Rudy Giuliani's support for abortion rights is neither very deep, nor very consequential, and no other candidate can match his record, his intelligence, his strength, his tenacity, or his commitment to limited government, free markets, low, pro-growth tax policies, a strong and vigorous military, secure borders, and an aggressive, America-first foreign policy.
I like Rudy Giuliani. I hate abortion. This was the dilemma I faced when deciding for whom to vote in the upcoming Republican primary. Being a staunchly pro-life conservative Catholic, it somehow seemed wrong to vote for a candidate who has voiced his support for the legality, if not the morality, of a woman’s right to kill her unwanted child. But as I closely followed the campaign and the candidates, I came to realize that his support for abortion rights is neither very deep, nor very consequential. And in the process I reached the conclusion that Rudy Giuliani is the best man for the job of President of the United States.
Like every field of presidential hopefuls, the current crop of candidates is not perfect, but in order to advance our agenda conservatives must coalesce around whichever candidate ultimately wins the Republican nomination. Some conservatives have once again been doing their level best to split the movement apart and thus dampen conservative turnout in the upcoming general election. Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, for example, in a classic case of ‘casting the first stone,’ uncharitably judged Rudy for various events in his personal life which are, quite frankly, none of his business. Dobson vowed he “cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008.” Other conservatives have reached different conclusions: Free Congress Foundation’s Paul Weyrich left open the possibility of supporting the former Mayor (if he wins the nomination) as long as he makes certain commitments on issues such as abortion and gay-marriage. And Evangelical leader and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy for president. For my part, though I will cast my primary vote for Rudy, I will support any of the top five Republicans (and the seventh) in this race against the eventual Democrat nominee if they win the nomination.
It is crucial that we conservatives rally round the eventual nominee because the last time self-righteous ideologues such as Dobson tried to punish Republicans for their apostasy on a small number of issues was in the 2006 mid-terms, with this predictable result: It elevated Charles Rangel to Chairman of the Ways and Means committee in the House, and Chuck Schumer to the Chairmanship of the Judiciary committee in the Senate. As a result, the nomination of strict constructionist or originalist judges is at the mercy of the rabidly pro-abortion liberal Schumer and tax policy is in the hands of the leftist tax-and-spend Rangel. Nice going, guys.
Each of the Republican candidates is flawed in one way or another: Mike Huckabee is a social conservative, but an economic liberal with a dubious record on law-enforcement. John McCain is generally strong on foreign policy (his anti-water-boarding crusade being an exception), but his positions on taxes, immigration, campaign finance, and global warming, among others, are repellent to the rank and file. Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney generally support the conservative position on most issues, but the former Tennessee Senator lacks any real executive experience, while the former Massachusetts governor’s recent conversion on some of these issues smacks more of expedience than conviction. And since Ron Paul is even less willing than the top three Democrat contenders to defend American interests abroad I shudder at the possibility, however remote, that he wins the nomination. The knock on Rudy is that he is a social moderate – some would say liberal. He has and does articulate positions on some social issues that are to the left of the Republican mainstream. (I’ll explore the abortion issue in greater detail later). This has always been, in terms of Republican electoral politics, his Achilles heel, but . . .
Then Achilles Turned Toward Troy
On the morning of September 11, 2001, everything changed. Two commercial airliners loaded with Americans were hijacked by radical Islamic terrorists and, in an act of unmitigated evil and treachery, slammed into some of the most visible landmarks of American freedom. This was more than a mere terrorist attack; it was an act of war. The resultant toll in American blood was both appalling and horrific. And it only turned out to be considerably less than initial estimates seemed to suggest because of the heroic efforts of hundreds of brave and selfless patriots in the NYPD, FDNY, PAPD, the U.S. Military, and civilians both on Flight 93 and in the Pentagon and World Trade Center. These men and women, most of whose acts of selfless courage will never be known because their stories died with them, responded with singular bravery in their country’s moment of need.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Rudy Giuliani, despite the personal grief caused by the loss of a number of close friends in the collapse of the Twin Towers, provided precisely the sort of strong and inspirational leadership displayed by Winston Churchill during WWII and the sort that was painfully and glaringly lacking in Louisiana in the wake of the Katrina disaster. No one else in the presidential field has been tested in the crucible of this conflict’s front lines the way he has (Sen. McCain’s Vietnam experience notwithstanding). And Rudy, perhaps more than any other candidate in this race, understands intrinsically the existential threat posed to Western freedom by the forces of radical Islamic jihad. No one is as committed as he is to take this fight to the enemy and defeat them on their turf, and on our terms.
