All Episodes
Previous Next
June 12, 2020 - Rudy Giuliani
47:15
From John Gotti to Recent Riots: The Guardian Angel | Ep. 44
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking that brought us to the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate from the powerful Kingdom of England and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and he explained it in ways that were understandable to the people, to all of the people.
A great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we are able to reason, we're able to talk to each other, we're able to listen to each other, and we're able to analyze.
We are able to apply our God-given common sense.
So let's do it.
Welcome back to Rudy Giuliani's Common Sense.
Thanks.
Today we have with us a true New Yorker, a New York legend, really, Curtis Sliwa, who started the Guardian Angels.
And they've had quite a history.
And it almost seems to me, because I've known Curtis now for 30 years, That this is like, in the words of Yogi Berra, déjà vu all over again.
Yes.
Right?
This is like when we first met.
Yep.
Basically, the streets were out of control.
The police department, possibly for different reasons, but whatever, they weren't able to control the streets.
People desperately needed help, and businesses would call on him to bring the guardian angels in to give him some form of protection.
That happened just last week with these terrible riots.
So, before we get to the recent incidents, tell us a little about the Gattis situation.
The Gattis?
Yeah.
And the Gambinos?
Right.
So John Gattis Sr.
is on trial for the last time.
The fourth time, the one where eventually the Memorex tapes and Sammy the Bogovanov sent him triple life without parole and marry him.
And so every morning, I was home with my wife at the time, of who you had a few battles with on the air when you were running for mayor against Dinkins.
She loved Dinkins.
Hey, Lisa, you couldn't have been more hopelessly wrong on that.
But anyway, so I would do mob talk.
And basically it was like, remember, during the O.J.
trial the next day, you would summarize what had happened.
Right.
So even at that time, the big talk radio host, you ask Sturm, you ask Imus, you ask Bob Grant, you're gonna talk about Cudi, who knows?
And I'd say, talk about him.
I grew up with them.
East New York, Rockaway, Fulton.
I know all about these yadrels, these knuckle-draggers.
So every day, I'd be glambasting them.
And so then they would send their spokespersons off to do interviews.
The little Dulce there.
Yeah, right.
You know, his legal counsel who was fixing juries.
Everybody would come.
And guess who was listening to these programs?
Because they give them an AM radio when you're in the stirrup.
Gotti?
Gotti was listening?
Yeah, Gotti Senior.
So he's on the phone with the underboss, Gotti Junior, saying, hey, shut this guy up.
You see what he's saying about you, your sister, you know what I'm saying, that putain, you know, Victoria.
So he's going crazy.
He says, shut him up.
I don't want to hear this guy anymore.
So in April of 1992, they attacked me with baseball bats outside of Tompkins Square Park.
Where they had the riots with the anarchists, and the only thing Dinkins did was put up a fence.
The fence saved my life.
They trapped me outside of my apartment.
I'm fighting three bat-wielding thugs, right?
And it's the international UN team.
They got McLaughlin, they got Kaplan, they got Rosario.
The Italian, the Irishman, and the German!
They're whooping me, and I'm fighting them off, and then I realize I'm dead.
Right.
So I run across the street, and I scurry over the fence.
Boom!
Beat me up.
Then they pop a donut.
They leave.
Better shut the eff up!
Okay, I'm gone.
I'm on the other side.
I'm bleeding out.
There's a Rastafarian guy who had just sold a nickel-or-dime bag to this white yuppie guy there, and they're looking, and they're paralyzed.
Let's get the cops.
Cops come over from the 9th Precinct.
They had to find the key, open it up.
Hey, I guess you're not Superman, right?
Because the cops didn't like you.
Nice greeting.
So they take me to Beth Israel.
They put the cast on.
And they say, oh, you got to stay here at least a week for observation.
You have a concussion.
I said, what concussion?
I'm going on the air.
I'm telling a story.
So then I told the story that my cousin Butchie had told me years before, Lush and Howard Beach.
But he was at the Silver Fox.
Right.
Disco.
When John Gotti Jr.
came in with Ruggiero and his crew, and they were looking for a guy that they had given a kilo of cocaine to on assignment, consignment.
And they found him.
And so they surround him.
Say, where's the scarro?
Where's the moogish moogah?
And he said, F you and your crew too.
And then Gotti gets a ship, 46 times.
Boom, boom, boom.
Guts him out like a pig.
He's on the floor.
They grab Gotti Jr., throw him in the Lincoln LTD, drive him over to the Bergen Hunt Fish and Shoot Human Beings Club, where his dad is.
Right, right, right, right.
And they say, oh, he just cut it out a guy.
No problem.
We got it.
So all of a sudden, the investigators come over, and one guy in the crowd actually talks.
He said, I saw it.
Gotti Jr.
killed.
That was my best friend.
So now all of a sudden, what happens?
Oh, Gotti Sr.' 's there at the Bergen Hunt Fish and Shoot Human Beings Club.
And who calls him up?
John Santucci, who had those 12-hour lunches at the Altadonna Restaurant across from his mother.
You got a problem.
Your son.
We're gonna get him on a murder app.
Take care of it.
Which he did.
All of a sudden, a few days later, the guy who had confided to the police that he had seen it was hanging from a tree right outside of Aqueduct Racetrack, except his knees were on the ground.
Apparently, according to the coroner, he had committed suicide.
But you know what that was.
