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Hizzoner’s Relationship Not Private Affair by JIM DWYER

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, May 07, 2000

Last fall, a Daily News reporter wondered why the mayor had vanished most summer weekends. For years, the mayor made public appearances on Saturdays or Sundays all summer long, so reporter Michael O. Allen asked the mayor’s press office about his schedule.

Because the answers were vague, Allen asked for the mayor’s public calendars.

File a freedom-of-information request, the reporter was told — a classic stalling tactic, but Allen sent in the paperwork.

A few weeks later, he got a call from the press office. Withdraw your official request, and we’ll tell you what you want to know.

Yes, the mayor had cut way back on his weekends.

How come? Speak to deputy mayor so-and-so, the press office told Allen, and he’ll give you what you need.

The deputy mayor said the mayor was taking more private time on weekends to be with his son.

“He’s also got a new love in his life,” the deputy mayor said. He gave a long, theatrical pause.

“It’s called golf.”

We now know the mayor has developed a very close relationship with a woman who is not his wife. He brought her to the party for the New York City Marathon and to be with him on New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

And he apparently stayed at the friend’s beach home in the Hamptons many weekends last summer.

Nothing here calls for Kenneth Starr and a grand jury investigation. While Bill Clinton lied about his involvement with Monica Lewinsky and confessed to being ashamed of himself, the mayor has all but boasted about his involvement with his friend Judi Nathan. She was posing for pictures all week.

Still, anyone who files Giuliani’s nonmarital relationship under the category “purely private” is hallucinating.

When three or four New York City Police detectives have the job of chauffeuring the mayor to liaisons in the Hamptons with his friend, the public life meets the private around the Douglaston exits of the Long Island Expressway. From the city line to Nathan’s condominium in Southampton, it is 75 miles.

“There’d be one or two city Town Cars in the parking lot all weekend,” said a Southampton neighbor of Nathan’s. “These big guys would be in the cars, with the motors running when you went to bed at night, and they’d be there in the morning. There were always at least two, sometimes three or four.”

Not so long ago, a New York City mayor got in trouble for sending city detectives to Long Island. In 1991, when David Dinkins dispatched two detectives to investigate a fire at the home of a friend, Giuliani clucked disapprovingly: “This poor guy gets into trouble every day.”

Last week, I asked the Police Department how much it cost the public to have the current mayor delivered by a police taxi service to his woman friend in Long Island. I wanted to know if helicopters had been used, hotels booked, food paid for, and if there had been any repayment by the mayor for these expenses.

“We never give out details of security,” Police Chief Thomas Fahey said Friday.

“Not details of security,” I said. “This is a request for costs.”

“Then you’ll be able to see which guy made the most overtime and figure out who spent the most time with him,” said Fahey.

“Give the cost information without the names,” I proposed.

“FOIL it,” he said.

“FOIL it” means file a freedom of information request. It would do no good, Fahey assured me, but I should file it anyway.

We argued some more, and then he said to put the questions in writing. I did. Late in the day, his office called back: “The chief wanted me to tell you that our statement is, ‘We’re not responding.'”

Later on, Fahey revised his official answer: “We don’t discuss security.” Of course, some of this is security, and some of it is a taxi service provided to the mayor.

Since the city has chosen to stonewall, we are free to analyze it ourselves. It is fair to say that the cost to the public of the mayor’s personal friendship was at least $200,000, much of that having to do with overtime and the need to dedicate so many detectives making $55,000 to $75,000 annually sitting in a Long Island parking lot.

Naturally, the mayor is entitled to protection, wherever he is. So are his wife and family, who continue to live in Gracie Mansion, the official residence supplied by the public. His wife and children also have police protection and chauffeurs, a reasonable precaution.

What about Judith Nathan? Asked by The News’ John Marzulli if she also receives police protection, Commissioner Howard Safir retorted: “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

Whatever the bright line between public and private life, Giuliani long ago declared that his temperament was a force that would shape the city.

And if he were a senator, he has even declared what the standard of public morality should be. In February, he called for the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms.

“The Ten Commandments is part of our tradition, it’s part of our history,” said Giuliani.

A few weeks later, the mayor and his “very good friend” Judith Nathan marched on St. Patrick’s Day, in a parade where gays are banned for practices seen by the Catholic Church as sinful as, say, adultery.

The wife who shares a public home with the mayor was not in that parade.

