We Could Have It Worse

Los Angeles certainly has had its police problems, and the stress of the Rampart scandal has hardly been the finest hour for Mayor Richard Riordan, Police Chief Bernard Parks or Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. But nothing those leaders could do in their wildest dreams would inflame a situation as Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has done in New York.

Giuliani seems to have developed a routine for dealing with situations in which city police officers shoot someone. It goes something like this: Defend the police; dig up as much dirt as you can on the fellow the cops just shot; defend the police; shoot from the hip--verbally speaking--and disparage the dead or wounded fellow as much as possible.

Now, Giuliani’s lighter-fuel politics have finally become worrisome even to law and order conservatives, Republican strategists and officeholders as well as the Giuliani Democrats who helped propel him to the mayor’s office. The latest example involves Patrick Dorismond, a black security guard who was slain by New York police on March 16 as he tried to hail a cab. Dorismond was the fourth unarmed black man shot dead by New York police in a little more than a year.

The circumstances are in dispute. By some accounts, Dorismond was shot after a plainclothes narcotics officer approached him outside a bar on Eighth Avenue and asked if Dorismond knew where to buy marijuana. But there was no doubt in Giuliani’s quick-tempered mind.

The mayor, while cautioning others against jumping to conclusions, almost immediately released Dorismond’s court-sealed juvenile arrest record. Saying Dorismond was “no altar boy,” Giuliani described him as prone to violence.

This has a familiar ring. There was Giuliani last year, blaming the mother of a 16-year-old shot by police, saying she shouldn’t have allowed her son to be out so late.

Associates of New York Gov. George Pataki, a fellow Republican, said the governor was “perplexed” by the mayor’s handling of the situation. Others called Giuliani--who, of course, is running for the U.S. Senate against First Lady and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton--his own worst enemy.

That’s for sure, but the political damage Giuliani is doing to himself holds no interest for most. The damage he is doing to the relationship between New York’s minority community and the police actually does matter. His knee-jerk attempts to support the police come off as mindless attempts to justify virtually anything the police do. It’s shamefully divisive and irresponsible.

So the next time you wonder why Los Angeles officials just can’t seem to get along, just remember there’s a loudmouth mayor back East who makes our leaders look absolutely circumspect.