They broke his neck, and they hung him, and everyone in the neighborhood knew snitches get stitches and end up in ditches.
Right, right.
There's no doubt about it.
So they took the Code of America.
Right.
My cousin Butchie, though, he had a few cold ones.
He used to like to drink Ballantyne beer.
I don't know where he found Ballantyne beer, but he found it.
And he tells me the story.
So I get on the air that morning.
I'm all busted up.
And you tell the story.
I tell the story and Gotti Senior freaks.
Right, right, right.
yo, that's a murder rap.
There is no statute of limitation.
All of the feds listen to him.
They're going to be coming for you.
This time, you better get him.
And that's when they hatched a plan that they would clip me as I was on my way to WABC
in the morning to do the show with your favorite person, Lisa Sleeper, at the time.
And so I get in the cab early in the morning.
I remember this exactly, sure.
Except it's not a normal yellow cab.
Right.
It's Joey DeAngelo with the wheel, who's the right-hand guy of the rat, Gravano, so he had to prove himself.
And he came from the Carrazzo crew.
Little Nick, Nick Carrazzo, right?
Hey, JoJo Carrazzo.
I grew up with them in Canarsie.
We used to have running battles.
So when Gotti Jr.
said, hey, my dad wants this guy silenced, the Carrazzo said, with pleasure.
Don't worry about payment.
We hate that prick.
So they get Iannotti, who's their gunman, who is known as a machine gun freak, and he's in the front seat underneath the dashboard.
D'Angelo is the driver.
He's driving around.
I jump into the back of the cab.
Hey, Mike, WABC.
And remember, this is 1992, June 19th.
There's potholes everywhere.
You can't find a cab driver that speaks English.
I mean, three days before, they were tending goats outside of Vermont, Jordan, and they get a hack license, right?
So this guy goes, yeah, no problem.
See you again.
I said, wow, this is like Lotto.
I got the New York Daily News, the Post.
I'm reading the sports section.
Weren't suspicious at this point?
No, no.
I'm thinking, like, I hit a lot of them.
I'm lucky.
And then all of a sudden, I said, Madison Square Garden, which is west, because I was on Avenue A, St.
Mark's, at the beginning of the Alphabet Jungle.
And all of a sudden, halfway going north, he goes east.
And I yell at him.
I say, hey, Matt.
I thought you knew where Madison Square Garden is.
This is like Michael Sollozzo and the lieutenant going to New Jersey.
We're going to New Jersey.
Turn the car around.
All of a sudden it's the Bronx, right?
Except in this case, they were taking me over to each side.
They were going to plug me full of bullets, drive me across the Williamsburg Bridge, throw the gun over the side, and then chemically incinerate me in a chop shop there.
This would be a very convenient time to take a short break.
Here where I live in New York City, you see people wearing these more and more as they commute.
They're earbuds from Raycon.
When commuting, you'll see them all over the city.
But they're great to wear right now, from home, on video conference calls, or when you're exercising, or you're watching this video podcast, or if you want to listen to music.
You just put them in, hit the music, and I'm listening to Bocelli's Conte Partero.
You can listen to your favorite music.
Raycon earbuds are really comfortable to wear.
Because they connect by Bluetooth seamlessly, and you're not having to untangle all these headphone wires.
The first time you listen to your favorite music, whether it's opera or something else, you're going to be amazed at how good the sound comes from this little thing.
What Raycon has done is truly amazing.
You get six hours of playing time between charges.
And when you pop them back into the box, it charges efficiently and very, very quickly.
And they're not that expensive.
You're gonna save a lot of money on these.
You buy these online.
Buy Raycon.com slash RIDGID.
That's Raycon.com slash Rudy G. Get them now.
You're going to really enjoy them.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming back.
And this is because you laid out this murder plot on the old man.
Laid out the murder plot, but also I was disparaging them every chance I had.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember.
And this guy acted emotionally.
Right, but you called in one time, Broadcast Plaza, remember?
I remember.
It was about the mob, and I was up there on the stage with the cop, the mob cop, and his mother, you know, who looked like a Sicilian mountain woman, and they were inviting me over for some pasta vaggio.
And Ben said, oh, you got the Gambino's all wrong.
Meantime, they're planning to whack me.
I said, no, no, no, I'll pass on the Paso Vaso.
That's how intense it was then.
And remember, the city was out of control anyway.
So all of a sudden, we're going to the east side.
And I say, hey, Mac, turn this hack around.
And all of a sudden, it's like he's driving Miss Stacy.
He puts the pedal to the metal.
He's hitting every pothole.
Back then, it was a pothole every five inches.
It's like we're going up and down.
And then I realize, uh-oh, I'm trapped.
And all of a sudden, Iannotti, who had been underneath the dashboard, pops up, he's got a .38, and he starts blasting me.
And he's hit me once, he's hit me twice.
Car's moving.
Oh yeah, car's moving.
So I'm like... Where were you exactly?
About B and 8th Street.
Okay, so he's shooting you from front seat, you're in back seat.
Front seat.
Remember, there's no partition because not all cabs have partitions.
That's close range.
Right.
And he's popping, popping me and I realize I got to get out of here.
So I dive for the side door.
I figure I'll dive into oncoming traffic.
I'll take my chances.
And guess what?
They had taken it to the chop shop opposite the right field wall of the O'Shea Stadium.
The son-in-law, Carmine Agnello.
Right, right, right.
They had fixed Yep.
The cab, and they had cut off the handles and put him back home with Krazy Glue.
Because the Carazzo said, Sleeve is crazy.
He's going to fight.
And they told Iannotti, don't shoot him in the head.
You shoot him in the head, you're going to give him a chance to fight back.
So what did Iannotti try to do for a shot?
Right in the head.
You know, he didn't pay attention to the old times.
So at that point, it comes off of my hand.
Boom!
He shoots me through the legs.
So now I've been hit three times.
I'm bleeding out.
Yeah, you're very close to bleeding out, right?
And now I'm jumping at him.
I'm grabbing the gun.
We're holding on to it.
Obviously, he has the advantage.
He's got all the strength, and I'm bleeding out.
And then all of a sudden, I see my radio is on the seat.
I grab my radio.
Guardian Angel.
Guardian Angel.
Code Red.
Code Red.
The driver, D'Angelo, freaks out, thinks maybe that's a police radio.
He takes, he goes up on the sidewalk and then makes a turn, and he's now going towards the Williamsburg Bridge.
And that's when all of a sudden they just start, he poured leather into me again, boom, popped me, and he had the window open on the right-hand side, the front side, the passenger side.
I couldn't see that, I just felt the air, and I said, I gotta take a leap of faith.
So I used the seat as if it were a trampoline, and I dived in the direction of the window.
I made it halfway out the window.
It's like a see-saw.
I could feel the pebbles coming from the asphalt.
The tire's right there.
Boom!
He puts the gun in my back, pops me the fifth time, pushes me out, and they just assume I'm dead.
How high were you?
How high?
How many floors?
When you went out the window, how many floors did you come down?
Well, this one, you know, just right out the window.
Boom!
Onto the asphalt.
But he shot you in the back as you were going out.
Yeah, right through the back.
Right.
So now you're on the ground.
There's a gin mill there where all the Hell's Angels are, right?
They come running out.
They turn me over.
Curtis!
Don't die on us, Curtis!
Right.
So they were the ones, believe it or not, who called.
They surrounded you and got you 9-1-1?
Right.
They surrounded me.
It all came out in court testimony.
Then the meat wagon came.
They put me in a body bag.
They put compression on me because I was bleeding out.
We must have hit every pothole on the way to Bellevue.
And luckily for me, Dr. Leon Pachter and a crew of surgeons were always on call at night because if a police officer got shot in the line of duty, they'd bring him right there.
So instead of a cop, they had Curtis Sliwa, and I remember he was talking to me in my ear.
Where do you think he grew up?
He said, hey, Sliwa, remember me?
I didn't remember.
And then all of a sudden, they're cutting into me because, you know, I'm in bad shape.
Oh, immediate operation, right?
Right.
They put me under.
A day and a half later, I wake up in intensive care.
I got tubes in every orifice of my body.
I wouldn't be alive if not that to keep the toxins out.
It's like a meat locker.
They got a sheet over me.
And I slowly wake up, and who do you think I see to my left?
Ed Koch, my nemesis.
Rudy, I thought I had died and gone straight to hell without an asbestos suit.
Because, you know, he hated the Guardian Angels.
What did he have to say?
Oh, I couldn't hear it at that point.
Then I look over, it's Cardinal O'Connor.
Right.
And he's got the vestments of extra emunctioners.
Yeah, right, right.
He's ready to do the last one.
Right, the last rights.
And then right in the middle is Lisa looking at me and I'm saying, I bet you wish you had a life insurance policy on you now, right?
And you can collect on that payout.
We weren't necessarily getting along all that well.
And I survived.
And then for a year, then I had to go back in another operation.
Three months later, the head of detectives has a press conference and he says, after an exhaustive, intensive investigation, We have determined that Curtis Lieber was not shot by any members of organized crime, not by the Gottis or Gambinos, that it was probably a local issue, you know, with local drug dealers.
Case closed.
I was crestfallen.
Because now people are looking at me like, hmm.
Yeah, make it up.
Right, right.
There was this certain element that would do that.
People were calling me on the radio, because obviously the influence.
How long were you in the hospital?
Over a year, back and forth.
Yeah, I remember visiting you in the hospital.
Yeah, back and forth.
And I'm still doing the radio.
Still throwing thunderbolts at them.
You know, I'd visit Howard Beach.
I think they've given up on you now.
No, well, give it up.
You know, they're hoping.
They're hoping.
They figure they got a new generation, not of Italians, but of thugs in Brownsville and East New York who will do the job.
So how many people do they have nationwide?
Well, we're in New York.
This is where we started, 150.
We're in 13 countries, 130 cities, so there are 5,000 of us.
Did you have to utilize them for some of the other riots around the country?
Uh, yes.
Los Angeles, where they went right to the looting and burning.
Chicago, Chi-Town, where it was completely out of control.
Baltimore, although, notice, no rioting, no looting in Baltimore.
What did they learn from 2015 in 3rd grade?
That gets you nowhere!
Right, right.
So, you've noticed, no rioting.
Detroit, where we have guardian angels and I was there amongst many
riots. Nothing. Why? Because Detroit knows they have nothing left. Then all the burning and looting
got them nowhere. But you know the cities that typically rebound? Where was the looting? LA,
Chicago, New York. I also have to point out they're all ruled by Democrats. Not only
Democrats.
