Rudy Giuliani (full name Rudolph William Louis Giuliani) served as the 108th Mayor of New York City from January 1, 1994 until December 31, 2001.
Crime control
In Giuliani's first term as mayor the New York City Police Department, under Giuliani appointee Commissioner Bill Bratton, adopted an aggressive enforcement and deterrence strategy based on James Q. Wilson's "broken windows" research. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, and aggressive "squeegeemen", on the principle that this would send a message that order would be maintained and that the city would be "cleaned up".
At a forum three months into his term as mayor, Giuliani mentioned that freedom does not mean that "people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it".
Giuliani also directed the New York City Police Department to aggressively pursue enterprises linked to organized crime, such as the Fulton Fish Market and the Javits Center on the West Side (Gambino crime family). By breaking mob control of solid waste removal, the city was able to save businesses over .
One of Bratton's first initiatives was the institution in 1994 of CompStat, a comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically in order to identify emerging criminal patterns and chart officer performance by quantifying apprehensions. The implementation of CompStat gave precinct commanders more power, based on the assumption that local authorities best knew their neighborhoods and thus could best determine what tactics to use to reduce crime. In turn, the gathering of statistics on specific personnel aimed to increase accountability of both commanders and officers. Critics of the system assert that it instead creates an incentive to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from Harvard Kennedy School.JoinRudy2008 :: Missing Controller
Bratton, not Giuliani, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1996.Time Magazine, "Finally, We're Winning The War Against Crime. Here's Why.", January 15, 1996. Retrieve March 6, 2007. Giuliani forced Bratton out of his position after two years in what was generally seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was unable to accept Bratton's celebrity.Richard Pérez-Peña, "Giuliani Courts Former Partner and Antagonist", The New York Times, March 9, 2007. Accessed March 14, 2007.James Lardner review of "Turnaround" by William Bratton with Peter Knobler The New York Times, February 1, 1998
Giuliani continued to highlight crime reduction and law enforcement as central missions of his mayoralty throughout both terms. These efforts were largely successful. However, concurrent with his achievements, a number of tragic cases of abuse of authority came to light, and numerous allegations of civil rights abuses were leveled against the NYPD. Giuliani's own Deputy Mayor, Rudy Washington, alleged that he had been harassed by police on several occasions. More controversial still were several police shootings of unarmed suspects,Saxakali, "NYC POLICE SHOOTINGS 1999" , July 9, 2000. Retrieved December 5, 2006. and the scandals surrounding the sexual torture of Abner Louima and the killing of Amadou Diallo. In a case less nationally publicized than those of Louima and Diallo, unarmed bar patron Patrick Dorismond was killed shortly after declining the overtures of what turned out to be an undercover officer soliciting illegal drugs. Even while hundreds of outraged New Yorkers protested, Giuliani staunchly supported the New York City Police Department, going so far as to take the unprecedented step of releasing Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public,CNN, "Giuliani, New York police under fire after shooting of unarmed man" , March 19, 2000. Retrieved December 5, 2006. for which he came under wide criticism. While many New Yorkers accused Giuliani of racism during his terms, former mayor Ed Koch defended him as even-handedly harsh: "Blacks and Hispanics ... would say to me, 'He's a racist!' I said, 'Absolutely not, he's nasty to everybody'."Rudy Giuliani: Master of Disaster – Newsweek: International Editions – MSNBC.com
The amount of credit Giuliani deserves for the drop in the crime rate is disputed. He may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Crime rates in New York City started to drop in 1991 under previous mayor David Dinkins, three years before Giuliani took office. Under Dinkins's Safe Streets, Safe Cities program, crime in New York City decreased more dramatically and more rapidly, both in terms of actual numbers and percentage, than at any time in previous New York City history. A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic According to investigative journalist Wayne Barrett, the rates of most crimes, including all categories of violent crime, made consecutive declines during the last 36 months of Dinkins's four-year term, ending a 30-year upward spiral. A small but significant nationwide drop in crime also preceded Giuliani's election, and continued throughout the 1990s. Two likely contributing factors to this overall decline in crime were federal funding of an additional 7,000 police officers and an improvement in the national economy. But many experts believe changing demographics were the most significant cause.Greene Crime Delinquency .1999; 45: 171–187 "Zero Tolerance: A Case Study of Police Policies and Practices in New York City". Retrieved December 5, 2006. Some have pointed out that during this time, murders inside the home, which could not be prevented by more police officers, decreased at the same rate as murders outside the home. Also, since the crime index is based on the FBI crime index, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories that the FBI does not quantify."Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani" by Wayne Barrett
According to some analyses, the crime rate in New York City fell even more in the 1990s and 2000s than nationwide and therefore credit should be given to a local dynamic: highly focused policing. In this view, as much as half of the reduction in crime in New York in the 1990s, and almost all in the 2000s, is due to policing.Franklin E. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline Oxford, 2006, Opinions differ on how much of the credit should be given to Giuliani; to Bratton; and to the last Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly, who had previously served under Dinkins and criticized aggressive policing under Giuliani.Heather Mac Donald, The Manhattan Institute, "New York Cops: Still the Finest" . Retrieved December 5, 2006.
