The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (49 page)

The Hall's political radar was incredible. Whereas the Dinkins administration had been justifiably criticized for its inattentiveness to issues, which was thought to have been a significant factor in the inept handling of the Crown Heights fiasco, no one would ever be able to accuse Rudy Giuliani of not being in the know. The fact that a black kid and a Jewish kid might have an altercation after school in the 75 Precinct might not mean much to the average person, but Rudy, clearly understanding the significance in that very racially conscious area of the city, would recognize its potential volatility and act accordingly. There were votes at play, constituencies in the balance; one teenage street fight could become a microcosm of the battle for recognition between large power blocs in city politics. And judging from the riots in Crown Heights and Washington Heights, it could all blow up any minute. None of that would be allowed to happen in the Giuliani administration. To give the mayor his due, he is one of the smartest men I have worked with, and his instincts and work habits are incredible.

Giuliani, through his liaison Bruce Teitelbaum, had extremely strong ties to the Jewish community, particularly the orthodox Hasidic community in Brooklyn. The Hasidim hated Mayor Dinkins for what they perceived as his indifference to their safety during the 1991 riots in Crown Heights, which had begun when a car in a rabbinical motorcade accidentally struck and killed a young black child. The rioting had gone on for
three days, during which the Jewish community came to believe that the police were instructed by the mayor and Commissioner Brown to pull back and let the anger burn out. During the riot, a rabbinical student named Yankel Rosenbaum had been killed by black rioters. The Hasidim thought of the Crown Heights riot as a pogrom. The Jewish community had overwhelmingly supported Giuliani in the following election and had his ear.

The Hall asked the department to issue licenses so the Hatzoloh ambulance service, a community organization that primarily served the orthodox Jewish community, could use lights and sirens on their private vehicles. Denny Young spent quite some time trying to convince Timoney that this was a good idea. “The mayor is very concerned about this,” he said. Timoney was not having any part of it. “They're nice people,” he said, “but they've been a headache from day one. They blow lights, they're in private cars, a number have been cited for inappropriate use of the lights and sirens, they have caused considerable tension and resentment in the neighboring black community.” They had lobbied and received legislation recognizing their private cars as ambulances, but the NYPD didn't recognize them—we didn't want them going through red lights and causing accidents.

“This is the law,” said Young.

“Fine. Have the Department of Motor Vehicles issue them licenses.”

They couldn't come to an agreement, so a meeting was scheduled at four o'clock on a Sunday at City Hall with the mayor. “It's the Sunday afternoon meetings where they break your balls,” says Timoney.

“Mister Mayor,” Timoney said there, “you've got to trust me on this one. The department is the best friend you've got on this issue. It can only hurt you. You don't want to license the Hatzolohs.”

The mayor looked around the table wide-eyed, as if he hadn't grown up in Brooklyn. He asked his aides, “What's a Hatzoloh?”

John Miller was in the mayor's office at another time when one of Giuliani's aides said, “[State Assembly Speaker] Sheldon Silver wants to know if we can get these people their lights and sirens.”

“Which people is that?” asked the mayor.

“You know, the Hatzoloh ambulance people.”

“Uh, have I heard about this before?”

I understand Giuliani spent much of the four years between his loss to David Dinkins in 1989 and his victory in 1993 studying Dinkins's handling of the city. Mayor Dinkins was viewed by much of the electorate
as hands-off, aloof, not in touch with the day-to-day operation of his government and his police force, which he didn't trust. Giuliani, used to micromanaging his federal prosecutions, would not make that mistake. He was going to have his finger in everything. The Hall consistently read every incident for its latent political message and tried to capitalize on it. Their intelligence-gathering apparatus never ceased to amaze me.

We began to suspect that my rising popularity was beginning to cause some political concern, if not to the mayor then to his staff. In all my years in policing, I had never been part of a popularity poll. The transit ads had raised my visibility with New Yorkers several years before, but not once had I been put in the same league with the man in charge of running the city. In April, after the mayor's first one hundred days in office, a
Daily News
/WNBC Harris poll showed me with an approval rating of 62 percent, nine points above the mayor. The
News
headline: “Rudy takes backseat to Bratton in new poll.”

