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Feb. 2, 2023 - Rudy Giuliani
45:21
Anatomy of a ‘proper’ police take down. | Guest: Howard Safir | Feb 2 | Ep 310
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It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
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.
Hello again, this is Rudy Giuliani and I'm back with another episode of Rudy's Common Sense.
Today, of course, we'll focus on the horrific incident involving the ultimate murder of Tyree Nichols in Memphis.
There's so much that's been said about it, so much that's been written about it, and we certainly don't want to overdo it, but I don't think you can, because we have to learn from it.
And I think I have with me the person, I know I have with me the person from whom we can learn the most, because he's actually done it, handled situations like this, and sort of set the model for how it should be done.
And while he was on television the other night describing it just off the top of his head, I was watching, just coincidentally, his police department, the one that he trained, doing it right.
So I thought it would be very useful if we had former New York City Commissioner Howard Safer, who was also the deputy director and head of the United States Marshal Service, and way back himself, a street Officer in the very, very tough former Bureau of Narcotics and now the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Howard has probably the widest experience with law enforcement.
That you can possibly imagine.
I go back with Howard to the days of his establishing the Witness Protection Program.
Yes, he established the Witness Protection Program.
His taking over jurisdiction for the U.S.
Marshals of catching fugitives, in which they quickly outdid the record of the FBI, which created all kinds of internal issues.
And he was both my fire commissioner and he reformed the fire department.
I'm good, Rudy.
Commissioner, he brought down crime by amounts that today would be astonishing.
Astonishing. But let's get on this focus on this. Howard, how are you? I'm good,
Rudy. Good to be with you. Always good being with you.
Howard, when you first saw this whole situation with Mr. Nichols and the tapes,
When were you first aware of it?
Was it earlier or when they put out the one-hour tapes and the two or three critical ones?
No, it was earlier.
I saw the first tape and saw the first reports and immediately I knew this was a bad one.
Okay, so back at the beginning you had a sense.
I mean, I should tell people he has a I guess you'd imagine that.
The man is a law enforcement professional forever and one of the best.
And whenever we would have these situations, he'd always advise me as the mayor as to what we had.
Like, we have a very bad one.
We've got a good one that's going to be a little tough, but the cop actually did everything right.
Or we got one we just can't tell.
So let's use the system for what it's meant for.
Let's step back.
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, presumption of innocence, and let's watch it play out.
If they're bad, we'll put them away forever.
If they're good, we'll make it up to them.
I mean, he has an erring judgment about this, and after working with him for so many years, I hate to say this, but I don't think he's ever was wrong.
So, Howard, so the first impression, what did you get to see in that first one?
Because I got to see very little of it, the first, until the other night.
And, of course, my prejudices, I have to admit, are always with the police because so often it's exaggerated and it turns out not to be as bad.
But I have to tell you, although you didn't talk to me, it was almost like you did.
I said, I think Howard would tell me, watch out on this one, Mayor.
Don't go too far out on this one.
We may have a problem.
Am I right?
Absolutely.
You know, when I first heard the first reports, instinctively I thought it would be bad, but I said, you know, let's see what happens.
But when I saw the second tape, you know, that's the best evidence.
The fact is you have a bunch of criminals in police uniforms murdering a man.
And you know me, Rudy.
You know me.
I'm always the first one to defend cops when they're right.
And when they're accused and they're being accused wrongly, I'm the first one to say they're being accused wrongly.
Unfortunately, that's not the case here.
You know, if you really defend cops, if that's your real goal, you've got to condemn the cops for doing the wrong thing.
Otherwise, you're not defending them.
You can get them killed.
Absolutely.
I mean, if they're allowed to run wild and the people who support them don't stand up and say, no, that's wrong, you're going to have a real problem in this country.
Real problem.
Absolutely.
You know, the most important thing is to get community trust.