Among those crediting Giuliani for making New York safer were several other cities nationwide whose police departments subsequently instituted programs similar to Bratton's CompStat.Josh Feit, "Crime Pays: City Council Reviews Curious Federal Grant to Fight Crime", Mar 29, 2000. Retrieved December 5, 2006.Detroit Police Department, "National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)" , 2004. Retrieved December 5, 2006.
In 2005 Giuliani was reportedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reduce crime rates in the city. The prize went instead to Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA for their efforts to reduce nuclear proliferation.
Gun control lawsuit On June 20, 2000, Giuliani announced that the City of New York had filed a lawsuit against two dozen major firearm manufacturers and distributors. The ramifications of this action extended beyond the end of Giuliani's mayoralty: President Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in October 2005 in an effort to protect gun companies from liability. In 2006, the Tiarht Amendment was added to an appropriations bill and was signed into law. The amendment seeks to prevent ATF data from being used to sue gun companies. Despite these two legislative attempts to end the case, the case remains active.Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Urban reconstruction Following up from an initiative started with the Walt Disney Company by the Dinkins administration, and preceded by planning and eminent domain seizures that went back to the Koch administration, under Giuliani the Times Square redevelopment project saw Times Square transformed from a center for small privately owned businesses such as tourist attractions, game parlors, and peep shows, to a district where media outlets and studios, theaters, financial companies, and restaurants predominate, including MTV Studios, an ESPN Zone, and (formerly) a large Virgin Megastore and theater. A few city councilmembers voted against the reasoning that led to the change, partly because they did not want to see the sex shops dispersed to other neighborhoods.
Throughout his term, Giuliani also pursued the construction of a new sports stadium in Manhattan, a goal in which he did not succeed, though new minor league baseball stadiums opened in Brooklyn, for the Brooklyn Cyclones, and in Staten Island, for the Staten Island Yankees. Conversely, Giuliani refused to attend the opening ceremonies for a Dinkins success, Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows, Queens, stating his anger with a contract that fines the city if planes from LaGuardia Airport fly over the stadium during U.S. Open matches. Giuliani boycotted the U.S. Open throughout his mayoralty. The tennis deal negotiated by the Dinkins administration, under which the City of New York receives a percentage of gross revenues from the U.S. Open, brings more economic benefit to the City of New York each year than the New York Yankees, New York Mets, New York Knicks and New York Rangers combined.A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic David N. Dinkins with Peter Knobler, PublicAffairs Books, 2013 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proclaimed several years ago that it was "the only good athletic sports stadium deal, not just in New York but in the country.""Another Look at the Dinkins Administration, and Not by Giuliani", Michael Powell, The New York Times, October 25, 2009
Budget management
Mayor Giuliani inherited a deficit from his predecessor, David Dinkins. During its first term, the Giuliani administration cut taxes, cut spending, and reduced the municipal payroll, thereby closing the budget gap. These measures, combined with the upward swing of the mid-late 1990s dot-com bubble, which especially benefited New York's financial sector, resulted in greatly increased tax revenues for the city by Giuliani's second term; soon there was a budget surplus of . But city spending then rose 6.3 percent a year, above the inflation rate, and the city payroll increased again, especially for police officers and teachers.
Health care In 2000 Giuliani initiated what the New York Post called "a massive program" to get city employees to expand the number of low-income, uninsured children and adults covered by public health entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plan. Promoting enrollment in his HealthStat program, Giuliani said at the time that the program could be "a model for the rest of this country for how to get people covered on the available health programs.""New Rudy vs. Old on Kid Health," New York Post, October 15, 2007, p. 8.
Immigration and illegal immigration As Mayor of New York City, Giuliani encouraged hardworking illegal immigrants to move to New York City. He said in 1994: