Ghouliani: A Tale of Comeuppance

Rudy Ghouliani was a monster during his brutal tenure as Mayor of NYC, which was augured in by a riot that he incited with off-duty white cops shouting invectives with reckless abandon: hurling racial pejoratives like "nigger" and "washboy" at the incumbent Black NYC mayor, David Dinkins. The first Black man to hold the esteemed office. The riot grew rapidly with alarmed, risk-adverse, and highly-political, NYPD brass dispatching "white shirts" (NYPD line command staff to put it down by threatening the off-duty cops with arrest if they did not disperse). It was an insurrection before the J6 insurrection that one of his biggest fans during that infamous period reprised during his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. He promptly micromanaged all of his top aids most notably Education Commissioner Rudy Crews, who he initially praised to high heaven, right out of office instituting a "broken windows" approach to law enforcement to curb crime in the largest city in America. It led to out-of-control, anti-crime (plainclothes) units roaming the streets in unmarked cars, like marauding bands of wild dogs out for blood, preying on unsuspecting, innocent people of color that were subjected to unlawful "stop and frisks." The ones that manage to escape unscathed, not roughed up, beaten down, or shot to death in a barrage of lethal bullets fired in anger were not provided a reason or receipt for their detainment leading DOJ to file suit. NYC entered into a consent decree. Ghouliani unapologetically turned up the heat, though; stomping down his jackboot solidly on the necks of law-abiding Black and brown folks by criminalizing all manner of "quality of life" offenses like jay walking, riding bikes outside designated bike lanes, blowing a blunt, smoking tobacco in the subway, having a beer on the porch, and the infamous crackdown on squeegee (homeless) men trying to hustle up a hamburger, cup of coffee, pint of liquor, bottle of beer, score some dope, coke, crack or a little weed to take the edge - if not the monkey - off. Trying to turn an unmanageable, diverse city of over eight million, fiercely independent, souls into a police state. City jails budged at the seams during this time. NYC Criminal courts clogged by a backlog of petty ante quality of life offenses were compelled to dismiss bogus, trumped-up charges as quickly as defendants were brought before seasoned judges at enormous costs to the city. Ghouliani misused his weekly radio show, a listener-sponsored bully pulpit, to castigate victims of police brutality by releasing their sealed juvenile records (a despicable violation of law cynically employed to throw shade at rogue bullies from Suffolk county masquerading as cops signaling tacit approval of their ham-handed, unlawful tactics; one overlooked because he was a powerful white politico his supporters believed naïvely had turned the city around. They were willing to turn a blind eye to the excesses at the expense of the rest of the city. Ghouliani began his career as a federal prosecutor in the influential Southern District of New York.The office obtained notable convictions that he took credit for but were prosecuted by rank and file assistant United States attorneys in the office who famously took down high-profile mobsters). He re-segregated an already segregated Fire Department by removing EMS functions from NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation; integrating the duties into FDNY, where rank and file 'techs and 'medics,  were over indexed by people of color, and unilaterally reclassified as "entry-level," while predominantly white firefighters became a "promotional" item that many Black and brown EMTs and paramedics were hard-pressed to pass into by examination.White folks universally lauded him, while Black and brown folks did not, greasing the slide for his outsized ambitions to higher office. Ghouliani was a mean, vindictive racist; a brazen hypocrite, though, who radically departed from the law when it suited his selfish, politically-motivated purposes.To find him destitute after having lived a long, lavish life marred by spousal abuse and alcoholism, brutally oppressing hapless, helpless people of color has to be sweet revenge for the victims of his merciless brutality. Now other powerful white men are judging him. And they have reached the conclusion that we have long ago, which is why he has been disbarred in NYC and Washington DC; indicted in Georgia and Arizona, and is now on a slippery slope down into the infamous NYC tombs or federal detention for a civil judgment if he continues defying court orders to surrender all his earthly possessions to Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman.Two sisters, a mother and daughter duo, he viciously defamed turning their neat, tidy lives upside down, inside out only to promote a debunked conspiracy theory falsely alleging that they were passing a thumbnail that contained votes for another NYC nemesis named Donald John Trump. Ghouliani is a tale of comeuppance; one long overdue.