Six on "America's Mayor": Rudy Guiliani, Explained by Tom Toles; The Rudy Giuliani of today is just the same old Rudy; The Mystery of Rudy Giuliani’s Vienna Trip; Randy Rainbow Interviews Former Mayor Rudy Guiliani; Giuliani Blames Eric Garner’s Deat
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Thanks John and Gary
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"Former Mayor Rudy Guiliani has a unique theory about why Eric Garner died. It was not because a police officer choked him until he died. No, it was because the teachers' union blocked charters, vouchers, and merit pay. I am not sure whether he wanted Mr. Garner to go to a charter school or the police officer. Maybe both. If there is an edge, he went over it.
His remarks reminded me of the incident during his term in office when police brutalized a man named Abner Louima, and one of them allegedly said, "It's Guiliani-time."
In 1989, he just barely lost the mayoral election to David Dinkins, the city's first and only African American mayor. But when a 23-year-old Dominican man, Jose "Kiko" Garcia, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Washington Heights in 1992, Giuliani seized on the tragedy as a political opportunity to resurrect his mayoral ambitions.
The shooting sparked resistance and a demand for political action from within the Dominican community. While news outlets focused on the fires and property damage that lasted nearly a week, Dominicans from different walks of life marched in the neighborhood's streets calling for the criminal conviction of the New York Police Department officer who shot Garcia, among other essential neighborhood needs. Community members communicated that they felt unjustly characterized as criminals by a mostly white police precinct that consistently harassed them. The department also had been under federal investigation for corruption relating to drug sales less than a month before Garcia's death.
Giuliani saw the politics of the situation differently. Eyeing a chance to unseat Dinkins, Giuliani threw his support behind the NYPD. He argued vocally that police officers were not to blame for the unrest in the city, but the mayor was.
Later that fall, he stood up on a podium near City Hall in front of thousands of off-duty police officers and declared, "The reason the morale of the police department of the city of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone: David Dinkins." Tapping into the sense of police grievance, Giuliani criticized Dinkins for utilizing city funds to fly Garcia's body - which he framed as being that of an undeserving "criminal" - back to the Dominican Republic for burial. Giuliani shared the stage with the officer who shot and killed Garcia. The rally quickly turned aggressive as hundreds of officers swarmed past barricades, stood atop cars, and blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. The nearly three-hour rally was underscored by repeated chants: "Rudy! Rudy!"
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