May 7, 2000
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Volpe’s Return Spurs Angry Blast

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, September 7, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Lawyers for alleged police torture victim Abner Louima yesterday criticized city officials for allowing the central suspect in the 70th Precinct scandal to return to police duty.

Officer Justin Volpe, accused of sodomizing Louima with a stick, will return to modified duty this week. That means he has been stripped of his gun and badge, and will work at a desk job.

Under civil service law, cops cannot be suspended without pay for more than 30 days.

“It is shocking, it is unfair, it is morally unacceptable that while Abner Louima continues to languish in his hospital bed, the man who stands indicted for putting him there can be allowed to return to business as usual,” said Vladimir Rodney, a spokesman for the Haitian-American Alliance.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and Carl Thomas, Louima’s lead attorney, said that Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir should have taken steps to prevent the return of the officers, and that they should not hide behind provisions of the police union contract.

September 7, 1997
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Plungers Waved In Angry March

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, August 17, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, CAROLINA GONZALEZ and PAUL SCHWARTZMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

Brandishing toilet plungers and chanting “KKK must go!” thousands of angry protesters yesterday descended on Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct, where two cops have been charged with torturing a Haitian immigrant.

Pressed tightly against a line of cops standing behind police barricades, the mostly Haitian crowd jammed the street outside the Flatbush stationhouse where two cops, Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz, allegedly beat Abner Louima before shoving a toilet plunger into his rectum last week.

Louima watched the demonstration from the intensive care unit at Brooklyn Hospital Center, where he is recovering.

Louima “felt very good that people are upset about what happened and that they were making their voices heard,” his lawyer Carl Thomas said.

As temperatures steamed into the mid-90s, the raucous crowd swelled to 4,000, with many pounding drums, dancing, and hoisting Haitian flags and plungers in the air in a racially charged, sometimes carnival-like scene.

Despite scattered skirmishes, no one was arrested in the tense stand-off as police brass took pains to adopt a conciliatory tone, even as many in the crowd chanted, “Pig,” “Shame on you,” and, “Seven-O, KKK.”

Someone from the crowd lobbed an empty water bottle, hitting a police officer in the eye. The officer was not hurt, but as a precaution, six officers were stationed on the rooftop of a one-story building across the street from the stationhouse.

The bottle throwing occurred around 7 p.m. after a late afternoon storm reduced the crowd to about 75.

During the height of the protest, marchers also shouted racial epithets and taunted the officers by waving the plungers in their faces.

“It’s Giuliani Time,” read one demonstrator’s sign, a reference to Louima’s claim that the cops told him, “This is Giuliani time, not Dinkins time” as they beat him.

Another sign displayed a photograph of Volpe with horns protruding from his head, accompanied by a caption that read, “Devil in a Blue Suit.”

Assistant Police Chief Patrick Brennan said the demonstrators “are mad as hell, and they have the right to be.”

“They want to get the most out of their demonstration, and who can blame them?” he asked.

Deputy Police Chief Wilbur Chapman conceded that the torture incident has “fractured” the community’s fragile relationship with the police. But he said the precinct’s new commander, Inspector Raymond Diaz, would “work hard to restore the faith.”

“One particularly horrific incident doesn’t negate all the terrific work that has been done,” Chapman said.

But that was not a sentiment held by many in the crowd, which began gathering in the morning outside Club Rendez-Vous, the Flatbush nightclub where Louima’s fracas with cops began early Aug. 9.

“In Haiti we went through all these things,” said Marie Toussaint, 36. “It’s a shock to find the same thing going on in the United States.”

Roy Sargent, 55, a former Flatbush resident, said he drove to the march from his home in Piscataway, N.J., because he wanted to be counted among the voices expressing outrage.

“We put the Police Department in uniform to serve and protect us, and this is what they’re going to do us?” he asked incredulously. “This has to stop.”

Others vowed to protest in front of the stationhouse every day.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the smaller crowd assembled at the precinct stationhouse.

“We’re not against the police; we’re against police brutality,” Sharpton told the demonstrators.

Standing nearby, Jonas Louima, 25, Abner Louima’s brother, said he hoped that the restless crowds would remain peaceful.

“I don’t want fights,” he said. “I want people to express what they feel without violence.”

Louima’s friend, Ian Joseph, said the steps taken by Police Commissioner Howard Safir to punish cops in the precinct did not send a strong enough message that brutality is unacceptable.

