I knew this was going to happen. For 20 years, it was clear that he had lost access to City Hall. Former Mayor Giuliani told him directly in his first few months that he was no longer welcomed at City Hall. And former Mayor Bloomberg made a point to exclude him. When our new Mayor de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray appointed his long time assistant at the National Action Network as her chief of staff at the cushy $170K salary, I knew he was back. If you haven't already guessed, "he" is Al Sharpton. And now Mayor de Blasio has made it clear that Al is back and has a seat at the table.
Let's take a trip to yesteryear...{{{{{wooooo...wooooooo....dissolve to...}}}} Oooh, the early '90's in New York. I remember this time! Cool! This was the time where you couldn't walk around Manhattan without fear of becoming a statistic! Cool! David Dinkins was Mayor and Al Sharpton was his best buddy! Protests, riots, general mayhem, and a peak of 2,224 murders in 1991! Good times.
It all came to a grand crescendo on August 19, 1991 in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) when a boy named Gavin Cato was accidentally struck and killed by a car driven by a Jewish man. Four days of riots ensued urged on by the Rev. Al Sharpton (and weakly discouraged by Mayor Dinkins) ending with the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum, an innocent Australian rabbinical student innocently walking down a Crown Heights street.
Dinkins lost his reelection bid in 1994 to Rudy Giuliani claiming it was because of racist voters (a claim he still makes to this day, by the way). So Rudy came in as a former US District Attorney and with the help of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and then by Ray Kelly, set about cleaning the city up. Block by block, they cleaned up the streets and crime went down.
But fearing that he had not done enough damage and probably because he thought Rudy would see the light, Rev. Al staged another protest in 1995. This time against a Jewish landlord who was trying to evict a black business owner to expand another business of Jewish tenant and owner of Freddie's Fashion Mart. Yeah, this was Rev. Al's rally cry -
Unfortunately, the protest turned violent (again), when one of the protesters entered Freddie's Fashion Mart and shot several people and then set the place on fire. Six employees died of smoke inhalation and the shooter killed himself. Al's only regret was using the term "white interloper".
Rudy didn't back down from his crusade of ridding the city of crime. He, Bratton and Kelly were so successful that the tourists started pouring in. Times Square morphed from some post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie into Disneyland. [Maybe they overshot the mark] Mayor Bloomberg continued with Ray Kelly and lowered violent crime to less than 300 murders in 2013.
{{{{woooo....wooooooo....dissolve to....}}}
Now Bill de Blasio is Mayor and Al Sharpton is his point man in all things racial. Oh, and violent crime is up 25% in just 8 months! Rev. Al is staging a protest on August 23 in Staten Island to protest the death of a long time petty criminal at the hands of the police. The good times are back.
Oh, there's still some good news! Bill Bratton is back as Police Commissioner. That's something, right?
CORRECTION: I have been spelling our new Mayor's last name incorrectly. It's "de Blasio", not "DiBlasio".
Let's take a trip to yesteryear...{{{{{wooooo...wooooooo....dissolve to...}}}} Oooh, the early '90's in New York. I remember this time! Cool! This was the time where you couldn't walk around Manhattan without fear of becoming a statistic! Cool! David Dinkins was Mayor and Al Sharpton was his best buddy! Protests, riots, general mayhem, and a peak of 2,224 murders in 1991! Good times.
It all came to a grand crescendo on August 19, 1991 in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) when a boy named Gavin Cato was accidentally struck and killed by a car driven by a Jewish man. Four days of riots ensued urged on by the Rev. Al Sharpton (and weakly discouraged by Mayor Dinkins) ending with the stabbing death of Yankel Rosenbaum, an innocent Australian rabbinical student innocently walking down a Crown Heights street.
Dinkins lost his reelection bid in 1994 to Rudy Giuliani claiming it was because of racist voters (a claim he still makes to this day, by the way). So Rudy came in as a former US District Attorney and with the help of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and then by Ray Kelly, set about cleaning the city up. Block by block, they cleaned up the streets and crime went down.
