Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s comments yesterday criticizing police actions in the shooting death of Sean Bell prompted commentators to draw comparisons between Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani.
“Much has changed in New York since Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, was killed in a hail of 41 bullets fired by city police officers in 1999,” the Times says in an editorial. “Mr. Diallo’s death sent racial tensions in the city nearly to a boiling point — helped along by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who regularly shunned meetings with black leaders and failed to treat the crisis with the urgency it required.”
In his column (Times Select only), Clyde Haberman applauds the changes at City Hall. “When the unarmed Amadou Diallo was killed in 1999 by four police officers who fired 41 shots, Mr. Giuliani failed to grasp that whatever the wrongs or rights of the case,” he writes. Instead, Haberman continues, the city had ” a leader who stood in the Blue Room alone, lashing out almost Lear-like at his critics,” unlike Bloomberg who “understands that flexibility of the spirit does not necessarily mean weakness.”
In calling the 50 shots fired by “unacceptable or inexplicable,” the Daily News writes, “Mayor Bloomberg rendered a fair preliminary assessment of a tragedy that, more and more, appears to have stemmed from a failure to follow proper NYPD procedures by cops who were on the front lines in the war on illegal guns.”
“Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg, flanked by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and several African-American leaders, showed real leadership by firmly stating that he was disturbed by the number of shots fired — 50 in total, writes El Diario. Harking back to Bloomberg’s predecessor, the editorial goes on, “Our city is scarred by the legacy of a former mayor, now running for president. In a series of ugly police incidents that resulted in the abuse or deaths of young African-American, Latino and Asian men, the rash statements of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani needlessly added insult to injury.”
But Bloomberg comes in for criticism as well. Responding to his comments, the Post believes “Mayor Mike needs to hold his horses.” “It must be remembered that as a matter of law, cops have an explicit right to use deadly force if they are in reasonable fear for their lives,” the editorial says, adding that in this case “such a fear was indeed reasonable”
The Blah, Blah, Blahg condemns what it see as a rush to judgement. “If this incident turns out to be a justified use of deadly force … how many of these leaders will come back and publicly apologize for finding the officers guilty in the court of public opinion? Which of them will make an effort to admit to speak to the accused officers then?” it writes.
And whatever the merits of the mayor’s comments, some believe they only go so far. Beyond Saturday’s shooting, there is a disturbing pattern of behavior in Bloomberg’s police department, writes News columnist Errol Louis. Citing a sharp increase in the number of civilian complaints against the police and in lawsuits brought against the department, Louis says, “Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s NYPD is failing to protect and serve the public the way it should.”
The Jewschool blog agrees: “While Mayor Bloomberg responded, calling 50 shots as unacceptable, unfortunately, the mayor also would not discuss this as a pattern,” which the writer says, includes “daily racial profiling, harassment, beating and arrests of people of color in New York City.”
By Gail Robinson on November 28, 2006, 8:56 am
In category: Civil Rights, Crime, Gotham City
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