As part of my ongoing efforts to improve the morale, self-respect, and public image of the department, we intended to capitalize on the 150th anniversary of the NYPD in October 1995. I put together a committee to plan a yearlong series of events and programs. One of the events proposed was a parade. The department's fabled Emerald Society Band, with its drummers and bagpipers, was sponsoring a convention, scheduled for the first week of October, with some twenty-five bands from all over the world coming to compete. We could use this gathering as a catalyst for a massive ticker-tape parade. How better to give the department the respect and acknowledgment it deserved on its 150th anniversary than to have the men and women in blue march through the fabled Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan like astronauts or World Series stars?

We began to talk to the unions, various retirement groups, and the Police Foundation, all of whom were enthusiastically supportive and agreed to raise funds and provide volunteers. I was very excited. Here was a way for the City of New York to say thank you to cops who were increasingly making the streets safer. My staff contacted the special-events office and found that, even though it was still more than a year away, the only date available for the parade was Saturday, October 6, my birthday. Was I unaware of the coincidence? No. Was I throwing myself a birthday party? Hardly. I actually joked about it when I first heard the date.

Miller and I and Joe Wuensch briefed the mayor in my conference room. He was enthusiastic. He understood that a parade celebrating the police and the historic drop in crime would accrue to his benefit. How
impressive for the mayor to march up Broadway at the head of a ticker-tape parade, with twenty-five bagpipe bands blaring, in front of tens of thousands of police and hundreds of thousands of cheering spectators. This was going to be quite a bash. Giuliani subsequently denied knowing anything about it or approving it.

I mentioned the amusing confluence of dates on Roger Ailes's cable-television talk show. (Ailes was a strong Giuliani backer and, ironically, the appearance had been arranged by Cristyne Lategano.) I joked that I was going to have one of the biggest birthday celebrations in history. My quote got picked up by one of the newspaper police-gossip columnists, and someone in the Hall read it. It was no joke to them.

The mayor and Cristyne Lategano didn't take kindly to the idea of a police parade that fell on my birthday and would once again put him at a public-relations disadvantage to me. City Hall refused to authorize it. Lategano said some unpleasant things about us in the paper the next day, and Miller told her, “The mayor could have cut him some slack. He didn't have to squeeze him like that.” Rudy got on the phone and yelled at Miller for criticizing Lategano, then hung up on him. Peter Powers called back and told Miller he was in big trouble, he'd better watch himself. Once again, they didn't say a word to me. Relations continued to go downhill.

When the New York Yankees and New York Rangers won champion-ships, Rudy got personally involved in their parades. He didn't mind marching up Broadway with them, but he wouldn't do it with the cops he professed to admire so much. But here the NYPD was delivering a safer city—200,000 fewer victims of crime a year, versus 1990—and the mayor denied the cops a parade. I thought that was shameful. Sports teams contribute to the spirit of the city, but they don't save a single life. New York cops were saving thousands of lives and in the process sacrificing many of their own.

In late summer, we cracked a big case. The previous March, a couple from Potomac, Maryland, and their two daughters were visiting New York and shopping in the chic Upper East Side bridal boutique, Vera Wang. Two men entered the store at Seventy-seventh Street and Madison Avenue, robbed the clientele, stole the wife's diamond ring, shot both parents, and got away. It was a random act of violence visited upon completely innocent people, and the latest in a series of robberies committed by the same suspects, known in the media as the “silver-gun bandits.” As they were wheeling her mother into an ambulance, the fifteen-year-old daughter cried out, “I hate this city!” It was a terrible tragedy, the kind many
people around the country expect when they think of New York, the kind that are uncommon but can set national opinion. The Vera Wang incident was one of the most highly publicized New York shootings in ten years. It took us six months, but detectives working out of the Nineteenth Squad, assisted by a tip to the Crime Stoppers Hot Line, finally caught the shooters.