But fearing that he had not done enough damage and probably because he thought Rudy would see the light, Rev. Al staged another protest in 1995. This time against a Jewish landlord who was trying to evict a black business owner to expand another business of Jewish tenant and owner of Freddie's Fashion Mart. Yeah, this was Rev. Al's rally cry -
"We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."
Unfortunately, the protest turned violent (again), when one of the protesters entered Freddie's Fashion Mart and shot several people and then set the place on fire. Six employees died of smoke inhalation and the shooter killed himself. Al's only regret was using the term "white interloper".
Rudy didn't back down from his crusade of ridding the city of crime. He, Bratton and Kelly were so successful that the tourists started pouring in. Times Square morphed from some post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie into Disneyland. [Maybe they overshot the mark] Mayor Bloomberg continued with Ray Kelly and lowered violent crime to less than 300 murders in 2013.
{{{{woooo....wooooooo....dissolve to....}}}
Oh, there's still some good news! Bill Bratton is back as Police Commissioner. That's something, right?
CORRECTION: I have been spelling our new Mayor's last name incorrectly. It's "de Blasio", not "DiBlasio".
Oy.
ReplyDeleteBev, A drop from 2224 murders to 300 should be enough to ensure no rational people would ever want a return to the bad old times. But then, we know that too many people aren't all that rational. How sad. And how despicable that people like Al are so willing to play with people's lives to aggrandize themselves.
ReplyDeleteAl Sharpton doesn't put out fires, he starts them, so putting him in charge of anything is insanely stupid. Putting him inside the circles of power is just going to help him start fires easier.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I don't have too much more respect for Bloomberg's judgement. Maybe the guy whose absolutist stance on soda (banning the big gulp) is a guy perfectly willing and able to draw a line for police power, but I doubt it.
Bloomberg gave cops a lot more leeway to make stops than Giuliani ever did (they increased from 100K a year to 685K a year). In 2011 (de Blasio's peak year) those 685,000 stops resulted in only 770 gun seizures.
Give a individual or a group unlimited power (or money) its not going to be used judiciously, it is going to be used whimsically. The downside of limiting absolute power is there is an adjustment period as one learns to deal with limits. Under de Blasio stop and frisk is still employed twice as much as it was under Giuliani but of course, that limit may still chafe cops who grew accustomed to the free reign Bloomberg gave them.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/06/26/nypd-analyzing-consequences-of-decline-in-stop-and-frisk/
He has previously said he didn’t believe there was a link between the drop in stops and an increase in shootings. Overall, stop-and-frisk numbers dropped last year from 533,000 to 194,000. Still, whatever rules are in force could be unnecessarily burdensome (I would expect no less from a guy who puts Al Sharpton in a position of responsibility).
That race baiting old SOB just makes me sick. I absolutely cannot get over how the American media gives him, Jesse Jackson and others so much leeway to lie.
ReplyDeleteAndrew - Oy is right. And you are right, there are very few rational people in NYC government right now. They are all taking a page from the Obama playbook. Make a mess and then demonize any opposition as [fill-in-the-blank] for complaining. But with Sharpton it just happens to turn deadly when he gets involved. He's heading off to Missouri to help with the riots there.
ReplyDeleteIf only Sharpton would spend his time within the black communities of NY trying to stop the black on black violence. But he never does do a damn thing about staging marches to stop that.
Anthony - One of the problems with the stop/frisk issue is that it was used in high crime areas. Those high crime areas are also mostly Black & Hispanic neighborhood. So when Al Sharpton joined in the chorus to have it stopped, the courts agreed. Then took the courts took it one step further and rules that individuals with a grievance could sue the cops. De Blasio opened that door by approving a $100million settlement which has opened the flood gates. It is open season on cops to force them to do something so someone can hit the lottery. Everyone has a grievance...yet the murder rate has gone up dramatically since the use of it has gone down. Those fine upstanding gangbangers who kept their weapons at home are now free to pack their heat. And if they get frisked they can just scream "injustice" and get a payoff from De Blasio....good time.