“They shift one and the other, but before they start firing people it won’t change,” he said. “If the cops had to live among us, they might fear that we might see them the next day, and it would be very different.”

Original Story Date: 08/17/97

August 17, 1997
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Cops Hunt Gang In Brazen Heist: Detective and ex-cop survive bloody ambush by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, DONALD BERTRAND, JOHN MARZULLI, BLANCA M. QUINTANILLA, and JAMES RUTENBERG; Written by JERE HESTER, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSaturday, May 10, 1997

Police hunted last night for a heavily armed gang that escaped on a public bus after ambushing an off-duty police detective and a retired cop delivering a payroll in Queens.

Wielding assault rifles and wearing hooded sweatshirts, the gunmen sprayed a quiet Flushing street with more than 50 rounds.

They mercilessly pumped bullets into the lawmen, even as they lay wounded, before grabbing $50,000 in checks and cash.

Retired Police Officer Joseph Bellone, riddled with at least 12 bullets, still squeezed off up to nine shots from his 9-mm. Glock pistol. A gunman was captured on camera standing over the ex-cop, coldly discharging his weapon.

Off-duty Detective Arthur Pettus, who works with Bellone for a payroll company, was struck several times in the legs and abdomen by the three or four robbers. Chunks of concrete shot out by bullets outlined the spot where he dived for cover.

Both victims were in critical condition but are expected to survive the execution-style attack.

The vicious, well-planned stickup unfolded at 10:26 a.m. when Bellone, 45, and Pettus, 38, pulled up in an armor-plated van in front of Positive Promotions, a printing company at 40-01 168th St.

The gunmen popped out of nowhere, firing AK-47s and other weapons from three directions, including an alley abutting the printing company.

“I thought they were firecrackers,” Ari Kayserian, 17, said of the 30-second barrage of gunfire. Kayserian, who lives nearby, ran downstairs to find a wounded Pettus clutching a 9-mm. Glock, hiding behind a van.

“He was calling, ‘Help! Help!’ ” Kayserian said. “The officer told me, ‘Call 911, tell them 10-13’ ” — the code for an officer needing assistance.

Police sources said that a surveillance camera captured several photos — including one of a gunman standing over Bellone and firing bullets into the prone ex-cop.

After rendering the lawmen helpless, the thugs scooped up two canvas bags containing $50,000 in cash and an undetermined amount in checks.

The gang hopped into a stolen green Ford Aerostar van double parked on Station Road and tore up the street the wrong way, ricocheting off parked vehicles.

“There were cars banging each other,” said Kayserian’s mother, Tamar.

The gunmen drove to 162d St. and 45th Ave. and hopped out of the van, which was crippled by a flat tire. They left the doors open and the motor running.

“I saw [three of] them running; you could tell they did something bad,” said Glenn Fammia, a worker at nearby Gabriella’s Pizzeria.

He said they waved down a Jamaica-bound Q-65 Queens Surface Line bus that had just started pulling away.

The gang acted like normal passengers and got off at Hillside Ave. and 164th St. — the same intersection where they had stolen the Aerostar van last month, police sources said.

The bus driver told detectives that the only strange thing about the men was that they paid the $1.50 fare in cash rather than by token, like most passengers. Sources said that one robber left a jacket behind.

No weapons were found.

Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir rushed to New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens, where the families of the wounded men gathered.

“It’s a miracle that both have a real chance of survival, given the brutality and viciousness of this attack,” Giuliani said.

“We don’t think that either one will sustain any permanent paralysis,” said Dr. James Turner, adding that both men were shot “many, many, many times.”

Safir said that neither Bellone nor Pettus wore a bulletproof vest. Officers are not required to wear such vests when working off-duty.

Pettus, a former transit cop now assigned to the Bronx robbery squad, had permission to moonlight for Mount Vernon Money Center, officials said. He had worked a 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift the night before the shooting.

Workers at the printing company said Bellone was their regular payroll deliveryman and that Pettus was apparently a fill-in.

One police officer said Mount Vernon Money Center guards were wary of the secluded spot.

May 10, 1997
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Don’t Pass The Ammunition; Mayor holds off on new bullets

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

March 5, 1997

by BOB LIFF, MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOHN MARZULLI, Daily News Staff Writers

Mayor Giuliani put the brakes on the police plan to arm cops with controversial hollow-point bullets yesterday — demanding to see studies on the expanding rounds before approving the change.

