Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told Fox News he takes offense at current Mayor Bill de Blasio's implication that police target black people.
"For the last 20 years, between [Michael] Bloomberg and me, we have saved more black lives than any mayor in the history of the city," Giuliani said Thursday on
"The O'Reilly Factor."
De Blasio,
in a speech following Wednesday's announcement that a white police officer would not be indicted in the death of a black man, Eric Garner, said the case points to a need to fix policing and that the struggle with race goes back to the days of slavery.
Giuliani said the insertion of race into the case is unwarranted and that a white man breaking the law would have seen the same result.
Garner was confronted by police because he had been selling unlicensed black-market cigarettes on the street. When he refused to comply he was wrestled to the ground and can be seen on video repeatedly telling officers he couldn't breathe. He died en route to a hospital.
Giuliani said there were 2,200 murders a year in New York when he took over, and he brought the number down to 340. With 75 percent of murder victims being black, Giuliani said that most of those lives saved were African-American.
"We were concentrating on the real problem: the 96 percent of blacks killing other blacks," Giuliani said.
He admitted police misconduct is a problem, but challenged de Blasio's assertion that young black men face harassment from police.
"If you're a father … and you're trying to keep your son safe, the thing to keep him safe from is black violence — not police officers," he said.
He said the Rev. Al Sharpton is among a group who uses the narrative that police are the problem because it helps them get their name known.
Giuliani's predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins, elevated Sharpton by treating him as an equal, he said.
"Here was my rule: I'm not dealing with him. I will only deal with people who have a legitimate interest in really solving the problem," Giuliani told host Bill O'Reilly. "And I never found that any of the problems that I had, that Al Sharpton had a legitimate interest."
Sharpton and others like him have done nothing for the black community for 30 years "except watch a lot of people get killed and blame it on the cops," Giuliani said.
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