New York City’s lawmakers are “actually committing murder” with their vote to end qualified immunity protection for the city’s police officers, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax TV Saturday.
“It’s devastating,” Giuliani said on Newsmax TV’s “America Right Now.” “The reality is, the government of New York City is so incompetent. It’s so left-wing. It’s built on unrealistic theories of socialism that failed 100 years ago.
City Council members late last month, while passing a series of reforms, effectively ended qualified immunity, leaving police officers more vulnerable to civil lawsuits in cases of excessive force and unreasonable searches.
Unions representing the NYPD have been pushing hard against the move, saying it will make it hard for police to protect the community from criminals.
Giuliani Saturday slammed New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for his role in the police reform legislation.
“There’s something wrong with him,” said Giuliani. “(He is) almost acknowledged to be the worst mayor in America, which is really hard because we have got some pretty bad names in America.”
Crime is “out of control” in cities governed by Democrats, he added.
“Every weekend in Chicago, it’s a good weekend if only 10 people get killed,” he said. “This has been going on for 30 years.”
But by ending qualified immunity, it gives people the opportunity to sue police officers, even if they didn’t do anything wrong, said the former mayor, who in recent years was former President Donald Trump’s attorney.
Giuliani added that he came from a family of police officers and was a prosecutor for 17 years, “so I think there’s nobody that knows the policing politics more than I do. I reduced crime more than any mayor in the history of the United States.”
But when you put police officers in jeopardy of not having enough money to feed their families, they will be either getting out of the job or will delay action until after a crime has been committed to avoid lawsuits, Giuliani said.
He noted that when he was in office and Bill Bratton was police commissioner, they made officers “proactive” and wanted them to respond to crimes before they were completed and either make an arrest or shoot the criminal if they had to
“They knew the mayor would be there with them,” said Giuliani.
Proactive policing also saves lives in the Black community, the former mayor said.
“There are more shootings in the communities of color that Democrat socialists claim to care about,” said Giuliani.
“I’m talking about saving lives in the Black community when we’re talking about stupid policies that increase murder…I saved more black lives in New York City than any mayor in American history. Hundreds maybe well over 1000 black lives that would have been lost, had I kept the murder rate where it was and what I inherited from my incompetent democratic predecessors. You will get a Democrat city and you see a lot of black people dying that don’t have to die.”
Source: Newmax
