Two New York politicians called on the Justice Department yesterday to investigate Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir, saying they “defamed and blamed” the victims of police shootings.
The requests from Reps. Jerry Nadler and Charles Rangel came as Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer traveled to Brooklyn yesterday to push U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch to resolve her two-year investigation into the NYPD.
The three Democrats are incensed by the handling of last month’s shooting of off-duty security guard Patrick Dorismond.
The mayor released Dorismond’s sealed juvenile record immediately after the shooting.
Rangel said that incident and others, including the shooting deaths of Amadou Diallo in The Bronx and Gideon Busch, a mentally ill Brooklyn man, demand a full investigation.
He and the others accused City Hall of a “casual acceptance of these tragedies and seeming lack of sympathy or remorse.”
“The mayor and police commissioner have defamed and blamed the victims, who cannot answer back,” Nadler said.
Giuliani has accused the Justice Department of acting politically to hurt his Senate campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“All of us can feel sympathy for [Dorismond’s] mother and family,” the mayor said yesterday on his weekly radio show. “The records that I released merely laid out his factual arrest records … his significant propensity to violence.”
Nadler denied the newest broadside against Giuliani was politically motivated, saying the city’s response to police shootings “is far too important to taint with political motives.”
Mrs. Clinton yesterday told NY-1 that Giuliani should apologize to the Dorismond family.
Meanwhile, Ferrer said Lynch must act soon to bridge “a gulf of distrust” that is growing every day between minority communities and the police in the wake of the shootings.
“This has gone on a long time, and it really can’t go on any longer,” Ferrer said.
Lynch told Ferrer she is still negotiating with the city. If talks fail, she could bring a lawsuit seeking a federal monitor for the entire NYPD.
Her probe began after the Abner Louima torture scandal.