And if the community thinks you're an occupying army that's going to be brutal, then you're not going to get cooperation, you're not going to solve crimes. So, you know,
it has to be a balance as you know, because we went through that balance when we were in office.
There has to be a balance between assertive policing and community policing, and they have to
come together so that the community understands the only people who should be afraid of cops
are criminals, not the community.
Paul Jay Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, more than a few former police officers, some of them, you
know, some of your old pals, they're angry.
the They said, we were just reestablishing, in a way, we're just reestablishing what the right relationship with the police should be.
That defund the police thing seems to be over.
Police are wrong for everything.
Whereas police are usually right for everything except a few things.
And all of a sudden they say, this ruins it.
I think a lot of them feel that way.
A lot of them feel that these guys, are responsible not only for the horrible murder, but also for making things dangerous for cops.
Absolutely.
You know, the fact is that, you know, there are millions and millions of interactions between police and the public each year.
.001 result in any injury to civilians.
But what happens is with this 24 media cycle that we have, This is going to be played over and over and over again.
And people are going to say, well, this must be what cops are like.
And then you have leftist politicians I saw in Washington yesterday calling for a total revamp of policing in America, which couldn't be further from the truth.
What we need to do is find bad cops and get rid of them.
Well, there are sort of two main tapes here.
The first tape is the original encounter.
when they pull him out of the car.
Hey!
I didn't turn your ass around!
All right.
All right.
You don't do that, okay?
I'm gonna do it.
You don't do that, OK?
Get on the fucking ground!
Get on the ground!
I'm gonna beat the tits out of your ass!
Beat the tits out of your ass!
I'm on the ground.
Lay down!
Lay down!
Yes sir.
Yes sir.
Please stay on the ground.
I'm on the ground!
I'm fixing to tase you!
Get on the ground!
One, now!
I'm tasing you!
Alright, okay.
Alright.
I'm going to break your shit.
Okay, dude, dang it!
Turn the fuck around.
Put your fucking hands on your back!
Bitch, put your hands on your back!
I'm going to knock your ass the fuck out!
Okay, stop.
You guys are really doing a lot right now.
Bro, lay down!
I'm on the ground.
I'm on the ground.
I'm just trying to go home, man.
If you don't lay down, I am on the ground.
I got you.
Dumb it.
I am.
I got you.
I'm sorry.
OK.
Get the fuck back.
Stop.
I'm not doing it.
Oh, jeez.
Fuck.
Jeez.
Oh, shit.
Fuck.
What?
2938.
Where it rains and Ross.
Taser was deployed.
Suspect is running down Ross.
And then I think what I wanted to ask you about that is how if that were the only thing that
happened just let's be in law school for a minute and assume they actually succeeded in handcuffing
Which is, at the end, what they would seem to be trying to do.
How bad would it have been?
If they had done what they were supposed to, first they should be de-escalating.
They should give this individual an opportunity.
Sir, step out of the car.
It doesn't look like that's what happened.
It looks like what happened is they pulled open the door, they dragged him out, and then they started to attempt to cuff him, and he was confused and trying to figure out why he was being cuffed.
So I think we still have, let's assume, it would be so nice if it ended up that way, that it ended up with that.
They did that, they cuffed him, took him in and charged him.
I think they still acted improperly.
Right.
You're supposed to, especially, you know, let's assume, which is probably not the case based on what I know, but let's assume he was recklessly driving.
You stop him, you get him out of the car, you tell him we're going to the police station, They certainly had overwhelming force.
I mean, this is a young man who's a thin young man.
You have four or five cops around.
You certainly don't need to throw him on the ground.
I don't even remember if they did a proper search of him.
It's almost as if they took him out and threw him right on the ground.
I mean, what I would expect is you take him out, you search him to protect yourself, make sure he doesn't have a weapon.
You explain to him what's going on.
If you felt you had to take him in, You take him in, or you give him a summons, one or the other.
And then if he resists, now you have a bit of a problem.