Liberal, left-wing, let-people-out-of-prison type Democrats.
The David Dinkins of their era.
So you have the benefit of having lived through Crown Heights, Washington Heights in the old days.
Crown Heights at the time was described as the worst racial riot in the city in 30 years.
And we haven't had one since then.
So this is now the next group of riots.
How do you compare the two?
Well, I was right in the middle of the Crown Heights.
I know you were.
Because the Lubavitchers at 770 Eastern Parkway, they don't watch TV, but they listen to WABC.
They listen a lot, yeah.
So, with the first night of rampaging and arson that was taking place, they give me a call.
And a lot of people don't realize that at that time, the whole world was watching Gorbachev and his wife, who had been kept in their dacha by the generals.
who took over Russia.
And the fear was the Cold War's coming back.
You know, no Yeltsin had appeared yet to save the day.
So nobody's paying attention to Crown Heights, and a heavy rain had come that night.
So everybody left.
But then, when the sun came up, boom!
They went out into the streets again.
Kill the Jews, kill the Jews.
So the Lubavitch called me and said, Curtis, can you come in here?
They're rioting, they're looting, they're threatening to kill all the Jews.
I said, I can't believe that.
So I told the guard, let's get in the avalanche.
That was our truck at the time.
Let's go in there.
And I see a cauldron of cops, St.
John's Place, all the way down on Linden.
And they're not letting anybody in and out.
But they're not doing anything to stop the rioting.
And then, lo and behold, who do I see?
Right near the precinct in Crown Heights, it's Al Slim, J.D.
Sharpton, and Sonny Carson, the heckle and jackal of marauders.
And they're firing up the crowd, mostly young black And the crowd is throwing things and being violent?
Oh, they're fired up.
Kill the Jews.
Kill the Jews.
Oh my gosh.
So I positioned us right at Kingston and President.
Two blocks from World Lubavitch headquarters.
And now the Lubavitch, they're like couriers.
They're running down to me.
We got a family trapped over in Buffalo.
A family trapped over in Rogers Avenue.
Can you go there, Curtis?
No problem.
Meantime, these thugs, they're in front of us.
Cops are doing nothing.
So I said, put the pedal to the metal.
Turn them into speed bumps.
Boom!
We're hitting!
BAM!
BAM!
People are like, whoa!
Guardian Angels don't play!
Total anarchy.
Totally out of control.
The only time things got back To a level where the cops were allowed to be cops again?
David Dinkins was in the public school on Schenectady.
He was talking to the community and the marauders and rioters, because it was all debris on Eastern Parkway.
They were refixing it.
They start throwing it at the, hey, we want Dinkins.
All of a sudden, Dinkins says, they're coming after me, Mr. Peace, Love, and Happiness.
And he tells the cops, Kelly, who is a deputy commissioner, because out-of-town Lee Brown was out of town, put it down, put the riot down, and the cops went in and kept it quiet.
But we were there for three months around the clock.
The little bobbage to this day, we'll never forget that.
Oh, I know they won't.
And they'll never forget what happened with the pogrom, from their point of view.
It was solely focused on beating hell or killing Jews.
Right, but if you notice, there were other elements of the Jewish community who abandoned the Ultra-Orthodox.
You didn't see the Reform, you didn't see the Conservative, they were like... There was a bit of, we can understand how this can happen to them.
And also, like, why did they stay there?
Because their Rebbe Menachem Schnertzen said, we're not going to Orange County, we're not going to... We're staying right here in Crown Heights.
We're going to improve, not move.
He was right.
And then all of a sudden I see all the other Jews parachuting down like they were members of the Israeli Defense Force.
There was Schumer.
There was Liz Holzman at the time.
All of it.
Oh, we feel it.
I say, where were you when the Lubavitch needed you?
You were there, Rudy.
You were one of the few.
I was there as a civilian.
I was always very close to the Rebbe.
And he asked me to come the second night because he wanted me to make a report directly to the federal government.
Because Bush won, was the president then.
And they kept feeling maybe they would need federal intervention.
So we'll be back with Curtis in a few minutes and we'll talk about All that experience you just heard about, all of a sudden, last four months, it gets repeated all again.
And we'll see how the elder Curtis Leawood deals with it.
You're going to find out it's the same way the young Curtis Leawood dealt with it.
We'll be right back.
When your life is in chaos, your home is your safe haven, your most valuable asset.
Imagine losing your home to some online scammer.
In an instant, you have no place to live, and your home, your security, your nest egg in an emergency isn't yours anymore.
Is this even possible?
In a word, yes.
It's called home title theft, and the FBI calls it one of the fastest growing crimes.
My friends at Home Title Log demonstrated how quickly and easily online scammers can steal our homes.
This is a legal title to a home in California.
All home titles, yours and mine, are vulnerable.
They're kept online, where thieves, foreign and domestic, hunt them.
They simply print your home's title, Forge your signature, stating you sold your home, put a fake notary seal on it, and refile it as the new owner.
In an instant, your home is theirs.
Then they can borrow against it, and you'd be responsible for the payments.
Or they could try to evict you.
I'm serious.
Your bank doesn't cover you, and neither does your homeowner's insurance.
Home Title Lock does.
For pennies a day, Home Title Lock puts a virtual firewall around your home's title.
If some cyber thief tampers with your home's title, they're on it, helping to shut it down before you lose your home.
