The shooting deaths of New York Police Department officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, were assassinations that came after months of propaganda about how the police are the enemy of the black community, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Sunday.
"What happened yesterday was an assassination, which we haven't had since 1988 with Officer [Edward] Byrne," Giuliani said on Fox and Friends Sunday, speaking of a young police officer who was murdered while on duty. "We have not had an assassination murder like this in a long, long time."
There no question from the words of killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley that the killings were connected to the deaths of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Missouri, said Giuliani. The two
officers were shot at about 3 p.m. while sitting in their marked car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn after Brinsley posted messages on Instagram saying he was going to kill police officers.
Brinsley also wounded his girlfriend in a shooting in Baltimore before driving to New York and ambushing the officers.
"It could be connected in an insane way, but it's not unfair to create a connection between these two things," said Giuliani. "And it's certainly true that we have been treated to about three to four months of propaganda about how the police are the enemy. [About how] the police are the problem. [About how] they are the major problem between the police and the black community."
Giuliani said such statements and protests are propaganda because the police departments interactions with communities are a "reaction, it's not the cause."
And the "cause" was why officers Liu and Ramos were in Brooklyn on Saturday, where they were murdered.
"They were moved from one precinct to another because there was more crime in that precinct," said Giuliani. "They were there to protect the lives in this particular case of black people in that neighborhood. And the reality is that the problem here is citizen crime."
In inner cities, the problem is black crime, and in other places, "it can be white crime," said the former mayor. "The problem here is not police interaction. The police shooting a young black man, if that happens one to two percent of the time, that's a lot."
But, Giuliani said, "a black man shooting another black man is 92 percent of the time."
Further, he wondered why someone with a African-American child, and worried about that son being killed, would "talk to him about the one percent of the time, which is the police, and not the 92 percent of the time, which are all of the other people in the neighborhood who are the ones more likely to kill him."
Giuliani said he is "big supporter" of police reforms and believes officers should have cameras and be trained better.
"If you want to start going into what the real problems are, that's where the time should be spent," said Giuliani. "That's where the efforts should be spent. Why is there so much crime? Why are they killing each other at levels that are that high?"
But he noted that it's not just the black community but the white community as well.
"I put as many white people, when I was U.S. attorney, I put so many Mafia people in jail, I used to have Italian-American groups protesting me for being anti-Italian-American," said Giuliani. "I was hardly anti-Italian-American. I was trying to save lives and I'm hardly anti-black as I try to save black lives."
And Giuliani said he doesn't "care about the stupid propaganda and the lies and this ridiculous myth that police are a danger to the black community. The police are saving the black community."
But Giuliani said that there should be no mistake about it, the murders came because of the violence in the rallies against the police.
"If you hear what people were saying at the rallies, kill the police, destroy the police, there was a lot more violence at the rallies in New York than was ever reported by any of the stations," said Giuliani. "Police officers were punched and spout on. A police officer almost hit with an ax. There was a tremendous amount of violence, not just a little bit."
Further, streets were blocked, which was a threat to public safety.
"[This} fosters the sense of anti-police hatred," said Giuliani. "And that's 1% of the problem! How about the 92 percent that is causing the death of black men in this country. We can't talk about that? You're racist if you say that? Frankly, you are racist if you don't say that."
Giuliani said he would have had more control over the protests that embattled Mayor Bill de Blasio has had.
"I'm not saying the murder would have happened on my hands," said Giuliani. "I do not blame the mayor for that incident. What I blame the mayor for is allowing the protests to get out of control. I allowed protests. But you had to be in a certain place; you could not block traffic. You could not impede the ability of the city to respond to emergency. I went to court, they would have to get permits."
Giuliani said he "feels sorry" for de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, and even though the city's police union has come out against the mayor and his own statements about officers, de Blasio still has the opportunity to make amends.
"The mayor has to make a speech and I would state to the police that he understands they are not the problem," said Giuliani. "They are reacting to another problem that he has not spent enough time on."
The mayor also needs to take action to secure the city for its children, said Giuliani.
"He would be well-advised to support the charter schools rather than to destroy them," said Giuliani. "Because that's going to reduce more crime in the black community than anything you do with the police."
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