Photos: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office\YouTube Screenshots
In the mid 1980s a young US attorney general for the Southern District of New York was catapulted to national fame and prominence by prosecuting key figures of the five Mafia crime families otherwise known as Cosa Nostra under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). It was a bonanza for the attention seeking attorney as one crime boss after another was hauled away into police custody. Ever the publicity hound, he perfected the perp walk, a practice of walking the accused from precinct to the police van or to court amidst a frenzy of photo journalists who often would get advance tips of such events.
Times were good then for Rudy Giuliani.
He wasted no time to use the newly acquired fame to seek the mayoralty of New York City as a Republican with a law and order platform in 1989. The NYC mayor then, Ed Koch who was seeking a fourth term unexpectedly lost to David Dinkins in the Democratic primary election. It made for an interesting matchup, pitting a soft-spoken, liberal Black democrat against the loud white ‘law and order’ Republican. The contrast between the two personalities could not have been starker. Giuliani lost the election by a thin margin.
Four years later, he ran again this time, leaving nothing to chance, he hired off-duty police officers, firefighters and correction officers to monitor ‘voter fraud’. The Dinkins campaign protested, pointing out that these so called monitors would have the chilling effect of intimidating voters and poll workers, thus interfering with the normal course of the election process.
Giuliani also incited the City Police to riot at a rally near City Hall. In what can be seen as foreshadowing of the January 6th storming of Capitol Hill three decades later, a mob of all-white Police officers descended on City Hall by the thousands, some of them drunk, carrying signs with racist cartoons of Mayor Dinkins calling him among other things “a washroom attendant”.
A young Black police officer named Eric Adams told Newsday that day that the riot was “right out of the 1950s: a drunk, racist lynch mob storming City Hall and coming in here to get themselves a n – – – – -.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/the-forgotten-city-hall-riot.html
The ugly racist tactics worked rallying some white New Yorkers around his candidacy. Giuliani won the election by a narrow margin. His crime fighting policy started with what he called ‘quality of life’ issues by criminalizing pan handlers, squeegees, young men and women hanging out all aimed at Black and Brown New Yorkers. He took credit for the drop in crime statistics although the trend had started under Mayor Dinkins with his policy of community policing.
Giuliani reached the height of his glory immediately following the 9/11 tragedy which he exploited to the maximum promoting himself as efficient city manager in a crisis, a dubious claim, earning the moniker- America’s mayor.
It has been a downhill trajectory for him ever since, starting with his disastrous 2008 presidential campaign to his current role as the bagman for the twice impeached president.
Now, the chickens have finally come home to roost. He is one of 19 co-conspirators, his name appearing right after Trump, for racketeering in a criminal enterprise under RICO Act, the very Act that he used to indict a criminal enterprise of another era -Cosa Nostra. Now in the twilight of his career, in a twist of historical irony, he is indicted for crimes under the RICO Act.
The final act in this drama will likely be a former successful federal prosecutor and a “law and order” mayor finding himself on the other side of the law charged with serious state and federal crimes that may land him behind bars.
Giuliani (in drag) with Trump
Mohammed A. Nurhussein MD