Here's what I want you to do.
Go to HomeTitleLock.com and register your address to see if you're already a victim and don't know it.
You will receive 30 days of free Home Title Lock protection using the promo code Rudy.
You need to do this now.
Get 30 days of free protection with promo code Rudy at hometitlelock.com.
Well, I think so far you have to have been riveted to listening to Curtis
Lerer.
This guy's had a remarkable career protecting people.
Encouraging young men to do something good with their lives, because a lot of these young men he takes in are probably going to go in a different direction, Curtis, if you didn't get them involved in something to enforce the law.
And it works most of the time.
So that's another contribution that you make.
But I want to get you now to today, because, as I said, it seems like we're right back where we started from.
Oh, absolutely.
And when did you realize That the protest was going to turn into a riot.
Well, you gotta have your boots on the ground.
Because, did you realize that because of Minnesota?
Because of what you saw in Minneapolis?
No.
And the mayor kind of caving in there?
No.
I knew there would be ramifications.
Yeah.
But I knew that L.A.
would be first and foremost, so I was hearing from the guardian angels there.
Right, but you have people in all these places.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody should know that, right?
That they weren't hitting South Central and Watts and Compton now.
They were up on Melrose, Fairfax, near Rodeo Drive, Santa Monica.
So, is this in Antifa?
No, that was straight out black gangs, bloodscripts, realizing, hey, it's time to go get paid.
That's what they were saying in the streets.
Yeah, there were a couple of checks that were caught.
Yeah.
A couple of checks saying, we're going to go for the big money.
Yeah, because remember, one thing LA is, they know how to loot.
We saw that during Rodney King riots.
Better than us.
Right.
Much better.
So now everyone here is watching what's going on there.
And you know, now they got.
They got WhatsApp.
They got instantaneous communication.
So the young gang members here are realizing, A, it's time to get paid.
So you have the demonstrations, no justice, no peace.
They're going all around.
About 4 o'clock, the young ones come.
I could see them coming out of the subway.
They all were dressed similarly.
Black pants, black shoes, black hoodies, and they have the white masks on.
And they're going out in groups of six or eight.
But first, they're scoping.
It's like they got their periscopes up.
And they're walking around.
I could see them near Macy's in Midtown.
I could see them in SoHo.
You could see the difference between them and the other protesters.
Oh, yeah.
And the age.
Most of the protesters were hipsters and millennials.
A lot of whites, too, right?
Yes.
Oh, mixed, mixed.
White, black.
Not too many Hispanics, not too many Asians.
But the young men coming out of the subway with some young women.
African-American, and I recognize, yo, yo, yo, Brooklyn, Brooklyn in the house!
Yeah, Brooklyn, in the projects!
See, that's how you get them, because it flags up.
They're proud of where they're from.
Mostly Brooklyn, some the Bronx, and they just came out of the subways, and they're walking around, and they're mixing in with the demonstrations.
No justice, no peace.
Meantime, they're looking around and checking their technology.
So, six o'clock, now they start roaming.
Six o'clock at night.
Right.
And they get in the city bikes.
And they get in the little scooters that you could rent.
And they're going all over.
And they target one, target two, target three, target four.
And they're already agreeing amongst one another.
Let's not fight.
There's plenty of loot here.
You go east, we'll go west.
Were they looking to make a score?
I mean, some of that was...
Someone said they took $2 million worth of watches.
Oh, yeah!
They knew where all the good... I mean, that's big money.
That's not just looting money.
They weren't hitting dollar stores.
No.
They weren't hitting dollar stores.
Some of this is to fund their operations.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's stuff that you could trade out in the street for cash.
Yeah, that's what it looked like to me.
It looked like a... Compared to our old riots, where they just trashed an entire block, they'd even leave stores alone.
They didn't think they'd make much.
They'd go three stores, they'd be fine, and all of a sudden, boom, open, took everything out.
They didn't burn them out.
You see, in LA, they were burning them out.
Back in the blackout, 77.
Waste of time.
No, but they knew they would restock and maybe come back again.
See, they're thinking like capitalists now.
They're not thinking like just terrorists.
Who organized this?
The leaders of the gangs.
The gangs in New York?
Yes, the gangs in New York.
And what's Antifa's role here?
Antifa is that they provide the information of how to be more successful.
So when I was growing up in the 60s, and you had a lot of radicals running the street, their Bible was the anarchist cookbook.
A lot of them had the anarchist cookbook.
They never made bombs, but you saw the way they're underground.
They'd end up blowing themselves up.
Black Liberation Army.
That was their manifesto.
So Antifa provides all the information, but you don't have to go out and get it in a book.
It's all online.
Antifa's mostly white.
A lot of them are from the suburbs.
But all of a sudden, just like you had the Weather Underground join the Black Liberation Army and declare war on America.
And notice, they knew, like Willie Sutton, where's all the money?
Brings trucks in the banks.
Yeah, definitely.
When I got to see them, they were definitely peaceful protesters.
Younger than I remembered.
Middle class to upper middle class, both black and white.
Yes.
These aren't people from the ghetto and the poor neighborhoods by and large.
smarter and Had a plan. Yes. It wasn't a perfectly executed plan, but
but it was a plan They knew what they were doing. They knew where we're going
and they look for they knew the property they wanted. Yep Now then that you had the next layer with the looters this
time around Guys coming in from Newark, and they were carjacking cars there.
