What Rudy can teach Bill
Politicians rarely admit error, so credit Mayor de Blasio with acknowledging that he has bungled the case of Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who callously choked Eric Garner, causing his death, as the unarmed man gasped “I can’t breathe” 11 times.
De Blasio dithered and deferred for five years, while a Staten Island grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department concluded that Pantaleo could not be prosecuted criminally under any state or federal statutes.
“Years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act,” de Blasio said in a statement as a busload of advocates, politicians and family members of Garner denounced the mayor on the steps of City Hall. “We won’t make that mistake again.”
De Blasio could learn from an incident more than 20 years ago, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani handled a less serious matter with admirable speed and decisiveness that established a useful legal precedent for de Blasio.
For years, the predominantly white enclave of Broad Channel, Queens, held a Labor Day parade that included a
“funniest float” competition in which one group of residents — including a number of city employees — would riff on popular culture and make fun of the diverse city outside their effectively segregated community.
As a federal court later noted: “In 1994, for example, this group entered a float entitled ‘Hasidic Park,’ a play on the film ‘Jurassic Park,’ that featured stereotypes of Hasidic Jews living in prehistoric times. The group’s 1996 float, called ‘Gooks of Hazard,’ depicted Asian stereotypes. Another year, the float styled itself ‘Happy Gays’ and made fun of gay men.”
Real highbrow stuff, all done in public. Anyhow, in 1998, a group went with “Black to the Future — Broad Channel 2098,” featuring a float with giant buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and watermelon; white men in blackface; and chants like “Crackers, we’re moving in!”
The display included a man in blackface pretending to be dragged by the float — a skit intended to parody the lynching of James Byrd Jr., a black man who had been murdered earlier that year in Texas by being chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death.
Footage of the spectacle in Broad Channel ended up on the news. When Giuliani discovered that some of the participants were NYPD and FDNY officers, he did not pause for legal niceties.
“Any police officer, firefighter or other city employee involved in this disgusting display of racism should be removed from positions of responsibility immediately…They will be fired,” the mayor said.
One cop and two firefighters were suspended without pay, and promptly complained that their actions, however offensive, were acts of free speech done on their own time.
The New York Civil Liberties Union defended the men. And even the Rev. Al Sharpton showed up as a friendly witness, testifying that Giuliani was likely going after the Broad Channel bums to deflect attention from his own troubled relationship with black New Yorkers.
Rudy was having none of it. “They’re technically suspended, but they’re never getting back into the Police Department or the Fire Department unless the Supreme Court of the United States ordered us to take them back,” he said.
The case of Locurto vs. Giuliani concluded one step shy of the Supreme Court. First, a lower court ordered the men reinstated, but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals — years after Giuliani had left office — reversed the judgment and approved the firings, finding that “bringing discredit upon the police and fire departments within minority communities” was valid grounds for termination.
Today, the same logic applies. Panteleo’s killing of Garner has already caused untold damage to the reputation of the NYPD, and keeping him on the job only compounds the harm.
The only question now is whether our mayor is willing to learn from his own mistakes, learn from one of his predecessors’ successes and take action.
Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.