But they should have been able to subdue him in a minute.
Less than a minute.
Well, as you know, what we taught in the police academy when I was commissioner was de-escalation.
You don't escalate situations, you de-escalate them.
You try and calm everybody down, get what has to be done done, and if you need to take them in, you put them in the back of the car and you take them in.
Obviously, that didn't happen here.
The second part is he runs away.
Now, having run away, how much more, uh, how much more justified is, uh, let's there.
I mean, should they, they had to have pursued him, right?
You can't let him run away.
Look, it's, it's, it's a very simple maximum that all police need to follow.
You use reasonable force to counter the force that you're encountering.
I didn't see this man fighting back.
I didn't see him swinging at anybody.
I saw him fleeing.
So they should have grabbed him, put him in handcuffs and taken him in.
That's not what happened.
Now, if you ran away, what kind of force can you use?
Now you catch up to him.
You basically do the same thing, right?
You take him down, you put the handcuffs on him and take him away.
Right.
You don't stop beating him.
And that's apparently what happened here.
I mean, you know, somebody started and the whole group, it became like a feeding frenzy.
Everybody seemed to be getting, they tasered him.
They were, they hit him with a baton.
They were kicking him.
I mean, overwhelmingly beyond what should be done in that kind of situation.
It's almost impossible to explain what they, why they were doing it.
They had them.
It was just a matter of putting them in the car and taking them away.
Well, it has to be one, a lack of training.
It has to be the fact that some or all of those individuals felt that they were empowered to do what they could do without being held accountable.
And that comes back to, you know, one of the things I've, I've mentioned before is when it's hard to hire cops, Because of the atmosphere that existed in this country, police departments started offering incentives.
I mean, like signing bonuses, take home cars, and then some police departments, and Memphis was one of them, lowered standards.
They started hiring people that they would not have hired before just to get people on the force.
And unfortunately, as I understand it, two of the officers involved there were hired with those lower standards.
And I have always said, But once you lower standards, you increase the probability of bad actions by police officers.
You also were very, very good, and if not 100% accurate, I think you were, but pretty close to it, kind of looking at the background of the police officer.
Did he have other incidents?
How credible were they?
Did he have none?
Which might make this a little strange.
In getting kind of an instinct for when they acted improperly.
But I would think this one was an easy one.
I mean, a terrible situation, but from a commissioner's point of view, immediately you know what's right and wrong.
Absolutely.
You know, Memphis did exactly the right thing.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Exactly.
By firing the cops and by getting them indicted as quickly as possible.
In fact, I think probably a record for indicting police officers involved In those kinds of incidents.
So, you know, from my standpoint, they prevented not only widespread violence and rioting in Memphis, but throughout the country.
So, you know, I commend them tremendously for that.
So I ask you this question, too, for the benefit of the public, because this goes back also to the Floyd situation.
Why do they keep this thing on the street so long?
Seems to I seem to remember that your training and the police department training was Get it off the street as soon as possible.
And so therefore it can be dealt with professionally, because you're going to have all sorts of incitement happening on the street.
So someone starts throwing things at the police officer.
That becomes chaotic.
It makes the situation much worse.
They seem to like, just keep them on the street, almost as if it's some kind of show.
Well, my first reaction was similar to yours, but also my reaction was, where is a sergeant?
Where is a lieutenant?
You have a violent incident happening.
It's on the radio because you had the state police respond as well.
So it's obviously out there that there's a violent situation happening and I see no supervision whatsoever.
I saw that with Floyd too.
I didn't see a lieutenant show up.
I didn't see a captain and that was like a 30 minute incident.
So generally with the NYPD, it was almost, in fact, I was looking for The Floyd situation, I was looking for people with gold on their hats or bars on their show.
I couldn't see any.
This one, there was no one.