And we're talking high-end cars, Beamers and Benzes.
So they're driving through the Holland Tunnel, and it's just like in the jungle.
So the lions go in.
They pry open the pyewood.
They bust the glass.
They chop the locks.
They pour in.
That's the first wave from Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Then after they've had their bellies full, they leave.
But there's still a lot of apparel.
A lot of stuff inside.
That's where the guys from Newark roll up the cars, the beaters in the benches, grab it, throw it in the trunk, throw it in the back, and then they drive back through the Holland Tunnel back.
Now, we found, like, three cars from New Jersey.
Unfortunately, Rudy, I don't know how it happened, but all the tires were flattened.
You know, maybe the air was let out, but apparently some guys in red berets and red sateen jackets knew exactly that they were not gonna get away with the loot.
These cars were packed with loot, and we made sure they weren't going to get back to Newark.
So what did they end up doing?
They probably took the PATH train home, right?
So remember, they didn't close the veins and arteries to the city.
So their focus, stop the demonstrators coming over the Manhattan Bridge.
Okay, I get that.
But they didn't stop anybody from coming in from Newark or Paterson who knew that there was a payday and a pecking order.
And again, they all communicate.
It was all quite civil amongst them because they said, there's plenty of loot, there's plenty of dough, no need to be battling one another because normally they'd start fighting one another because it would be survival of the fittest, aren't we?
You didn't have to this time.
A little mutt in scale, right?
Little peewee, 13, 14, who would normally have to wait back.
For the older teenagers?
Nah, they'd just wait.
They'd be happy.
They'd be roaming around.
Okay, our turn.
And then on their bicycles, they'd go in and they'd scoop out.
And the reason they hit Macy's and went in there and busted it up?
So they could bring stuff home to mom.
There's nothing in Macy's for young people.
This is for older people.
Because notice, I always say, how could so many young teenagers be out?
Dressed all in black with backpacks.
And you see them with baseball bats.
They never played baseball in their life.
You see them with lock cutters.
You see them with all kinds of burglar tools.
And you mean to tell me their mother or father didn't know where they were going?
And even if they went out the first night, you ain't going out.
I'm sheltering you in.
You're staying in the house.
Now, during the pandemic, you didn't see young people running the streets.
Somebody was keeping them at home.
How come they weren't being kept at home When the parents knew there was looting going on.
Isn't that the core of the big problem?
Why aren't they being kept at home?
Let's be real here.
No father.
Let's be real here.
A lot of this is unsupervised childhood.
There's no parental control.
We see that in the schools.
So we blame the teachers.
We blame the educators.
There's no control in the streets.
So who do we blame?
Who's the first line of defense?
The cops.
Let's have midnight basketball again.
Yeah, Bill Clinton.
That did a lot of good.
Midnight freakin' basketball!
Where is that gonna get you?
What these young people need... Well, I think they want to do that again.
They need charter schools.
Look, in those same neighborhoods, those same kids, they go to charter schools, they're on their way to college and better education.
We gotta get to your incident.
Sure.
How do you end up where you were And the fight takes place.
What brings you there?
Monday night, the looting.
So Monday night, we had already had... Is that the Monday after the first weekend of...?
Yeah.
And that was the worst night of looting.
That's the one where they... Things were still very bad.
The cops were still being held back.
Told, stand down.
Before Cuomo and everybody else beat them up.
Right.
Stand down.
And so Macy's Herald is invaded.
And I knew the Macy's was going to get invaded, because earlier that morning on my way to WABC, I see all the plywood around.
I say, they know they're going to get hit.
They're the crown jewel.
If you can invade Macy's, you basically say we control the city.
This is like out of The Warriors.
I don't know if you ever saw that cult classic about gangs, where the charismatic leader of the gang, Cyrus, assembles all the gangs to Van Cortlandt Park.
And he says, there's three of us for every one of the cops.
We can control the city!
That's what it reminded me of.
Right, right.
They felt that way, you think?
Yeah.
They controlled the city.
Particularly when the cops were... It was absurd.
The cops were observers.
Yes.
Instead of interfering in the crime, you'd see a guy walk out with a bunch of dresses from the store, and the cop is watching.
Bunch of liquor from the store, cop is watching.
Now, having seen riots before in New York City, I'd say, where's the mounted units?
They're the best.
There's 55 professional mounted cops.
Well, I... First time I looked at it, I said, OK, the horses are coming in soon.
Because it was a big, big crowd.
It was clear that, let's call them the agitators, mixed in with the peaceful ones.
Some of the peaceful ones became agitators.
So before you go too far with everyone's peaceful, some of the agitators got the peaceful ones to join.
But if you're on a horseback, you can see that.
You can see the guy getting the Molotov cocktail together.
You can see the guy taking the rock and putting it in the thing.
And Rudy, having been at the Tompkins Square Park riots with the anarchists there, when the horse comes with the cop, everybody runs!
Nobody stands!
All you do is you put your plainclothes in there, give them a little receiver, The guy on horseback has a little radio, and he says, hey, the guy to your left, he's putting together a Molotov cocktail.
Now, this is the other thing.
You mentioned undercover.
Bam!
Grab him!
How stupid was this?
On that Saturday before the Sunday where the looting started, they have guys with orange fluorescent armbands, the undercover.