Leviathan in Chains
Many Republican candidates promise to govern as a conservative by reigning in the size, scope, and cost of government, but only one has actually done it; not only has Rudy Giuliani actually scaled back government, but he did it in the very belly of the beast: NYC. In a typical display of leadership and fiscal discipline, Mayor Giuliani reduced the NYC workforce by roughly 20%, the welfare rolls by 60%, balanced a city budget that was hemorrhaging cash, and elevated the city’s bond rating to a 30-year high – all while cutting taxes by 9 billion dollars. He accomplished all of this with a legislative body – the City Council – dominated by liberal Democrats. This is an example of true conservative, supply-side governance. No other candidate can match this record. And the new tax plan announced by the Giuliani campaign promises to transfer these achievements to the federal government by slashing tax rates and eliminating many unfair and counter-productive taxes. In contrast, Mike Huckabee recently defended his decision to raise taxes on Arkansans by explaining he did it to balance the state budget. And John McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts from the start. Whom should conservatives support, a man who has balanced budgets by raising taxes? A Senator who has never managed a large budget and opposes tax cuts? Or should we support a seasoned executive who has slashed taxes while balancing a massive budget?
Broken Windows, Broken Records
Upon taking office as mayor in 1994, Rudy Giuliani based the future of his entire administration on one key premise: If he could make NYC’s streets safe again, then the rest of his ambitious plan (economic growth, job creation, welfare reform, etc.) was possible; if not, his would be the latest in a long string of failed mayoralties, bested – like his well-intentioned predecessors – by the wild, ungovernable metropolis he led.
His first order of business, then, was crime. He tackled this problem with the same mixture of cool intelligence and bulldog tenacity which had become his trademark. He began by appointing William Bratton as Police Commissioner and together they began the revolution which forever transformed the nature of policing in America. They implemented the ideas of noted criminologist James Q. Wilson, the concept that by ignoring low-level crimes and being a reactive police force, criminality, even anarchy is encouraged; and conversely that by being proactive in posture and treating quality of life crimes seriously, that an atmosphere of order is created. They implemented COMPSTAT – the system, inspired by Jack Maple, which tracks daily crime trends, devolves responsibility (and resources) to local precinct commanders, and holds those commanders responsible for crime in their jurisdiction. He also instituted a policy even more radical in its uniqueness which allowed all the other changes to germinate and bear fruit: he backed up his cops and told the racist, racial agitators to take a walk.
The result of these changes has been well-noted, but that makes them no less remarkable. By the end of his term as mayor, overall crime in NYC had been reduced by half, murder by two-thirds. And because his successor, Mike Bloomberg, and his Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly, have, to their great credit, retained and furthered the innovations begun by Rudy Giuliani, crime continues to drop precipitously in NYC: there were fewer than 500 murders in the city in 2007 — a remarkable achievement considering the fact the there were well over 2,000 murders per year in the late 80’s and early 90’s – before Rudy took office.
While Democrats in congress and the Clinton Administration were debating the crime-fighting efficacy of midnight basketball and after-school programs, the NYPD, under the leadership of Rudy Giuliani, was locking up felons, closing out open warrants, and vigorously prosecuting criminals. The results of this approach speak for themselves. The methods and techniques pioneered by Rudy Giuliani have been copied and implemented throughout the country resulting in a nationwide decline in crime unprecedented in US history. Rudy Giuliani will bring with him to Washington this same knack for strong, effective leadership in reducing the size and cost of government and will wield the same innovative approach to border security/immigration enforcement and anti-terror efforts that he honed in cracking down on crime in New York.