Whereas in New York, it's almost, you know, I had to tell that to reporters that they didn't realize all these years that when they watch New York, that there's always at least a sergeant, a lieutenant, a captain, At the time that you were describing this on television, the night, Friday night when it was released, I was home and for some reason I just found this, we were trying to see what's going on in New York.
We actually had a little bit of violence in New York and there was none in Memphis, but a little bit, but they contained it beautifully and I sent you the tape of the incident where the man jumped on top of a, it was in Times Square.
He jumps on top of the police car.
The police officers... I think there are police officers in the car.
They very intelligently don't jump out right away, because they'd be mobbed, and the two of them probably, given current circumstances, beaten up.
Now they get out.
I'm watching it myself, but you probably can't see it.
Now they get out, but all of a sudden you realize there's something like 20 cops around, in the crowd, And lo and behold, just what you talked about.
The guy grabbing him down has a gold thing across his hat.
I think he's got two bars.
The guy's a captain.
Pulling him down.
Everybody surrounding him is a sergeant on a... They actually look a little too old.
Which is good.
Because the guy... Maybe if they were dealing with a muscle man, they'd have to take some of the young guys.
They have a brief conversation on the street.
All they're concerned about is setting up a pathway to get them out.
They ignore the crowd.
No response to them.
And they get them out.
I think this thing takes all of about two minutes.
And the other police officers are going like this to the crowd.
It's classic.
It's exactly the way they're trained, which is, you know, this guy is committing and both an assault and destruction of property. He kicked
in the windshield of that car.
They get up, they take them, they put handcuffs on them, and they take them away. And at the same
time, the perimeter is controlled by the other cops who were there, but they're not beating
people up. They're just saying, stay calm. And that's exactly what should happen. And
I think that was pretty much the extent of violence in New York that night.
Yeah, this ended it because they also followed our old rule, which was get the first one.
Yep.
Don't let them build up, because we came into a situation where they had had a bunch of riots in New York.
They get trained in doing this, right?
Absolutely.
We trained at the academy how to do this.
I mean, some of it's common sense, but still, they get actual training that de-escalated right away, get them off the street right away.
Absolutely.
That's the whole thing.
React to the crowd.
Don't react to the crowd and make sure that not only are you protected, but the public's protected.
So, you know, that's the way it needs to be done.
And, you know, the other thing is you need to immediately take action.
And that's what Memphis did with these cops.
And that's why it was so important to get these guys indicted.
We did the same thing in a case you're aware of in New York, the Louima case.
Yes, yes.
I'm going to tell them about that in a moment because I think it's another good example.
There should be examples laid out of doing it right, which, by the way, is the way it's done most of the time.
Otherwise, we'd have this incident like that every day.
No, this is an aberration.
This is not the norm of what police do.
You've said that before.
How many interreactions, roughly, are there with the police?
Well, you know, there's millions and millions.
I can only tell you that in New York when I was Commissioner, six million a year.
Now, most are not bad like this, but you get a lot like this, too.
You get a lot of the level of difficulty of this one.
This is not so uncommon, what we're watching here.
No, but, you know, the fact is, if they're handled correctly, you know, as you know, I like statistics.
And we lowered crime tremendously, but just as much I was proud of, we lowered civilian complaints, we lowered shooting incidents, and we certainly lowered homicides and shooting victims.
And we did all of that with assertive policing, but yet communicating, you know, those 76 town hall meetings we had, we made sure that we told the public what we were doing and how we were doing it.
And if you remember, The majority of comments we heard were not about police brutality.
It was, give us more cops.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
I mean, way, way beyond the press ever reports.
I mean, we get harassed in places where we were criticized for having too many cops by the intelligentsia.
We were criticized for having too few by the people, but the, this is taught.
Something like this is taught.
As a given in most police academies, right?
Obviously New York, but they're taught to deescalate.
Also, if you look at the faces of the police officers, they're very stoic.
It's as if their faces look like they're at a concert, you know, policing a nice peaceful concert.
They have a situation, but they don't show it.