So naturally, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, they're taking pictures, spreading it around.
Why would you have undercover cops with the color of the day, orange fluorescent?
Right, right.
Crazy!
Then, drones.
We have 20 NYPD drones at Floyd Bennett Field next to the helicopters.
Didn't use them?
They use drones for all kinds of crimes.
They didn't use them?
Not at all.
How about the helicopters?
The helicopters, yeah, but they're too high.
The drones could have gone.
Oh no, you bring them down!
Right, and they could have followed the looters and they alerted the police.
They didn't use the drone.
And you know whose decision that was?
That's how we ended the 100-man march.
Right.
But you know whose decision that was.
It wasn't Dermot Shea.
It wasn't Monahan.
It was the mayor.
The mayor didn't want the horses.
Remember, that's how he got elected.
Remember what he said?
We don't want horses in Central Park.
He was afraid of the animal people.
Exactly.
And then the drones.
Oh, that's militaristic.
And what about the helicopter?
Too noisy?
Yeah, they were up there.
But again, you know, he didn't have them dissent.
You bring them down and they leave.
Well, that's what happened in Tompkins Square Park.
That's also what I did.
That's how it came down.
The Million Man March was scheduled from noon to four.
I went to court.
We tried to get it prohibited.
We lost.
Ha ha.
We really won.
Because we got a time limit placed on it.
And a space limit placed on it.
Four o'clock, I get a call.
And the call is from Chief Hale.
And the chief says, Mayor, they'd like 15 more minutes.
I said, why?
I said, the microphone wasn't working in the first 15.
I said, tough shit.
At 1 minute to 5, you begin.
And at 5 o'clock, get them out.
I said, it's going to be hard.
I said, I have a surprise for you.
Just trust me.
All of a sudden, four helicopters are coming down, like really low, almost like they're coming down the block.
And I think they thought we were going to spray them.
They start yelling.
I won't say the words that we're using, but he's going to spray us!
He's going to spray us!
He's going to spray us with that!
We were having West Nile virus then.
He's going to spray us with the West Nile virus stuff and it kills you!
It doesn't kill you.
They all ran away.
Well, you know, the term they have for it, they call them ghetto birds.
When the helicopters come down.
They don't like those.
But tell me, the store that you were protecting, how did you pick that store?
How did you know that was going to be a target?
Well, I saw... Not every store was a target.
But I saw the looters were circling, you know, like they were looking at shops.
This particular footlocker.
And then I figured it out because they had broken in the first time and we fought them off 35.
This was 8 o'clock at night, Tuesday night.
And I go inside and I see they had grabbed some of the loot, but we forced them to drop it before they left.
And then I see in the back all of the limited edition Nike sneakers.
This is like treasure.
So how much did they cost?
Oh, hundreds of dollars.
Colin Kaepernick, limited edition.
Michael Jordan, LeBron James, limited edition.
All the sneakers back there.
That is like... So the boys would know that?
Oh, they not only knew it, they told us they were coming back.
And I told us, there were only six of us, they're coming back.
They mean it.
Let's see.
Let's see if we can look at it.
So this is the first round, Curtis?
Yes.
So you've got about six guys there, right?
Right.
Did you select these guys on purpose, who have been through this kind of thing before?
Some of them are veterans, but some of them are rookies.
And so they came in waves.
You had a couple of big guys there.
The looters who tried to get through first, and that's when you noticed we were exchanging blows.
They picked up a city bike.
Who's this guy talking to?
in the head.
They thought that was this guy talking.
I think that's just a journalist.
But the point is they're conking me in the head with the city bike and thought that that would knock me out.
And then all of a sudden, we're just battling them.
And I guess they realized they weren't going to get in but they told me they were coming back and an hour later Rudy
they came back with 300 right 300.
And they were intent on looting.
It wasn't until 11.15 that night.
They hit you with a bicycle here.
Bicycle.
Then later on, they hit me with a ball-peen hammer.
They fractured my jaw.
And one of your colleagues got even worse.
One of my colleagues, Aram, he had a busted eye socket, broken nose, 48 stitches.
But he took a licking and came back ticking.
We did not surrender one inch.
I gotta ask you, how do you get them to do that?
I mean, basically, they don't have guns.
Right.
They don't have arms.
You teach them martial arts purely defensive, so if they are hit, they can defend themselves.
They don't have to just take the hitting.
Is that right?
There's no doubt.
We're not just eyes and ears, as you know.
We see there's a crime.
We're going to get physical.
Right.
And you've got to be out there.
I don't want it ever said, oh, well, Curtis, you don't know what's going on now.
You live in the past.
They see me out there, and they know all these thugs are coming for me, because this will be the big notch on the belt.
Take out the leader of the guardian angels.
Of course.
Of course.
Of course, this would be great to go back to the gangs.
Yo, we took out Sliwa!
That stupid white boy.
It's time to hang it up and retire.
I'm never retiring until I'm in a pine box.
Maybe in Potter's Field is the way I'm going.
Sounds like he's better than ever.
Oh, there's no way.
Let me ask you a couple of quickies so we can get to the end.
Defunding the police.
They voted to defund the police in Minneapolis.
They've got, I don't know the exact number, they got about 30 Democratic cities, Democratic councils and mayors, they're going to either get rid of the police, replace them with social workers, health workers, and I don't know who else.
Then we have the defunding the police.
We're going to cut the police in half.
