Giuliani time — with Staten Island travesty, former mayor is back in the news rotation
[Speaking Truth To Power]
The Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose strangulation lynching of Eric Garner led to his death, is another clear reminder that police who kill Black people will be protected by the prosecutors who they work with.
The “broken windows” policing theory should also be on trial here.
Is it any better than stop-and-frisk?
This case shows us why “broken windows” should be discarded where it belongs: into the rubbish heap. The “broken windows” policing—and the pressure to procure tickets and arrests—created the scenario where Officer Pantaleo ended up applying a deadly lynch-hold chokehold around the neck of Eric Garner.
Mayor Bill de Blasio says he’s sorry about what happened to Eric Garner—if he is, he should admit “broken windows” aided and abetted in this horrific death. Will the mayor do the right thing and end this oppressive police policy? Or, will he try to keep it in place, because of Commissioner Bill Bratton’s support of it?
This mayor was supposed to be “progressive.” We should wonder why he chose to bring Bratton back in the first place. Black and Latino New Yorkers voted for Mr. de Blasio in overwhelming numbers—and we deserve better than this from him. Where is the tangible change?
This unjust grand jury decision tells us substantive change remains elusive. After the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown many talked about the alleged “ambiguities” that allowed Wilson to walk.
But where are the “ambiguities” that allowed this killer of Garner, Officer Pantaleo, to walk—when the world has repeatedly watched the lynch-hold killing on videotape?
We’ve all heard the saying a “grand jury can indict a ham sandwich,” but that was, apparently, never meant to apply to those who are a part of the exclusive club of insiders we call “law enforcement” officials. When law-breaking is covered-up by prosecutors, and politicians who tout their commitment to “law and order” remain silent, there can be no respect for this so-called “justice” system.
Following the Eric Garner and Michael Brown decisions, the message is clear: Black people can expect no justice from local prosecutors, who have to work with these killer cops—making it obvious that special prosecutors should become the standard procedure when the perpetrators of murder are police.
Eric Garner was victimized twice by those who are supposed to represent “law and order.” First, he had his life taken—the conduct of EMS workers was also horrid—by Officer Pantaleo, then, those who are supposed to secure justice for the people refused to do so.
Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan and St. Louis county prosecutor Bob McCulloch are symbols of the sickeningly incestuous relationship between local police and their prosecutor bosom-buddies.
In both of these cases, the foreseeable outcome of no indictments were logical conclusions from the minute their grand juries were convened. Moreover, why was it even necessary in these cases? Are they trying to fool us into believing they could not have arrested and indicted these two officers without the need to convene these rubber-stamp grand juries?
The real reason for convening these grand juries is to give their dealings the appearance of democratic impartiality. They know if they refused to indict these officers directly, through the prosecutor’s office, that the partiality and comradery they have for their police friends would be blatantly apparent. Therefore, to pull the wool over the eyes of the public, they finagle the grand jury procedure to give it a façade of fairness.
However, it is clear these prosecutors knew how to orchestrate those in the grand jury to achieve the desired predestined outcomes. In the Ferguson case, it was revealed, through the insightful analysis of MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that the jury was, at one point, given an unconstitutional law—regarding the legality of shooting fleeing suspects—that had been outlawed because of its unconstitutionality.
In the Eric Garner case, we don’t yet know what instructions grand jury members were given. However, what we do know is Staten Island is rife with a racist element that will no doubt back cops regardless of what outrages they commit, especially, if it is done against Black people. Did any of these grand jury members watch the same video the rest of the world watched?
Some, like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani talk about how Eric Garner was resisting arrest—so, supposedly, he caused his own death. We should not be surprised this dishonestly deceitful former mayor would say something like this. Are we to accept the narrative that a man should lose his life because he, may, have been selling untaxed cigarettes?
We’re told by Giuliani, and others, if Eric Garner was White the outcome would be the same. What bull. This is the fanciful fiction some Whites articulate so they don’t have to take any responsibility for racism running rampant in the way police departments police Black people.
Recently, in Pennsylvania, Eric Frein—the murderer of Pennsylvania State Police Officer Bryon K. Dickson II was captured and taken into custody—alive. Yet, unarmed men like Michael Brown and Eric Garner end up dead for, alleged, minor law infractions—and apologists tell us police did nothing wrong. Apparently, there is nothing ever wrong when White police—usually, from White segregated communities—kill Black people.
In a recent Meet The Press, interview, Mr. Giuliani tried to deflect the question of police murder of Blacks by injecting the “Black people kill Black people too” defense. However, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson lyrically bitch-slapped this idiotic nonsense by pointing out that the Black people who kill other Black people got to jail while White officers, sworn to uphold the law, who kill Black people are not prosecuted.
What Giuliani spouted from his foul mouth is what many White politicians and criminologists—and some in media—like to do whenever the subject of police brutality comes up: invoke the lie that Black people are uniquely criminally-inclined. In the interview, Giuliani—like White law enforcement officials—tried to project Black-on-Black killing as something abnormal, in America, by saying 90 percent of Blacks kill Blacks.
But the fraud here is: Whites kill Whites at similar rates—and people like Giuliani never say a damn thing about there being an epidemic of pathological murder among Whites or White-on-White crime.
During the Meet The Press interview, he postulated the paternalistically patronizing notion that White police are in Black communities to protect Black people. Somehow were supposed to believe White officers—mostly, from segregated suburbs—are somehow the White-hope saviors of Black people?
Clearly, Giuliani’s attempt was to do what White racists do: project Black people as a savages who must be controlled by brutes in badges. His degrading, dehumanizing, racist comments of Black people must be denounced. How dare he ask what Rev. Sharpton has done for Black New Yorkers? What they hell has he done, for Blacks—besides use the mayoral office as a tool of Black oppression to make White people feel, supposedly, “safe?”
Later on FOX News in deranged sounding rants Giuliani claimed he had saved thousands of Black lives as mayor of New York City; as if he was doing the race a favor rather than just continuing the effective community policing initiated by his predecessor Dinkins.
He’s also the same man who, before he became mayor, joined cops who were wilding outside City Hall protesting against Mayor David Dinkins and referring to him as a nigger.
The man may think his angry outbursts will launch him ahead of the weak Republican presidential field for 2016. He failed miserably in 2008 and if he dares he will burn again. Hate may sell in America; but it won’t be enough to get you elected president today with the new demographics.
Which leads us to the “fear of Black men,” syndrome afflicting so many White Americans.
Where, in the record, is the historical basis for this hysterical fear when the history of Black brutalization is clear?
Did Black men brutally enslave White people in America? Did Black men routinely rape White women—like the manner in which White men raped Black women, whenever they wanted to, during the times of Slavery and Jim Crow segregation? Did Black men lynch White men—and then proceeded to castrate them, and, then, keep those male members as souvenirs, as was done, on a massive scale, during the Lynching Era?
How dare any person call Blacks “savages”—and pretend that we are the criminal menaces to their American “society?”
Unless the rage and anger shown by some of these cops come out of a feeling of guilt.
The outrage of this verdict is an indictment of America’s jurisprudence. “Broken windows” is a policy that—like stop-and-frisk—puts Black citizens at risk from White officers, who are either racist, or, come from segregated suburbs where the only thing they know about Black people is the lies they were indoctrinated to believe by White media and a backward educational system.
The righteous rage now pouring into the streets by Black, Latino—and White—protesters should be a clear signal to America that police brutality must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if the “integrity” of the “justice” system is to be trusted by all Americans.
Here, in New York, Mayor de Blasio must outlaw “broken windows”—or be voted out of office in the next election.