Yeah, we actually trained in the police academy where we put cops in mock stress situations to see how they react.
And if they react properly, we commend them.
If they react improperly, we train them so that the next time they go through a situation, they react with restraint.
You know, it's an easy rule.
When you're a police officer, when everybody else is losing their head, you've got to keep yours.
And you also, tell us the slogan that you came up with, which I know people can say it's a slogan, but you keep repeating it, gets into people's minds and hearts.
One of the things I'm proudest of when I go back to New York, I look at every police car and it says, Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect.
And we put that on police cars when we were in office and it's still on there and I hope they continue to keep it.
But do you know every time I pass one and someone in the car with me and then now my staff is getting bored with me.
I point at it and they say yeah I know put Commissioner Safer put it there.
CPR.
I tell everyone and I think a lot of people minimize that but you keep saying it often enough And people start thinking about it, particularly your officers.
And I think if you compare New York City police to other police, not all, there are some great police departments in addition to New York.
You see that.
Now, let's go back to the Louima case for one minute.
That was a case in which a police officer took action, you'd almost regard it as perverted, perverted action.
He took a guy that was arrested for we don't even know what.
A fight.
I think the fight might have been with him.
I'm not sure, but a fight.
And he got him in the bathroom and took a baton and put it up his backside.
And it was well known that it happened, but the real question was, would there be a blue wall of silence?
Police protect each other.
Howard called me immediately, told me what he was going to do.
He had me come from my son's baseball game, I remember.
I came home.
I always knew when I got a call from him it wasn't good.
Rarely.
Every once in a while he called me and said crime went down 15%.
But most of the time it was this happened or that happened.
And he had a plan already.
He had a whole plan laid out.
And he turned from, we became Howard the investigator, Howard the police officer, Howard the FBI agent, the DEA agent.
And you transfer the precinct.
And then you questioned every one of them.
And you got them, you got them, you got your guys in the question to break down this like the blue wall of silence doesn't exist when something like this is done by the police.
And by covering it up, you're going to hurt the police, not help the police.
I mean, you and you had the case by the next day.
Well, you know, it was very important because the Louie was Haitian.
He lived in a very large Haitian community in Brooklyn, and one of the first things that we did is we called all the leaders of the Haitian community, and I had them come to one police plaza into the command center, and I promised them that we would not only solve this case, but we would make sure that those police officers who committed this act would be prosecuted, indicted, and sent to jail.
And as a result of that, we did not have any violence.
We had those community leaders out there telling people, the police commissioner has assured us that we're going to get justice here.
And even though the press went crazy, we didn't have violence.
And we did get the primary perpetrator in that case sentenced to 14 years in jail.
Yeah, and also that was an area that a few years earlier had had a massive four-day riot.
So it was an area of Brooklyn that was, and a lot of small ones, so it was an area that based on provocation or perceived provocation, much less than this, would blow and then go attack the Jewish area that was right next to it, usually for no reason.
But by the way you handled it so quickly, It diffused it because you gave them confidence in the justice system that it works for everybody, which is what they did, which is what they did, which is what I give whoever, I don't know the political people or police people there, but you have to say, you can't, they handle it book perfect.
Yeah.
Chief Davis, who handled it great in Memphis and the mayor as well.
And you know, they were out there, they were out there telling people, This is a horrible crime and we're going to take care of it.
And they did it immediately by firing those five cops.
I also think that the mother's statement, Raoul Vaughn Wells, her name is, uh, the mother's statement, we've heard many, many mother's statements and they're all wonderful.
Some work, some don't work.
This is, this one kind of really got to you.
There was something about the sincerity of it.
That was very powerful.
Maybe the way she forgave, she did like the very Christian thing of forgiving.
And it seemed very legit.
Sometimes someone will forgive the murderer and you don't believe it.
You say, I don't really believe they forgave him.
But there was something about this woman.
I actually, from that moment on, even though most of my friends had the opposite, I said, I don't think it's going to blow.
