Jackson Township, NJ – Before running for political office, Chris Pollak, 41, of Jackson, used to dress up as a masked superhero complete with a cape and superhero sidekicks to patrol the streets of New York City with a megaphone, yelling at drug dealers, and confronting pimps, hookers, and others in city parks.
“It’s Weird Man” – Pollak describes his past as a superhero vigilante
Now, he’s running for political office, but his former persona as “The Dark Guardian” is catching up with him. You won’t see him boasting about his 17 years as an adult, posing as a superhero while on the campaign trail, but there are constant reminders.
A large Batman tattoo on his shoulder, a “DG” Dark Guardian tattoo, and tattoos with logos of his former superhero cosplaying groups across his body.
In an interview in March, he described his two decades as a superhero quite simply, “It’s weird man“, noting that the groups he was associated were rife with people who donned the costume for nefarious reasons. Some are convicted pedophiles, others have criminal records, and the co-founder of his “New York Ronins” superhero group was later accused of assaulting a woman, which led to a criminal restraining order against the man.
Source: Justice Unleashed: True Stories of Real-Life Vigilantes
Jackson Election and Fake Accounts Posing as Little Boys and Girls
As the November 5 municipal election approaches, Jackson Township Council candidate Chris Pollak, better known in his past life as the vigilante superhero “Dark Guardian,” finds himself at the center of a heated race overshadowed by resurfaced allegations from his time in the Real Life Superhero (RLSH) community.
Pollak, a 41-year-old martial arts instructor and former New York City street patroller, is vying for a vacant council seat against longtime resident Al Couceiro in a non-partisan contest.
Banned from social media for harassment, fake accounts of children
But old controversies, including claims that he created fake online profiles posing as underage boys and girls to engage in explicit chats and frame rivals, have ignited scrutiny just days before voters head to the polls.
His actions, in which he claims were “to catch a predator” type operations led to him being banned on all social media platforms several times, due to multiple violations of social media community guidelines.
In 2025, he launched new accounts, which were quickly deactivated by those platforms because once you are banned, it is against their terms of service to open new accounts under different names. Pollak is facing a lifetime ban from Facebook and Instagram.
Source: Dark Guardian Exposed; What you need to know. – Submission from Midnight
“I have accounts where I pose as young boys and girls,” Pollak said in a March 2025 published podcast interview with “We are Libertarians”.
Pollak’s unconventional background, he says, has been both an asset and a liability in his campaign.
Despite Pollak’s claims to have been a pedophile hunter online, the New York City Police Department and New York City Court Records do not cite a single case where a predator who Pollak lured into sex chats posing as children were arrested or charged.
Instead, Pollak said it was done for personal gratification, to ‘expose’ them. He later boasted about his exploits in a now-deleted, but archived podcast.
Pollak says former Mayor Michael Reina convinced him to run for office purely for revenge against township council
Recruited by former Mayor Michael Reina, Pollak confessed in an recent interview with NJ.com that his sole purpose on the Jackson Council is not to govern, but disrupt a council that voted against a 1,200 unit apartment complex championed by Reina, but stopped by the council.
You can read that article in its entirety here: Chris Pollak Confesses he is Running for Office at the Direction of Former Mayor Michael Reina.
Pollak entered the race after being approached to run by then-Mayor Michael Reina’s camp, he said. He was one of several potential candidates contacted by Reina, who had a frosty relationship with the council and rarely attended township meetings.
“He met with everybody who opposed the council,” Pollak said. “They wanted someone to run to beat them, and I was one of the people who would possibly do it.”
Jackson’s mayor is elected separately from the council and functions as the town’s chief executive, managing day-to-day operations and enforcing local laws. When asked why his criticism hasn’t extended to the mayor’s office, Pollak offered only a shrug.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he said.
Source: He was a vigilante ‘superhero.’ His new villain: A ‘spineless’ N.J. town council.
For 17 years, starting in the early 2000s, when he was in his mid-twenties, he donned a black costume with a red shield emblem, patrolling high-crime areas like Washington Square Park to confront drug dealers and assist the homeless.
He founded the New York Ronin group and even proposed opening a “superhero school” in 2013 to train aspiring crime-fighters, though the project never came to fruition after soliciting over $1,000 in a GoFundMe campaign.
After relocating to Jackson Township seven years ago, Pollak hung up his cape in 2017 to join the Staten Island chapter of the Guardian Angels before shifting focus to local politics.
Now a full-time scaffold maintenance technician and owner of Hybrid Combat Karate in Jackson, Pollak positions himself as an outsider reformer, criticizing what he calls a “spineless” and corrupt town council for unchecked development and lack of resident representation.
However, Pollak’s campaign has been dogged by past statements and actions resurfacing online. In a March 2025 podcast with “We Are Libertarians,” Pollak admitted to maintaining fake social media profiles where he posed as young children, claiming it was part of vigilante efforts similar to “To Catch a Predator” to expose potential threats. “I have fake profiles, like posing as little girls or boys,” he said in the interview, describing the tactic as a way to monitor and confront suspicious individuals.
Source: Dark Guardian Exposed: Reddit
Critics within the RLSH community allege Pollak misused these methods.
In 2020, he was accused of creating an Instagram account under the handle “mariaboo2323,” impersonating a 13-year-old girl complete with provocative photos, to target and frame the author of *Superhero University*, a book chronicling the RLSH world. According to reports, Pollak aimed to lure the author into incriminating conversations to discredit him as a pedophile, stemming from personal grudges over the book’s content.
Screenshots from RLSH forums and private messages show Pollak admitting to the impersonation, dismissing it as “harmless trolling” while facing backlash from peers who described his behavior as unstable and unethical.
The New York Initiative, a group Pollak was once affiliated with, distanced itself from him in 2020, citing his tendency to issue threats and frame innocent people.
The scheme reportedly unraveled when inconsistencies in the fake account led to its exposure, sparking a public feud across social media. Pollak has not directly addressed these specific allegations in his campaign, instead labeling critical reports as “fake news” orchestrated by political opponents.
Adding to the scrutiny, Pollak has faced platform bans for violations including hate speech and impersonation. In 2025, he was suspended from Facebook and Instagram, which he attributed to sabotage by local officials, using the incidents to bolster his anti-corruption narrative. Separate controversies include resurfaced anti-police comments from podcasts, where he advocated for decriminalizing drugs and criticized law enforcement, drawing fire in the pro-law-enforcement town.
Additionally, remarks touching on cancel culture and references to the Jewish community and the Holocaust have prompted accusations of insensitivity, though Pollak has defended himself in videos, insisting he is not anti-Semitic, despite sharing Jewish tropes of a Jewish man holding a marionette, “pulling the strings” in Jackson Township.