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Then last February came the Bronx shooting of Amadou Diallo by four white undercover officers, who were acquitted of all charges last month. That was followed too quickly by the March 16 shooting of Patrick Dorismond, the son of Haitian immigrants. Dorismond was approached by an undercover cop who asked if he could help him purchase marijuana; a scuffle ensued and the unarmed Dorismond was blown away.

The Dorismond case was guaranteed to raise another ruckus. Instead of contacting the man's family and expressing his recognition of their tragic loss, Giuliani released Dorismond's sealed juvenile record, and dug in his heels. A wildfire of condemnation resulted, but, as those who have followed the mayor know, it was not the sort of thing that would make Giuliani back down.

This past Saturday could have been another black eye for the NYPD, when a riot followed Dorismond's funeral, with several arrests and 23 cops injured. But so far the media has done very little hard reporting. According to black community workers who were in the crowd outside the Brooklyn church where the funeral was held, the place was crawling with anarchists, black nationalists, Marxist revolutionaries and others who saw the people on the street as cannon fodder. They kept heating them up with vitriolic statements, and trying to bait the police. Eventually, a couple of people pushed the metal barricades over, and the riot the agitators sought took off.

But the police showed perfectly professional restraint. One female cop was badly banged up trying to protect a mother and her child, who were about to be crushed under a barricade. Others were struck by bricks and bottles. "Then," as one witness said, "the cops with the riot hats and the bats came in, but they didn't go crazy. They could have. There could have been blood everywhere. You had to respect how well they handled a situation that could have become nuts. It could have been just like those cops in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention. It could have gone way over the top."

As it now stands, Dorismond's mother and Giuliani have at least one thing in common: They have both condemned the violence of the Saturday riots. What we need now is some sort of movement past the predictable polarization on the issue of police brutality, some resistance to hot air that helps to draw quite clearly the line between those who are seriously concerned about race and law enforcement, and those who are only manipulators and opportunists.

So far Giuliani's only concession has been to agree that the cop who killed Dorismond, Anthony Vasquez, was right to issue a statement of condolence to the dead man's mother and family. This has led some to speculate that he is trying to appeal to more conservative voters outside of New York City in his run against Hillary Clinton for Senate. (If so, it is questionable whether that will work, since a poll Tuesday showed Giuliani's standing statewide had declined since the fracas over Dorismond's death.)

Next page | What Giuliani is thinking