Culture Warrior
Paradoxically, like President Bush, Rudy Giuliani may be a victim of his own success. Many Americans, as memories of 9/11 fade with the passage of time, are lulled into a false sense of security by the success of the Bush administration in preventing another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil for 6+ years. Likewise, many people – New Yorkers included – forget what the City was like before it was tamed by America’s Mayor.
Times Square is a perfect example. Like Iraq’s al-Anbar province circa 2004, it was, before Rudy’s tenure, a no-go zone (that is, unless you were packing heat and looking for trouble). In the early 90’s a person could not walk through ‘the crossroads of the world’ without slipping on a used condom and landing on a dirty needle. Now, Times Square is a thriving, family-friendly tourist destination once again.
In 1995, before standing up to terrorists (let alone the State Department) was cool, he kicked Yasser Arafat out of Lincoln Center and in 2001 he refused to accept Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s donation to the Twin Towers Fund after he (like Ron Paul) blamed America for the attacks on 9/11. He took on and crushed (as a federal prosecutor, Justice Department official, and as mayor) organized crime in New York. He took on the ACLU and the peddlers of pornography; he cut off public funding for the Brooklyn Art Museum for displaying blasphemy masquerading as art; he refused to meet with the vile race hustlers, let alone bow down before them as his predecessors had done; in fact, at every opportunity to take an official stand in the culture wars, Rudy has taken an unapologetic and principled conservative one.
Abortion
Since Roe v. Wade, presidential power has been severely restricted with respect to abortion policy. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling against state laws restricting abortion, like other activist court decisions, replaced federalism and the democratic process with the oligarchic rule of five unelected judges with lifetime tenure. Overturning Roe v. Wade and restoring the Supreme Court to its proper status as a co-equal – not preeminent – branch of government is the immediate goal of the pro-life movement. Once this is done, however, abortion policy will once again become a state issue, not a federal one. It will be up to the 50 state legislatures to pass new laws outlawing the barbaric procedure. What the next president can do is to appoint conservative, strict constructionist justices to the bench who will restore the proper balance between the three branches of government and overturn Roe. The next president will, in all likelihood, have the opportunity to appoint as many as three new justices to the High Court. Rudy Giuliani has committed to appointing just such men and women to the court. In his National Review article endorsing Rudy last year, former Solicitor General (and possible High Court nominee?) Ted Olson wrote:
That is one very important reason why this conservative Republican is supporting Rudy Giuliani for president. I know the qualities he will look for in the persons he will appoint to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts: individuals of talent, quality, experience, integrity, intellect, and conscious of constitutional limits on judicial authority; men and women who will respect and defer to the wisdom of the framers of the Constitution and the rights of citizens to make policy through their elected representatives; jurists in the mold of Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito and Chief Justices Rehnquist and Roberts.
When a majority of the Supreme Court base their decisions on the Constitution's original meaning and the intent of its framers, Roe v. Wade will be overturned because it was a decision based not on the Constitution but in spite of it. And since Rudy has made the commitment to appoint such men and women to the court, his personal support for a woman’s right to an abortion should not prohibit pro-life conservatives from backing his candidacy.
Rudy Giuliani is a strong, principled conservative with the executive experience and leadership ability to lead our country and our party for the next four years and beyond. No other candidate can match his record, his intelligence, his strength, his tenacity, or his commitment to limited government, free markets, low, pro-growth tax policies, a strong and vigorous military, secure borders, and an aggressive, America-first foreign policy. As a New Yorker I witnessed first-hand how he imposed order and sanity on a city and government in chaos; a city ravaged by decades of liberal madness which had sapped it of its vitality and sent its middle class fleeing in droves. Rudy did for New York what Ronald Reagan did for America: he restored a sense of pride in its people and hope for the future. And just as Reagan prevailed over the threat of Soviet communism by confronting it head-on, Rudy will aggressively confront the current threat to liberty our country faces: radical Islamic jihad. And ultimately, that is why I proudly support Rudy Giuliani for President.
Mr. McMillan,
I think you have misconstrued what Stix was trying to convey. For instance, when he said,
“he [Giuliani] inherited a city that was universally considered to be ungovernable, and which was in thrall to murderous racist demagogues. Between the demagogues, who threatened to burn the city down, and the despicable, racist media that supported them, Giuliani was faced with the sort of organized hatred that would guaranteed the failure of many a strong man. Indeed, as I have written, I think had I faced such organized evil, might have ended up eating the business end of a .38.”