Giuliani summoned Police Commissioner Howard Safir and his top brass to City Hall to brief him on the switch, which would replace the full metal jacket police bullet with a round that expands on impact and is less likely to ricochet.

The mayor said he believes the bullets would be safer for cops and civilians, but insisted he needs more time to study the sensitive issue.

“I asked them to see all the studies so that I can review them personally,” he said after meeting with police brass. “They went over some of them with me. They are going to get me more because I want to look into this issue carefully.”

“It is not a done deal until I finally approve it,” Giuliani said as City Council members prepared to grill Safir on the switch to hollow-points at a previously scheduled public safety hearing today.

Civil rights advocates have long criticized the snub-nose bullets, which create gruesome wounds but are more likely to stop a suspect. Elected city officials said yesterday they also want to hear more about the changeover before throwing their support behind it.

“Right now we in the Council have more questions than answers,” said Speaker Peter Vallone, (D-Queens).

Councilman Enoch Williams (D-Brooklyn) called the hollow-points “a license to kill.”

“It means that if someone makes a mistake out there . . . a youngster 15, 16 years old that maybe does something the police officer doesn’t like . . . and he shoots, that kid is finished,” Williams said.

“It should be disturbing to all elected leaders and citizens that the NYPD could just introduce these bullets without any briefing or public hearing about the implications,” said Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

Police officials argue that hollow-points do not ricochet and rarely pass through walls or the body of an intended target — lessening the risk to bystanders from stray bullets.

New York is virtually alone among major police departments and law enforcement agencies in using full metal jacket bullets.

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Lou Matarazzo applauded the change, saying the advantages of the hollow-points “outweigh the risks” to cops and civilians.

Giuliani said he understands the potential benefits for police. He said the decision on hollow-points was made by then-Commissioner William Bratton before he resigned in April. The mayor said he did not disagree “at the time” with Bratton’s decision.

But Bratton told the Daily News he “did not recall” signing off on the new bullets before he left, although he would have approved the hollow-points.

Bratton, who had a stormy relationship with Giuliani during his last months as commissioner, said he believes the mayor was angry that Safir made the announcement Monday.

“The mayor doesn’t like media surprises, so he’ll hold off on it for a while to reinforce that he doesn’t like being surprised,” Bratton said.

Critics of the bullets have also said they pose a danger to cops who accidentally shoot themselves or their partners.

Since 1981, 51 officers have been wounded by so-called friendly fire.

March 5, 1997
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LIVOTI BOUNCED IN SAFIR CRACKDOWN; Commish orders profiles of too-tough cops

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

February 22, 1997
by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOHN MARZULLI, Daily News Staff Writers

Police Commissioner Howard Safir yesterday vowed tougher monitoring of cops accused of brutality after he fired a controversial Bronx officer whose use of an illegal choke hold led to a man’s death.

Safir canned Officer Francis Livoti for violating departmental regulations in the 1994 Bronx struggle that ended with the death of Anthony Baez.

Livoti, 37, the target of 15 civilian complaints over 13 years, was supposed to be under a strict watch by police supervisors at the time of his struggle to subdue Baez.

But the death of the 29-year-old guard showed that the system used to monitor officers hit with multiple complaints was “somewhat inadequate,” Safir admitted.

He ordered police prosecutors to draft profiles of cops accused of more than five violence or abuse complaints so a special board can decide whether the officers require monitoring, counseling, re-training or transfer.

“This department will never tolerate an officer who is abusive or brutal,” Safir said.

He also ordered a review of Sgt. William Monahan, Livoti’s supervisor on the night of Baez’ death. Monahan has not been disciplined, although he was present throughout the struggle.

Police Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rae Koshetz blasted Monahan as a “disgracefully lackadaisical supervisor” in her decision urging that Livoti be fired after she convicted him of using the choke hold at a departmental hearing.

Safir announced the tougher monitoring after he acted on Koshetz’ recommendation and fired Livoti, a move that strips the 15-year veteran of his pension. In an unusually harsh attack on a cop with strong police union ties, Safir ripped Livoti for “inexplicable aggressiveness” and lack of remorse.

The ouster marked one of the final chapters in an emotion-charged case that sparked angry demonstrations in the Bronx, pleas for justice from Baez’ family and a controversial acquittal of Livoti at a criminal trial where he was charged with criminally negligent homicide.

