Mayor Bill de Blasio: Rudy Giuliani Fundamentally Misunderstands the Reality

Kena betancur/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani “fundamentally misunderstands the reality,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday on This Week in response to Giuliani’s recent comments about the relationship between African-American communities and law enforcement.

“I think he fundamentally misunderstands the reality,” de Blasio told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos while also addressing other comments the former mayor made about de Blasio’s statement after a New York grand jury voted not to indict police officers in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

“We’re trying to bring police and community together. There is a problem here, there is a rift here that has to be overcome.

“You cannot look at the incident in Missouri, another incident in Cleveland, Ohio, and another incident in New York City, all happening in the space of weeks and act like there’s not a problem,” de Blasio added.

De Blasio was responding to comments made by Giuliani on Fox News last Sunday in which he said, “I think just as much, if not more, responsibility is on the black community to reduce the reason why the police officers are assigned in such large numbers to the black community. It’s because blacks commit murder eight times more per capita than any other group in our society.”

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Giuliani, who had strained relations with many black New Yorkers during his tenure as mayor from 1994 to 2001, later said in separate comments that de Blasio’s response to the Garner case this week contributed to tearing down respect for the criminal justice system.

De Blasio’s appearance on This Week came after a grand jury decided not to indict New York City police officers in the death of Garner, who died earlier this year during a physical encounter with law enforcement in the New York City borough of Staten Island. The decision, like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, not to indict Darren Wilson in the death of teenager Michael Brown, sparked nationwide protests.

In an emotionally fueled news conference earlier this week, the mayor, who is married to an African-American woman  and has a biracial son, Dante, discussed the challenges his son has faced.

“A good young man, a law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong, and yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face – we’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him,” de Blasio said at a news  conference Wednesday.

Stephanopoulos asked the mayor whether he thought his son was at risk from his own police department.

“I’m just saying what people are actually experiencing and have been for decades,” de Blasio responded. “I’ve talked to a lot of families of color, well before this time, because I’ve said things like this before. And they’ve said to me over and over again that they appreciate someone finally acknowledging that they have that conversation with their sons. It’s a painful conversation. You can sense there’s a contradiction in that conversation.”

The mayor, who said he has “immense” respect for those who serve in law enforcement, said his city can “transcend” problems of bias between police and minority communities through improved training and communication.

“Our police keep us safe, and yet there’s been, as I said not just decades of problems, a history of centuries of racism that undergird this reality,” de Blasio said. “We can transcend that. We believe in New York City. Retraining our entire police for. It’s going to make a huge difference.

“This is something our commissioner Bill Bratton is fundamentally a believer, in that if you train the police in a different approach to the use of force, in a different approach to communication with the community, a different approach to building relationships with the community, you won’t see these tragedies,” he said.

Earlier in the conversation Sunday, the mayor said he respected the “process” when asked by Stephanopoulos whether he respected the grand jury’s decision in Garner’s death.

De Blasio on Democratic Losses in 2014

During his interview on This Week, de Blasio also offered an explanation for why the Democratic Party took a large hit this year in midterm elections, saying the party did not directly enough address issues of economic fairness.

“In the 2014 cycle, Democrats did not speak bluntly about it,” he said. “They did not honestly say to the people of this country, here’s a crisis and we’re going to do very specific things about it. We’re going to be willing to take on those who are wealthy and ask them to do their fair share. We’re going to be willing to take on corporations that are not being fair to their workers.

“If the people of this country heard Democrats enunciate a clear vision for economic fairness, I think you would have seen a very different result in 2014,” he added.

The mayor, who ran former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign in New York, offered praise for the potential 2016 presidential candidate, but reiterated that Democrats have to be “blunt” about economic issues in the next election.

“I think the world of Hillary Clinton. I think she’s an extraordinarily capable person,” de Blasio said. “I would say this to all Democrats running for any office — that we have to talk about economic reality and we have to talk about economic fairness.”

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