I don't think so.
I hope I'm still right.
I don't think it's really going to blow.
But I think she was very powerful.
She was.
She was powerful.
She was credible.
She was sincere.
And, you know, she even got one of the most outspoken persons who talk about police brutality, this attorney Crum, to basically say what they did here is a blueprint for how we should go forward.
He actually commended the police and the mayor, which astonished me, but just shows Yeah, and there were a couple out there that started right away with, first of all, they made it a racial incident, even though it's hard to do with five black police officers and a black man.
It obviously is a question of what you're saying.
This is either police properly selected and trained, We're people of police men who never should have been police or improperly trained.
Right.
And that's it.
I think that's a more serious problem, because I don't think the problem of racism is as great as that.
I think that's the second one is the bigger problem.
Poor training or poor selection, particularly as you reduce standards.
Right.
That's the worst thing you can do is reduce standards because you're going to get people in police.
You know, I and I know you've heard me say this before.
I want police who want To be police officers because of service, not adventure.
And I think what happens is you get some of the latter type people who are looking for the power of the badge and being able to control people rather than people who just want to serve the community when you lower standards.
Well, I'm going to ask you a question you don't have.
Well, first, I'm going to just point out to everyone that this is one of maybe three or four or five men who are responsible for 20 years of a miracle in New York.
Uh, and Howard had a very specific role.
Howard institutionalized it.
And I'll, when I get a chance to explain it all, I'll explain to you what he did, but he's just a remarkable asset to our country, a former Marine.
And you're never a former Marine.
Sorry.
A Marine.
I'm sorry.
Don't get angry at me.
Semper Fi.
And I want to, I wonder if you would tell us, and I'll cut the whole thing out if you don't.
Tell us about that incident with Jesse Jackson when he called up and asked for an accommodation arrest.
I was, I was, I was sitting in my office at One Police Plaza and my secretary walked in and said, Jesse Jackson's attorney is on the phone.
I said, okay.
And it was when we were having peaceful demonstrations in front of One Police Plaza, but where politicians would come and cross the line to get arrested.
So they could say that they were supportive of being against the police.
So I got on the phone and this individual said to me, uh, Reverend Jackson is coming to New York to participate in the demonstration.
I said, fine, you know, it's okay.
Uh, you know, he can participate in anyone he wants.
He says, well, he's coming to get arrested.
And I said, well, I hope he doesn't come to get arrested.
If he wants to talk, he can come into my office.
We can sit down and he can tell me what his grievances are and we'll talk about it.
Turns out, oh no, he needs to get arrested.
So I said, well, look, I said, Reverend Jackson to do whatever he wants, but if he commits a crime, we'll arrest him.
Well, he came and he committed a crime and we arrested him and the attorney had said to me, but he has a 7 o'clock plane back to Washington.
He needs to be on that plane.
Well, somehow we got sent to Staten Island.
You know when you described it to me?
You called me up and you said, I hope you agree with me, Mayor, but I refuse to give him an accommodation arrest.
Exactly.
In fact, I told the attorney, we don't do accommodation arrests.
That's right.
He called me up immediately after.
He said, you won't believe what happened.
I just, I assume you're going to agree with this.
I hope you do, because it'd be hard to reverse it now.
And then you told me the whole story.
And he said, and I said, I said to him, I told him in New York, we don't do accommodation.
Well, Howard, it's been a pleasure, and believe me, your wisdom at times like Friday night, a lot of interviews were done that night, some I agreed with, and sometimes, you know, we get people on there that just want to be on there and don't know what they're talking about.
But yours are always very insightful and very helpful, because they come from a wealth of experience and knowledge, and I'm glad you're doing so well, Howard.
God bless you.
Always good to see and be with you, Rudy.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Howard.
See you soon.
That we have got to help our friends.
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Well, I think you found that, I'm sure, very, very interesting.
