew of 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. for 15- and 16-year-old children and a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for 17-year-olds not accompanied by a legal guardian over the age of 18. Additionally, many firehouses and police stations began hosting Angel Night events to help distract visitors from causing mischief.

When Ares rose to become the premier megacorp in Detroit, taking vast swaths of the city into its extraterritoriality, it threw its support and resources behind a number of community building initiatives, including Angels’s Night.

After over half-a-century of Ares support, it has become one of the premier Ares corporate holidays, equal in importance to Damien Knight ’s birthday, celebrated wherever Ares has influence. For the corp, Angels’ Night showcases the “Ares commitment to community safety” and strengthens the public’s connection between the ideas of ‘Ares’ and ‘Security’. October 30th is a half-day for Ares’ non-security personnel and the original police and fire department Angels’ Night events have grown, with Ares support into a full celebration with various branches sponsoring activities including indoor “FlagWar” competitions for the kids, parades, product demos and shooting galleries, corporate “meet Ares” events,  and, of course, Knight Errant-led citizen patrols keep Ares-protected neighborhoods clear of troublemakers on Angels’ Night and Halloween.

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