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What the NYPD did right | page 1, 2
In fact, had their union representatives been more diplomatic they might have gotten their demands, or something close to it. Giuliani doesn't respond well to threats, and some cops have told me they think their union has a lot to learn. But he clearly wants their votes in the next election. Even more important, the mayor speaks up for the NYPD because of the great pride he takes in how much safer New York is than when he came into office. Everyone knows this, but with the smell of politics in the air, those who want to polarize the city suddenly have amnesia about Giuliani's real accomplishments. And other New Yorkers are silent, afraid of the hysterical attacks they might suffer for breaking the ideological line. A young woman who lives in Washington Heights -- a hard-working Dominican community known to outsiders for its drug dealers -- said people in her neighborhood love Giuliani because police pressure on criminals has made their life better. But she said no one would ever tell that to reporters, for fear of being contemptuously defined as a slavish supporter of the mayor. As one female cop said, "People don't seem to remember when women put their babies in bathtubs at night to protect them from being shot." The violence at Saturday's funeral, condemned by Dorismond's own mother as well as Giuliani, should force us to turn a page on the debate over the police. That point of agreement might be turned into something big. Giuliani now has another opportunity to master the situation. Police Commissioner Howard Safir has already arranged to meet with religious leaders in Brooklyn, including the one who conducted Dorismond's funeral. Smart. The mayor himself could build on Vasquez's letter of condolence. One way would be to point out that the bereaved mother, and those community people who were outraged by the rioting in the name of Dorismond, are more characteristic of those communities than the rioters, who thrive on ethnic alienation and hostility. Giuliani has done this kind of public work before. During the blackout in Washington Heights last summer, he noted publicly what a civilized community it was and how its behavior put to rest all of the stereotypes about those who lived in that section of New York. During the blackout of 1977, there were 3,000 arrests; overnight last year in Washington Heights there were only three. Giuliani spoke up to commend the community for helping the police, the emergency health workers, and each other. It was one of his finest moments. If that Giuliani reappears, he will not only be a formidable force for his detractors to contend with, the mayor will also make it much, much easier to create an atmosphere in which New Yorkers can actually assess the overall quality of the work done by its police force. In 1990, for instance, 1,096 black people were murdered. In 1999, there were 356, down by two-thirds. That doesn't make any act of excessive police force or obnoxiousness less than what it is, but it sure proves that there is more to say about the NYPD than what our professional rabble rousers like to talk about. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - In Stanley Crouch's column, "Diallo is a martyr, but the cops aren't murderers," a sentence stating his position on the Diallo verdict was dropped due to an editing error. The sentence in question should have read, "At the very least I expected a guilty verdict on the charge of reckless endangerment." Salon regrets the error.
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