ReplyDeleteAnd trust me, I monitor the daily court filings...
Bev, It's always easier to complain about the cops than it is to try to fix the underlying problem. Besides, attacking black violence wouldn't fit with his mission of black victimization.
ReplyDeleteBev,
ReplyDeleteThe racial profiling aspect of stop and frisk is not something I have an issue with, its the fact that only 1 in 1000 people stopped were carrying. That indicates that either the cops were searching people in high crime areas indiscriminately (theoretically they were supposed to have probable cause) or they were very bad at their jobs.
If you put speed cameras on every street in NY and decided to prosecute people for anything the cameras detected (from littering to murder) you would no doubt bring down the crime rate, but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to accept said cameras. Probably not many.
Andrew, this is how stupid it is getting. In the final days of the Bloomberg administration when it was obvious that regime change was imminent, the Studen....er City Council passed an ordinance that "perps" can no longer be describe in racial terms. So now if there is a news report, text alert or newspaper "be on the lookout" report for say a rapist in an area, we get descriptions like this "male, approx. 5'9" approx. age 19-49 wearing a Yankees t-shirt and blue jeans". All I can do I stare at the complete stupidity of the report as it narrows it down to about 6 million people. Well, and one assumes that after committing a crime, one would probably change one's clothes...in this case to a Red Sox t-shirt to throw the cops off the scent.
ReplyDeleteAnthony - "If you put speed cameras on every street in NY and decided to prosecute people for anything the cameras detected (from littering to murder)"
ReplyDeleteThey already do...
I understand and so did Ray Kelly. He admitted that the police were being overly aggressive and was pro-active with the complaints and moved swiftly to correct the problem. But that is not what the likes of Al Sharpton wanted. They want something to complain about to distract from the real problem. That 75% of the violent crime in NYC is perpetrated by and AGAINST minorities. Al and his ilk have done NOTHING to address that problem...nothing.
I was a teenager visiting my brother in NYC for the tall ships in '76. One evening, shortly after dark, we needed something from the local quickie mart so I volunteered to go.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got there, I noticed a twenty-something woman walking up behind me, so I stepped back and held the door for her. She stopped in her tracks. She stared at me. She started to look frightened. It scared the hell out of me and I was afraid she'd scream, so I said, "I'm sorry. I'm from Ohio and I don't know what I'm doing!"
She smiled then and said, "Okay, thanks!" And she walked into the store.
NYC is where I started carrying my wallet in a front pocket and where I learned to stand no closer than my height to the edge of a subway platform.
Still, I kinda love that city a little.
if Al can make it there, he can make it anywhere (well except on Fox I suppose.) Gotham, sadly, is controlled by kooks, and it takes incredible perserence for folks like yourself to remain there
ReplyDeleteI just read that Lauren Bacall has died. I made a costume for her years ago for a movie. What a classy lady. I hope she and Bogey are dancing together in Heaven tonight. RIP.
ReplyDeleteLauren Bacall was one classy lady...I still love her films...
ReplyDeleteApparently, too many NYC voters have short memories so they'll fall prey to more unintended consequences (higher crime) once again.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the lower crime rates were too boring for them. Sadly, a lot of people who know it will only get worse under DeBlasio's old and discredited plans will suffer too.
Stay safe, Bev!
Lauren Bacall was indeed a classy lady. Great actress too.
ReplyDeleteOne last note on Bacall: There's a story in one of the Bogart biographies how when he was suffering from the cancer that would soon kill him, Bacall stayed home every night with him and their children. One of the couple's friends chided him about that a bit, saying something like, "I'm sure Betty could use a night off." Bogie's response: "She's my wife, so she stays home with me. Maybe that's how you tell the ladies from the broads in this town."
ReplyDelete