I mean, it got a little technical there and it reminded me of my sessions at the police department.
Howard never minded it as much, nor did Bernie, but particularly Howard, because Howard and I were like partners.
I mean, we had When I was an Assistant U.S.
Attorney and Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General and Deputy, I mean, Associate Attorney General myself, Howard was one of the people I relied on the most when I was U.S.
Attorney.
He got an awful lot of fugitives for me.
We worked on the Nazi cases together.
So we were partners in prosecutor-agent, you know, doing a case.
And that's why that whole Buena case was so comfortable for us.
And it's the weirdest thing, you know, watching this New York takedown just at the time that Howard was explaining on Fox that that wasn't the way they did it, it wasn't the right way to do it.
And I'm saying, oh damn, they're still doing it the way Howard taught them.
Thank God my boys know what they're doing.
Now, I had made this point a number of years ago.
I had made this point on Fox.
And I pointed out something.
I said, do you see in New York, you see all those little gold things on there?
And the correspondent said, yeah.
I said, do you realize those are officers?
Now, when you look at Minnesota, Minneapolis, you don't see any.
New York, you see just as many of them as officers.
Why are they there?
Because they're the ones with the experience.
They're the ones who are detached.
They're the ones that can see the guy getting out of control.
And when you're looking at whether a police department is well-trained or not, and you want to be anything other than a racial huckster, which some of them are, these are the things you look for.
What kind of protocol do they have in getting their officers to the scene?
Or do you just leave it to the young guys, the least trained, the least experienced?
You're dealing with an incident that requires the most experience, and you've got the least experience there.
A police department doesn't consider that as a police department.
It isn't managed.
This is what managing is about.
In government, we don't ever think about managing unless we're Republicans.
I'm serious.
Because we think in terms of business.
But I want to take a look with you at that tape once again.
You see, it begins with the guy climbing up on the top of the police car.
And I'm going to tell you my reaction, because I saw this whole thing I probably saw it live on tape, within a few minutes of it, on TV.
And my first reaction, and Ted and Dr. Maria were with me, my first reaction was, they're not doing what I taught them to do.
My teaching was, here's how you stop a riot.
You don't allow them to break any law.
You pick the first law they break and you arrest them.
And you arrest them for the second and the third and the fourth and they stop.
You don't do a kind of warming up or cooling down period like my predecessor David Dinkins did and ended up with a pogrom in Crown Heights.
And it's criticized by a report by Governor Mario Cuomo about how poorly handled that was and was in large part exacerbated by a poor government response.
So I'm starting to think, well, they should be on this guy right away.
What's going on here?
This is, this is the guy to stop it.
The crowd's around.
They see him do it.
They see him get away with it.
Then they think they can throw a rock.
You arrest him, you kill it.
And I'm saying, come on, what are you doing?
So let's watch a little more.
So now he goes up, he smashes in the back, uh, that's the front window.
Sorry.
Smashes in the front window, disappears for a moment.
And he comes over the other way, and now he's smashing it again.
There's the police officer, finally gets out.
I said, okay, here we go.
Right answer, but I hope you got backup, pal, because these people are going to come after you.
Well, there goes one guy, one guy.
The guy, by the way, is not 12 years old.
That guy is a, and I want you to notice the gold around their hats.
You notice that gold braid around the hat?
They are not police officers, my friends.
Those are higher-ranking officers of the New York City Police Department.
One, you can see his sergeant stripes on his side.
The other, I now see a bar.
That means he's at least a captain.
And I think I may have just seen an eagle, which means he's an inspector!
You have any idea how high that is in the police?
There's another inspector!
I'll tell you what that means.
That's not just a word.
To become that, you have passed one, two, three, four grueling tests with a fail rate of at least over 50%.
I mean, this is a natural selection, my friend, of the most intelligent.
The guy directing it seems to be this guy right here.
That is an inspector.
That was an eagle on his shoulder.