I don’t think there was any “racist” intent there. What he is stating is simply a description (at least in his view) of the state of affairs in New York pre-Giuliani. I’m sure you’re aware, for example, of the Bernard Goetz incident and the racial demagogues, such as Al Sharpton, who tried to exploit it to instigate racial tensions. And I believe that last sentence there is supposed to read, “Giuliani was faced with the sort of organized hatred that would [have] guaranteed the failure of many a strong man. Indeed, as I have written, I think had I faced such organized evil, [I] might have ended up eating the business end of a .38.”
Your interpretation of “they might have ended up eating the business end of a .38″ doesn’t really make sense in the context of the sentence and its structure.
In any case, I think you really have to be reading into that passage to infer that it is a racist tract against Jews and blacks, or advocating the killing of such. Which was my initial point in the first place – I think you drew a lot of unintended inferences because of your past experience with Mr. Stix. Also, I was in no way calling you personally a fascist thought-policeman or trying to disparage you – that wasn’t my intention at all. It was just an observation on the insane zealotry of political correctness in European countries and the danger of jumping to conclusions based on it. Like I said, I’m not trying to take sides, I’m just very suspicious of knee-jerk accusations of racism without any substantive reasoning.
Dear Mr Mulligan,
I do appreciate your Comment. As I said in my post to Mr Stix, I will unreservedly apologize to him if I have misconstrued him, and if you are right that I have, he may take this as such an apology. And I will even up the offer to remedy my error to complimentary copies of both my books (since the first book deals with what I say below).
Before I get to that, however, please let me say that I did not take your Comment about Europe to be a personal attack. I was not being sarcastic when I said that I pretty much agree with you. Much of what I have written says, I think, exactly that, and even for much the same reasons you advance (see, for example, my “Heard Man in Europe” quote on my web site).
Turning to the issue in hand, I do actually know something about ‘reverse discrimination’. When I first arrived in Britain in 1978, the anti-apartheid movement was in full swing. I was white, and I was South African – and that was enough for most people to condemn me.
Few people ever asked why I left South Africa (for reasons I shall not go into here, I deserted the military; and had I been apprehended in Rhodesia where I had escaped to, would have spent a considerable part of my life rotting in a SA prison). The fact that I had the wrong accent and color was enough for them. So, even though I had been to university in SA, the best job I could get at first was cleaning toilets and mowing lawns in a caravan site.
But I had faith that there were enough people out there who could look beyond the outward, and I was right. Notwithstanding the seemingly endless stream of hostile rejections and insults, and without jumping on the anti-apartheid bandwagon myself, I managed to crawl my way up thanks to those people who were prepared to stand up to the notion that simply being white and South African (and not embracing the anti-apartheid movement), was sufficient reason to condemn a person.
When I was at university in England, a song was released called “I’ve never met a nice South African” – meaning white South African. Whenever I went into a bar, people delighted in playing the song on the juke box. It was all great fun for them, and I accommodated them by doing a little dance to the tune. I could see them for the morons they were. For them, of course, it could not be ‘racist’ to hate a ‘white South African racist’.
When the idiot Blair and his Liberal Fundamentalist cohorts gained power in Britain with their ideology of ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’, it was clear to me that they were intent on finding and criminalizing a ‘bigot’ in every nook and cranny of the country – so I packed up and left.
So personally, I think every one should be free to like and dislike whomever he pleases, so long as his likes and dislikes are not mobilized to interfere with the freedom of such people. If 95% of blacks are committed of a crime after a fair trial, and incarcerated, I have no problem with that. If 95% of whites are likewise convicted, I have no problem with that either. The problem I have is with condemning the other 5% who may have done nothing wrong – and that is usually where condemning entire peoples ends up. [I have a different opinion, however, when it comes to Islam – that to me is an ideology, nothing to do with race].
The book offer still stands by the way.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Jeff Osonitsch: 43. “I agree with much of what you’ve written, however I must disagree with you on crime. As a New Yorker you must admit that you felt much safer walking the streets of the city after dark in 2001 (the end of Rudy’s term) than you did in 1993. I know I certainly did. And if you did not, then you are the only New Yorker I know that didn’t.”