“I’m satisfied with the decision, but nothing is going to satisfy me. Nothing. I lost my son. That doesn’t change,” the victim’s father, Ramon Baez, said yesterday.

Livoti, who still faces a federal civil rights investigation and a civil lawsuit by the Baez family, could not immediately be reached for comment on the firing. But his lawyer, Stuart London, said the ex-cop would appeal the decision.

At the 46th Precinct where Livoti served, tight-lipped officers called the firing a foregone conclusion.

A senseless chain of events produced the tragedy. Baez and three brothers were playing touch football in the early morning of Dec. 22, 1994, in front of their University Heights home.

The struggle began after Livoti, angry that the ball had struck his patrol car, raged at the brothers for ignoring his orders to halt the game.

Livoti’s “inexplicable aggressiveness during what most reasonable officers understand to be a routine street encounter escalated events into violence, and the death resulted,” Safir said.

Livoti applied the choke hold — banned by the Police Department in 1993 — in a struggle when Baez protested Livoti’s arrest of his brother David for disorderly conduct. Livoti testified during the departmental trial that his arm only brushed Baez’ neck.

Safir caustically said Livoti “remains incapable of accepting responsibility for his actions. He blames others for his ordeal.”

City Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Hirsch, however, estimated that Baez was choked for more than a minute. Although Baez suffered an asthma attack during the clash, Hirsch determined that the ailment played a minor role in his death.

Mayor Giuliani praised Safir for the ouster. He also conceded that Livoti should have been booted long ago — but blamed the inaction on prior police administrations.

“Should they have kept him on the police force for as long as he was on the police force? Absolutely not,” Giuliani said.

Original Story Date: 02/22/97

February 22, 1997
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SLOWDOWN NOT THE TICKET; Rudy sez cops’ll be punished

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

January 25, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN Daily News Staff Writer

Mayor Giuliani yesterday escalated his contract fight with city cops, warning rank-and-file officers not to engage in a ticket slowdown — or else.

“If a police officer absolutely refuses to do his or her job, then that police officer will have to be disciplined,” he said. “But that isn’t for me to do. That is for the police commissioner.”

It was Giuliani’s first direct threat to street cops after a week of blasting union leaders for rejecting the package of wage and benefit hikes offered by the city Tuesday.

“My advice to police officers would be: Don’t push this too far, otherwise you are going to be in serious trouble,” he said.

Giuliani’s remarks, made at a Harlem mosque, came a day after thousands of chanting, sign-waving cops took their contract fight to the streets outside police stationhouses in all five boroughs.

Dennis Sheehan, a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association spokesman, declined to comment on the mayor’s salvo.

Giuliani visited the mosque just four days after he was heckled, taunted and booed during a Martin Luther King Day celebration at a Harlem church.

It was Giuliani’s second visit to the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque, which hosted him a year ago in the wake of the fatal fire at Freddy’s Fashion Mart on 125th St. that killed eight people, including the arsonist.

Mayoral spokesman Colleen Roche said that yesterday’s trip had been planned “a couple of months ago.” The mosque’s leader, Imam Izak-El M. Pasha, is friendly with the administration.

Afterward, at a news conference on the first floor of the mosque, the mayor again blamed the PBA for lack of leadership and not doing a better job of presenting the city’s contract offer to the rank and file.

The city offered cops a five-year contract with no raises the first two years and increases totaling 15.8% in the final three years.

The city’s proposal to the PBA is 2.5% over what had been offered any other municipal union, the mayor said.

“I did that because I believe that the police officers deserve some special consideration for the risk that they take and for the job that they do,” Giuliani said.

“I can’t say yes to everything one group wants because that will take away from what other groups also deserve,” he said. “This is a fair program; it’s a balanced one. It’s a shame that there isn’t any leadership there at the PBA to explain this to the police officers.”

Giuliani said arrests are up compared to a year ago and that essential law enforcement work has not slowed down. Ticket-writing is a little trickier to gauge, and it will take about a week before the city can tell if cops are involved in a slowdown, he said.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir will monitor ticket-writing, the mayor said.

“If we have police officers that, over a period of several days, are so far off of what they should be doing, I’m sure they are going to be taking disciplinary actions,” Giuliani said.

January 25, 1997
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