That's an inspector of the New York City Police Department which puts him in the top 1%.
This is equivalent to a general.
This is equivalent to at least a one or two star general in the military.
The captains would be equivalent to colonels.
The lieutenants are like captains in the military.
And the sergeants really are like lieutenants and master sergeants.
You want to get it?
You don't see these guys... That's a regular police officer right there.
You don't see these guys out in Memphis.
I didn't see a bar or a stripe or a... And the same criticism I had of the Floyd situation.
30 minutes on the street, no officer comes.
Gets it under control.
This place was filled with officers.
Consequence?
No violence that night.
Couple of other arrests.
No damage.
Went around New York City early the next morning.
Ted and I took a little trip.
We had nothing to photograph.
I was expecting I'd see a little damage here, a little damage there.
I was expecting to see stores that were boarded up.
They didn't bother.
I'm gonna tell you the opposite.
Had they let that go, Or engaged in some kind of a ridiculously incompetent violent arrest.
You'd have had a problem.
Big problem.
So I offer that first as an example for any police department that wants to teach it.
Just show it.
You'll find plenty of others.
There's a much longer tape, by the way.
I could give you a one-hour, and we might make one, a one-hour analysis of just what to do and how to do it.
Based on that.
And it's always good to do it based on a real incident rather than a tabletop incident.
But second, what it shows you is, honestly, that's the way it usually happens.
Otherwise, you'd have one of these three, four times a week.
This kind of thing happens in every city, I don't know, maybe every day, maybe every other day.
How many of them turn into the tragedy of Memphis?
I don't know.
I don't know the exact statistics and maybe we should get them, but very few.
I am broken hearted for the family.
I really empathize with the mother.
I thought mom was... I think the Memphis police, the Memphis DA, the Memphis mayor, to the extent that we criticize the others who condone violence and let criminals go, deserve great credit for the way they handle this.
They not only handled it quickly, they handled it fairly.
No leaks, no beating their chest.
They didn't make it worse than it was.
It'd been pretty hard to do that, but they didn't do that.
Certainly didn't make it better than it was.
They handled it as professionals.
Handled like the system wants you to.
It's going to work out.
The system is a lot wiser than us.
It's only taken a thousand years to develop it.
None of us are that smart.
But I really want to give credit to mom.
She handled this.
I don't know how many mothers could do that, but it has to have come from the heart.
This has to be a good, really malicious woman, Ralph Vaughan Wells.
So she gets my credit.
And from my point of view, although all the rest of it also deserves backup credit.
Rowan Wells is the reason that there are a lot of people not injured, a lot of businesses not destroyed, because it was so sincere.
Thank you.
And thank you to our police officers, the 99.9% who go out there and risk their lives and have to put up with awful things happening to them for continuing to do it and just have confidence that this will not be exaggerated beyond what it really is.
And also, don't feel put upon.
If training has to be increased, and nobody's perfect, everybody needs training.
And like every other group, you've got some bad ones among you.
I sure do in the legal profession.
I sure do in politics.
And I even have some really bad people in what I'm doing now, which is a form of journalism, right?
Probably a lot more bad ones in those three groups than among cops.
But when they're bad among cops, It has a big impact.
We don't have a margin of error.
We're not allowed it.
And we probably shouldn't be, because we have so much power among law enforcement.
So, let's use this to just double down.
I know there were very, very few of these incidents.
Very few.
I know this sounds impossible.
Let's see if we can eliminate them completely.
That's what we mean by America being a more perfect union.
Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you, Howard Safer.
It is always extraordinary to be with you and it gives me a sense of why I was so successful and humbles me.
And God bless all of you that listen and pay attention and analyze these things rather than just become products of the brainwashing that's going on.
So stick with us at RudyGiulianiCS.com I think we bring you things other people don't, and that's what we're hoping to do.
A more informed America is a free America, and we sure have to free America in the 2024 elections, and that's what we're pointing toward.
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