As I already said, during Giuliani’s first term, I felt less safe than before, due to the NYPD’s increasing hostility to white victims of black criminals. But since then I recalled how incalculably worse my quality of life became under Giuliani, as black racists of all social classes felt so confident of avoiding punishment that they committed racial attacks on white men during work hours, in public places in front of many witnesses, including in midtown Manhattan. Racially sycophantic white police officers were often the worst enemy a white crime victim could have. A white defense attorney I know who has handled such cases recently told me that it is virtually impossible for a white man who successfully defends himself against a racial attack, to get any justice. The best the victim can hope for is to avoid prison time.
You don’t know enough New Yorkers.
Osonitsch: “The allegation that crime statistics are bogus is quite simply false.”
Osonitsch redux: 47. “For my part, not surprisingly, it is only part one of Mr. Stix’s post with which I generally agree. The rest is a kind of bizarre and somewhat paranoid list of inuendo and conspiracy theory not supported (or supportable) by facts.”
Patrick Mulligan: 48. “Simply labeling someone a racist, bizarre, paranoid conspiracy theorist doesn’t really raise any issues as to what he actually said.”
Jeff Osonitsch: 49. “I never called him any of those things, what I wrote was ‘the rest [of his post] was a kind of bizarre and paranoid list.’”
But of course you called me those things.
The NYPD’s crime statistics have been exposed as fraudulent so many times since 1995, that only someone willfully ignorant or dishonest could deny it. That Mayor Mike Bloomberg would deny it, when challenged on the matter, is hardly surprising.
Did you take the trouble to read either of the articles I linked to?
(“‘Disappearing’ Urban Crime”
http://www.vdare.com/stix/040526_crime.htm)
“These Stats are a Crime”
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0544,moses,69552,5.html
From “‘Disappearing’ Urban Crime”
“… That made for at least five shootings on December 8.
“A few weeks later, I asked NYPD press rep Officer Kathie Kelly if there had been any shootings on December 8. She told me she’d get back to me.
“Later, she informed me: ‘There were no shootings on the eighth.’
“Since 1991, I have fought off at least eight racial attacks, including two attempted muggings. All were ‘disappeared’ by police or prosecutors—even when I had bloody wounds; when the police had been called to the scene by a subway motorman or (unbeknownst to me) an anonymous witness who corroborated my depiction of events; or when the attack took place on camera, in front of a black postal police officer. (In 1994, a black New Jersey bus driver who had recently fled Brooklyn, suggested that in New York, crime victims require legal representation no less than defendants, if they wish their cases prosecuted.)
“And the fudging of crime statistics is not just a story in the Naked City.
“On October 23, 2003, five New Orleans police officers—including First District captain, Norvel Orazio, a 29-year veteran, who had won awards for reducing crime—were fired, and a sixth was demoted, for improperly downgrading crime complaints so that they would not show up in crime statistics.
“On February 20, an audit of Atlanta’s police records showed that the suppression and loss of crime records was endemic for many years, with 22,000 police reports of 911 calls disappearing in 2002 alone.
“Similar mini-scandals have also occurred in recent years in Philadelphia and Boca Raton, Florida.
“Urban police departments have for years been under intense pressure to reduce violent crime. But blacks and Hispanics have a virtual monopoly over urban violent crime. (In New York City in 1998, 89.2 percent of suspects in violent crimes were black or Hispanic.) And police officials dare not offend outraged black and Hispanic criminals, or their supporters in the media and in politics who constantly invent ‘racial profiling’ hoaxes.
“The police’s job is impossible. And so, instead of policing hoodlums, today’s modern, urban police managers aggressively police … impressions. The ‘disappearing’ of crime is one of their leading impression management methods.
Stix, cont’d.
Critics may counter: “So what are you saying, they’re hiding bodies?!”
Not at all. Keep in mind: most crime reporters do not ride late at night in subway cars to observe crime firsthand, drive through city streets listening to police scanners and racing to crime scenes, or take inventory at city morgues. They are more likely to ride through the city in taxicabs. Many seem to know—or want to know—only why police officials deign to tell them. And these officials simply refuse to report many violent felonies.