We're going to give all that money to Midnight Basketball.
That's right.
Because that cures you, Midnight Basketball.
Oh, yeah.
What's going on?
This is crazy, isn't it?
Totally crazy.
Well, first off, you know, Rudy, everything's going to be defunded.
There's no money out there.
The pandemic, there wasn't enough money.
So they want to put a spin on that?
Of course.
We did it.
We saved you.
But now, you know what's going to happen.
If, having reduced murder with more cops, I can tell you, if they took half the cops out of Harlem, murder would go up.
Oh, absolutely.
30, 40%.
It's already going up.
Absolutely.
It's already going up.
Just the other night we had, what, how many shootings?
12 shootings?
12 shootings.
Within a block.
And mostly Brownsville, Flatbush, and Bedside.
Which was always the worst area.
High crime areas.
But I'll tell you this much.
I like the Minneapolis idea.
You know, I have guardian angels in Minneapolis.
So now, if I visit and I get shot, I'll have, all of a sudden, an EMT come and resuscitate me so I don't die in the street and bleed out.
And then a social worker says, you know, in Minneapolis, we have a victim's compensation fund.
We'll be able to see if there's any funds available for it.
And who's going to get the guys who shot me?
Who's going to stop the next guy from shooting other people?
You mean they come and they focus on the victim?
Yeah.
And nobody goes after the bad guy?
No!
Uh-oh.
They're wayward youth.
They're misunderstood youth.
It's all part of the oppression.
Well, would they write for them and turn themselves in?
Well, of course!
There's no bail!
I know, we're laughing about this.
There's no bail!
But this is anarchy.
There's no jails!
They don't want jails.
Look, AOC.
The acronym is All Out Crazy.
She doesn't want cops.
She wants abolished police.
Remember, what they have on their signs.
Abolished police.
Abolished jails.
Abolished ICE.
No borders.
That is the recipe for total anarchy and the destruction of America that you love and I love and everyone has grown in.
It would not be the America that we know.
De Blasio released how many just for the pandemic?
About 8,000?
Yep.
About 8,000 for the pandemic.
He said they were nonviolent.
Yeah.
But then when you saw the crimes committed, we had a rape by a guy who was convicted of rape.
Yep.
How do you let a rapist out of prison?
I mean, a rapist.
What does a rapist do?
Almost by instinct.
He rapes!
Of course.
And he did.
And notice, where did they do their pillaging and commit their violence and rape?
In the hood, in the black and Hispanic communities, they are the ones who are going to suffer the most.
So you may think that policing, ultra-policing, is aimed at your neighborhoods.
Without the police, when you call 911, who the hell is going to show up?
Well, I mean, a massive reduction in police is a death sentence for the black community.
It's a death sentence.
There's no doubt.
It's going to reflect itself.
You reduce the cops by 50% in Harlem, the murders are going to go up by 20 or 30%.
And if black people kill black people, they don't kill white people.
But most of these police commissioners, like in Minneapolis, they're black.
So the leadership police departments are black.
They hate blue.
It has nothing to do with black people.
They hate police because the police are the only thing standing between them and them destroying our way of life here in America.
It's the police.
It must be.
You know, when I was mayor, I used to have relationships below that.
I don't have as many of them now except my friends.
One of the things we always relied on, because we never had a riot, We had great relationships with the people I would describe as below the surface.
People who go to church on Sunday, the people who run the businesses, the Rudy Washingtons.
We could go to them if there was going to be a bad situation and they could take it down because they're the ones who knew that they were going to continue to live there and they had a certain amount of street creds That you've got to find the right people in these neighborhoods.
You need to know who to talk to.
I don't get the sense that de Blasio does any of that.
If you go to church now, de Blasio wants to arrest you.
Not having the church open.
Not having the churches open.
I know they sometimes attack the black church and say, they don't do enough.
That's half the story.
Some do a lot.
And I can tell you, we talked our way out of two, three Riots, disturbances, through ministers you'd never expect.
Well, let me leave you on this note.
Even some of those that had, like, some of those who had very, very crazy rhetoric, you sat them down.
Yep.
And you said, hey, your church may go.
Right.
But let me leave you on this note.
We're sitting here on a day where Curtis Sleeper, remember, went swimming in Coney Island.
That was considered a violation.
It's 90 degrees.
It's humid.
You can't swim.
You can't go to a playground.
You can't go to a bar.
You can't go to a club.
You can't do anything.
They gotta open up New York City and allow us to live life again.
And I tell you, these demonstrations will shrink.
Because one of the reasons they're so large, and they're endless, they're morning, noon, and night, these young people have nothing to do!
There's nothing out there!
So this becomes a social event!
You come out here, it's...
It's in the news.
It's a happening thing.
People are excited.
So get back to a normal life and people will return to a normal life.
So that's what I'm intent on doing.
Look, I never wore a mask and I never socially distanced myself.
And now all of a sudden they're saying, yeah, yeah, maybe.
Maybe we were wrong for the last three months.
They destroyed our city.
De Blasio has destroyed the city that you rebuilt, Rudy.
But I got to run now, Rudy, because I got to go to WABC.
You go ahead.
You do that great show because you're helping to keep the city together.
And we can't give up.
We've got to keep fighting back.
And having you on the front line makes me very confident.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, Rudy.
God bless you, Chris.
Appreciate that.
▲
Export Selection