It is normal procedure to call a press conference when you crack a big case. Because this was such a media event and knowing that Giuliani would want to be there, we tried to contact him. We got no response. A big Yankee fan, Rudy Giuliani was spending that Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium with several members of his staff. Miller beeped, no answer. Miller beeped various people in his entourage and still didn't get a call back. Time was passing. TV news reporters have deadlines, and the family, who had come to New York to make the IDs, was anxious to return home. By the time we raised someone from the Hall, we had fifteen minutes until we were scheduled to begin. It would take considerably longer than that to get the mayor out of the stadium and into lower Manhattan. They started screaming and yelling to delay it. “Screw it,” said Miller. “Fine. We'll wait. We'll hold the press conference whenever you say. I will go out there right now and put them on hold.”

“No, go with the press conference.”

“No, we'll wait. We're going to wait, it's fine.”

“Do the press conference now.”

We did. It was the lead story on the local news.

Miller got another call: Go to Gracie Mansion and wait for the mayor. I had left to attend a wedding in Boston. One of my security detail, Detective Jimmy Motto, took him. They were talking in the car, and Miller was trying to decide how many phone books this meeting would require. He was inclined to tell the mayor, “Listen, you're at a ballgame, your people don't answer, what the hell do you want me to do, hold up the whole world?”

Denny Young said, “Sit down.” Miller felt like he was a mob soldier about to get whacked. “Now,” said Young, “when the mayor comes here, I don't think you should explain what happened.” Consistently, Young or Powers would soften up people before they got to see the mayor. They literally gave them the line—You have to apologize—so when the mayor came in it was all scripted. Giuliani does not like surprises. He does not want to walk into a room without knowing the script.

“Denny,” Miller explained, “we beeped the mayor's press people, we
called the mayor's press people, and we left a message for the mayor's press people. They didn't call us back. And when they finally did call back, the press conference was starting in fifteen minutes, and their suggestion was to tell the world press—who is on deadline for the six o'clock news—that the thing will begin at quarter to seven. What reason were we going to give them?”

“Please,” Young said, “I know some of that may be true…. I really wouldn't argue with him about this because, you know, he's very concerned about this, he's very angry. I would just say, ‘Sir, it went wrong, and it's not going to happen again,’ and apologize.”

Miller was thinking, “I've known Denny a long time, and I know him a little better than I know Giuliani. Maybe my pal's here to help me.” Still, his first impulse, which he often acted on, was to tell the mayor the hard facts. He sat there on the Gracie Mansion back porch with Denny Young, being prepared for the slaughter.

The mayor arrived and slammed the car door behind him. An aide handed him a clipboard and said something to him. He winged it back. Jimmy Motto, sitting in the car in the driveway, saw this and thought, “Oh, God, Miller's going to talk back to the mayor. Look at the mood he's in!” Motto jumped out of the car, ran into the mansion, through the kitchen, and was about to go up the stairs to get to the back porch to find Miller when he heard the door slam and Giuliani say, “Where's Miller!” He snuck back to the car.

As Miller recalls it, Giuliani stormed in. “What the fuck happened?” he demanded. They were the first words out of his mouth.
“What the fuck happened!”

“Well, Mr. Mayor … obviously something went really wrong, and it will never happen again.” He was beginning to think the porch advice had some value.

“I want to know what happened!”

“Well, there was a little miscommunication.” Miller decided he wanted to hold on to his job. He had to walk the thin line between “We didn't cut you out of it” and “It was your staff's fault.” He couldn't say “Cristyne didn't answer her beeper”; he would get killed for blaming one of the mayor's people, particularly Lategano, and it was bad form.

“What miscommunication?”

“Well, you know, in our communications with your people … things just didn't get communicated.” He went straight to gibberish. “But from now on we'll make sure that none of these things go forward before we're
in touch with your people. But,” he said, trying to salvage some sense of normality, “I just thought it was limited to a crime story, and it seemed to be in the department's purview and not an area of big concern to you.” Miller knew that was baloney but he had to say it. It was the wrong tack to take.