Detectives engage in the wholesale “unfounding” of crimes i.e. determine that allegation were “unfounded.” And murders are reclassified as non-criminal deaths. But in most cases, crime is “disappeared” by the street officer who engages in “creative writing,” turning felonies into misdemeanors or non-crimes. (An additional crime statistic reduction strategy, “de-policing,” withdrawing police from embarrassing confrontation with criminals, is beyond the scope of this essay.)
It’s been going on for years:
On October 11, 1995, reporter William K. Rashbaum, then of the New York Daily News, published a memo he’d obtained from the 50th Precinct in The Bronx. The memo, by precinct commander, Capt. Anthony Kissik, instructed officers in the art of defining down crimes from felonies to misdemeanors or even non-crimes (e.g., a felony assault would be changed to a misdemeanor case of “harassment.”)
On January 29, 1996, Newsday’s Leonard Levitt reported on two rapes, one murder, and one fatal shooting of a car thief by a police officer (which was eventually counted as a homicide [that is not the same as murder]) from the previous December, none of which had been reported by the NYPD. The NYPD brass insisted (get this!) that a mysterious, unnamed reporter had stolen the crime reports. Levitt found out about the incidents from relatives of the victims. [The nefarious, thieving reporter has yet to be brought to justice.]
On October 29, 1996, Captain Louis Vega, commander of the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx, was suspended without pay in a crime statistic fraud scandal. The Daily News quoted a stationhouse source as saying, “in any precinct you could go in and come up with complaints where the charges should be higher. There is tremendous pressure on precinct commanders to produce lower numbers.”
Captain Vega’s mistake was apparently in violating the first law of lying: Plausibility.
Crime was allegedly down 14% in the South Bronx overall from Jan. 1 to October 20, 1996 compared to the same period in 1995. But Vega reported a 40% crime reduction in his precinct.
On January 1998, the NYPD’s Transit Bureau was caught fudging violent crime stats. Bureau Chief William Donoghue was forced to resign. NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir, apparently a master of fuzzy math, insisted that the fraudulent underreporting of subway crime by 20 percent did not affect the NYPD’s overall crime statistics: “While a true portrait of citywide crime was being painted, a somewhat skewed picture of crime in the subway was being put forth.”
But two months into the administration of liberal Democrat-turned-Republican Michael Bloomberg, reporter Larry Celona wrote in the March 14, 2002 New York Post, that a rape that had been committed in the 50th Precinct
“was logged as a lesser crime—thus giving a rare look into what some beat cops say is a statistical sleight of hand used by their commanders.
“According to many patrol officers, commanders sometimes reclassify major crimes like murder, assault, robbery and rape as lesser offenses to make it appear they are winning the war on crime….
“… the March 8 rape of a woman at a Bailey Avenue hotel was recorded as an ‘inconclusive’ incident. Only on Tuesday, after The Post started asking questions, was the crime properly classified as rape.”
(This redefining of a rape as an “inconclusive incident” is a speciality of the Philadelphia PD which for years, according to the FBI, has conquered crime through the simple expedient of finding victim complaints “unfounded.” The Philadelphia PD also pioneered the method of disappearing burglaries through redefining them as the non-crime of “lost/stolen property.” According to a 1998 Philadelphia Inquirer report, “Among police, the practice is called ‘going down with crime.’”)
On June 30, 2003, in ”Crime Statistics Doubts Adding Up,” Newsday’s Leonard Levitt detailed the reality behind the “reduction in crime”:
The punishment-by-transfer of an officer in The Bronx (again from the 50th Precinct!) who refused to downgrade a felony to a misdemeanor;
A former police official having to intercede on a victim’s behalf, to get detectives who had refused to help the victim to take down a crime report;
A Brooklyn precinct commander discouraging robbery victims from reporting crimes, by refusing to permit the uniformed officer at the scene from taking down a report;
A multiple-officer tag team talking victims out of filing crime reports;
Reusing the complaint number of a disappeared crime for a new case, in order to eliminate the first crime’s paper trail;
Keeping two sets of books for a precinct’s crime statistics.
More recently, in March 22, Levitt and Rocco Parascandola reported on the case of former 50th Precinct commander Thomas DiRusso. From 2000-2003, when Deputy Inspector DiRusso was on the job, crime allegedly fell 26%, but in the first 10 weeks after he left the precinct in January, 2004, to head up Brooklyn South Narcotics, crime in the “5-0” allegedly increased by 11.2%.
Deputy Inspector DiRusso was reportedly aggressive at reducing crime reports.
Officers told Levitt and Parascandola, that, when restaurant deliverymen were robbed and sought help from the precinct, DiRusso ran them off, threatening to ticket them for riding their bicycles on the sidewalk. His officers were also in the habit of refusing to take down crime reports from victims.
Rather than investigate DiRusso, the NYPD has stood by their man.
The reality of “disappeared” crime contradicts the managed impression that a revolution in police methods has saved New York over the past ten or so. The revolution has credited to two new policies: “broken windows” policing and “COMPSTAT” (computer statistics).
Stix, cont’d.
From Paul Moses’ “These Stats are a Crime: While Bloomberg boasts of crime drop, the hospitals’ work on assault victims is booming”
“Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been free to spend his fortune on campaign advertisements touting the continued drop in crimes police have reported. His campaign website declares that, under Bloomberg, ‘the neighborhoods of New York have become safer than ever.’
“Tell that to the people in the emergency rooms.
“The number of people who went to New York City hospitals because they were assaulted jumped sharply in four of the last five years for which figures are available—a direct contrast to the plunging number of assaults the NYPD reported.
“These hospital visits are numbered in official statistics of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Injury Epidemiology—every bit as official as the heavily publicized police department data showing fewer and fewer serious assaults ‘known to the police’ during the same years.
“This continued drop in reported crimes is a cornerstone of Bloomberg’s re-election drive, ever present in the advertising he’s bought for what’s likely the most expensive municipal election campaign in U.S. history. He’s made it his own.
“But the stark contrast between these two sets of official statistics demonstrates again the need for a thorough, independent probe of the police department’s crime reports. And it shows how wrong it was for the Bloomberg administration to have allowed the NYPD to thwart a probe earlier this year of the crime statistics.
“According to health statistics on the city government’s website, more and more assault victims flocked to emergency rooms for four years in a row. In 2002, the last year for which data is available and Bloomberg’s first year in office, the number of assault victims either hospitalized or treated in emergency rooms shot up 6 percent from the year before.
“Not to worry: The police department reported a 10 percent drop in aggravated assaults, according to FBI records.
“No matter how much money is poured into touting these numbers, there is ample reason to question them.
“That’s what the city’s Commission to Combat Police Corruption, a panel of mayoral appointees, wanted to do. It was a reasonable move, given that the leaders of the police officers’ and sergeants’ unions had charged publicly that the books were cooked.
“Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch had said that officers ‘are forced to falsify stats in order to maintain the appearance of a drastic reduction in crime,’ the Daily News reported. And Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins said his sergeants had witnessed assaults being downgraded to harassment cases.”
“The NYPD’s hostility to white victims of black criminals”? “Racially sycophantic white police officers”? “how incalculably worse [your] quality of life became under Giuliani”? What!?! This is the very definition of bizarre and paranoid. I hope you don’t live anywhere near a precinct station house – that would be truly terrifying!
Enter Rod Serling.
The quotes from the PBA and SBA (which happens to be my union) refered to specific incidents which were investigated and adjudicated. I conceded in a previous post that such isolated incidents do occur but are extremely rare.
As far as your anecdotal “evidence” from hospitals are concerned, the simple answer is that many people are treated at hospitals for injuries (which may or may not be crime related) that are either not reported to the PD or the “victim” refuses to make a report when police respond – I’ve dealt with this phenomenon a number of times.
The men and women serving in the NYPD are some of the very best, most decent, and honest people I know. I should know – I work with them each and every day (and somehow I’ve lived to tell about it!) I don’t appreciate your slandering us.
Your allegations are absolutely absurd, and yes both bizarre and paranoid.
Jeff Osonitsch, 55: “The quotes from the PBA and SBA (which happens to be my union) refered to specific incidents which were investigated and adjudicated.”
That’s a lie.
“I conceded in a previous post that such isolated incidents do occur but are extremely rare.”
That’s another lie. They are not at all rare. As I showed, and Lenny Levitt and Rocco Parascandola and Paul Moses and Larry Celona and Bill Rashbaum and many other journalists have shown, the incidents are typical and systemic. I challenge you to take the trouble to read the aforementioned journalists’ exposes, and to write to them that their “allegations are absolutely absurd, and yes both bizarre and paranoid.”
Maybe you’ll prove me wrong, but I don’t think you’ve got the integrity to do it.
“As far as your anecdotal ‘evidence’ from hospitals are concerned, the simple answer is that many people are treated at hospitals for injuries (which may or may not be crime related) that are either not reported to the PD or the ‘victim’ refuses to make a report when police respond – I’ve dealt with this phenomenon a number of times.”
Yet another lie. The evidence was not anecdotal, and the wounds in question were not due to accidents. (Although an anecdote—“short account of an incident”—can be evidence. Crime statistics are nothing but aggregations of anecdotes.) And if massive numbers of crime victims are refusing to cooperate with the police, and the crimes they endured are not being counted as such, that gives the lie to the NYPD’s (and your) claims of crime reductions. And if numbers of crime victims insufficient to be statistically significant are refusing to cooperate, why even bring up the issue, except as a red herring?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anecdote
“The men and women serving in the NYPD are some of the very best, most decent, and honest people I know. I should know – I work with them each and every day (and somehow I’ve lived to tell about it!) I don’t appreciate your slandering us.”
“Slander” involves lying. The only one lying here is you.
The worst part of all is that unless you’ve been driving a desk for the past 14 years, you know better than anyone else at this site that what I’m saying is true. I could understand racist black and Hispanic cops lying about the job, but I don’t know how “sensitized,” diversity-trained, lying white cops can live with themselves. Have you no shame?
I used to always defend cops, and I still write about what honest cops are up against. As a kid, I knew lots of honorable coppers … and some less than honorable ones. Hell, I named my son after a hero cop. But if you think I’m going to go along with your lies and cover for you and other cops who have dishonored the job and dragged it through the mud, you’re crazy. You need to come clean.
I suggest again that anyone interested in the truth read mine and Paul Moses’ articles.
Stix: “‘Disappearing’ Urban Crime”
http://www.vdare.com/stix/040526_crime.htm
Moses: “These Stats are a Crime”
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0544,moses,69552,5.html
Also:
Stix: “Solving Philly Crime with an Eraser:
The ‘Good Irishman’ and the Race Man”
http://geocities.com/nstix/phillyii.html
Stix: “De-Policing in America’s Cities: Erasing the ‘Thin Blue Line’”
http://geocities.com/nstix/thinblueline.html
Stix: “The War on the Police”
http://geocities.com/nstix/waronpolice.html
Stix and Moses – a latter day Woodward and Bernstein – two intrepid investigative sleuths have uncovered the scoop of the century: NYC is not safer today than it was in the early 90′s and the NYPD is full of lying, jack-booted racist thugs! Since the departments cover is now officially blown, allow me to come clean on a few items:
You know the attacks of 9/11? Well they actually took place on 9/12. Shhhhhh, its a big secret! And it wasn’t just the Twin Towers that were attacked but Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, Ebbets Field, and Scores, as well. (The current buildings standing in their former places are actually CG holograms.) And the extra 25,000 killed that day were replaced by clones developed by the evil genius’s in Police Headquarters. (the families don’t suspect a thing!)
And the NYPD, under the stewardship of the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations really didn’t prevent some 500-1500 murders a year since 1993 either. No, there is actually a super secret vault under the old Polo-Grounds where the bodies of about 10,000 homicide victims are stored in freezers. What did we say to the victims families when they tried to file missing person reports, you ask? This is the really clever part: we said ‘your loved one was not murdered, he’s not even missing, he just went for a reeeaaally long walk. He’ll probably be home any time now.’
Any other inside info you plan on blowing the whistle about?