• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Federal investigators search Giuliani apartment: reports

That's around the same time Maggie came up with 'care in the community' in the UK.

Anything like board-and-care homes which proliferated after the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill?

By 1975 board-and-care homes had become big business in California. In Los Angeles alone, there were “approximately 11,000 ex-state-hospital patients living in board-and-care facilities.” Many of these homes were owned by for-profit chains, such as Beverly Enterprises, which owned 38 homes. Many homes were regarded by their owners “solely as a business, squeezing excessive profits out of it at the expense of residents.” Five members of Beverly Enterprises’ board of directors had ties to Governor Reagan; the chairman was vice chairman of a Reagan fundraising dinner, and “four others were either politically active in one or both of the Reagan [gubernatorial] campaigns and/or contributed large or undisclosed sums of money to the campaign.” Financial ties between the governor, who was emptying state hospitals, and business persons who were profiting from the process would also soon become apparent in other states.

Many of the board-and-care homes in California, as elsewhere, were clustered in city areas that were rundown and thus had low rents. In San Jose, for example, approximately 1,800 patients discharged from nearby Agnews State Hospital were placed in homes clustered near the campus of San Jose State University. As early as 1971 the local newspaper decried this “mass invasion of mental patients.” Some patients left their board-and-care homes because of the poor living conditions, whereas others were evicted when the symptoms of their illness recurred because they were not receiving medication, but both scenarios resulted in homelessness. By 1973 the San Jose area was described as having “discharged patients...living in skid row...wandering aimlessly in the streets . . . a ghetto for the mentally ill and mentally retarded.”
https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ro..._legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/
 
What nation's news were you reading? I remember hearing about stop and frisk rather a lot. In fact, I think that's the first I heard of Giuliani at all.

I'm sure if you wanted to know what was going on in New York you could find out about such things. If you didn't particularly care about their local news, it's not something you'd have seen if you weren't looking for it.
 
Here is an interesting dilemma for Stubby McBonespurs:

From: Law and Crime
...advisers to the former New York City mayor have been pushing for former President Donald Trump to foot the mounting bill for Giuliani’s legal defense team...

The problem for Trump is that he's greedy, so he would want to avoid paying out any money that he doesn't have to. On the other hand, he also wants to keep Giuliani from flipping on Trump, so it might be in his best interest to help keep him out of jail.

(Note that in the past, Trump has tried to avoid paying Giuliani's fees as a lawyer while he was trying to overturn the election.)

I'm pretty sure this is signalling to Trump that he either pays up or Rudy takes the Cohen option.
 
I'm sure if you wanted to know what was going on in New York you could find out about such things. If you didn't particularly care about their local news, it's not something you'd have seen if you weren't looking for it.

It was reported in the national news. That you missed it is not a big deal but you are mistaken if you're trying to pass it off as niche information only available to those who sought it out. In that era millions of people still watched national news on television.
 
I'm pretty sure this is signalling to Trump that he either pays up or Rudy takes the Cohen option.
Trump bots still call here every day and I always think large chunks of the money are being siphoned off because everyone involved is a crook. For example the RNC gets a cut, and phone solicitors take their bit, and individuals in Trump’s circle will divert some funds hoping to cash in while the gravy train is still rolling. You’d think paying lawyers would be a priority, but Trump expects them to work for free, apparently. Trump’s outfit can’t even mimic a respectable fundraising effort because he has no idea how that even works. They know how to beg for cash, but I suspect that accountability is an alien concept and that there’s some skimming going on.
 
I remember hearing about stop and frisk rather a lot. In fact, I think that's the first I heard of Giuliani at all.

Just for the record, Giuliani was known for the 'broken windows' policing strategy. I think there was some overlap, but "Stop and Frisk" was associated more with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In a 2016 NPR feature looking back at Giuliani and broken windows (not entirely complimentary ) they reported:
By 2001, broken windows had become one of Giuliani's greatest accomplishments. In his farewell address, he emphasized the beautiful and simple idea behind the success. "The broken windows theory replaced the idea that we were too busy to pay attention to street-level prostitution, too busy to pay attention to panhandling, too busy to pay attention to graffiti," he said. "Well, you can't be too busy to pay attention to those things, because those are the things that underlie the problems of crime that you have in your society." NPR link
 

Attachments

  • NY City 1980s.jpg
    NY City 1980s.jpg
    113.2 KB · Views: 24
Just for the record, Giuliani was known for the 'broken windows' policing strategy. I think there was some overlap, but "Stop and Frisk" was associated more with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In a 2016 NPR feature looking back at Giuliani and broken windows (not entirely complimentary ) they reported:

Broken Windows is deeply flawed. It relies on there being a direct relationship between disorder and crime - such a relationship is at best tenuous, if it even exists at all. There are plenty of valid arguments to show that the reduction in crime in NY during the period of BW policy law enforcement, had little to do with the policy, and more to do with the contemporaneous economic boom and decline of the crack cocaine epidemic... in other words, the consensus is that crime statistics would have come down with or without BW.
 
Broken Windows is the result of the effort to quantify the work cops do.

It is based on a false premise of what Policing is supposed to be.
 
I think there's some logic behind the idea that taking care of low-level crime can, in the fullness of time, take care of bigger crimes. The idea being that people start off shoplifting, and if they get away with that they progress to bigger thefts, and from there to home entry. One day someone's home and they kill them. A few more times and killing for them isn't the big deal it once was, etc.

But that doesn't translate to "arrest prostitutes, beggars and graffiti artists". Seems more like creating economic conditions where people don't have to shoplift in the first place, and social programmes that can help actually rehabilitate low-level criminals, rather than locking them up or giving them fines that they can't pay. If you can make it so that people don't want to shoplift, and don't need to shoplift then, sure, it seems logical that in 10-20 years time that will mean fewer grocery store stick-ups and fewer home invasions. If you just write them off and put even more obstacles and burdens in their way, then the long-term effects are more likely to be a rise in crime because people have no other choice to survive.
 
The fact that crime was declining and declining everywhere in the early and mid-1990s is indisputable. Nonetheless, Mayor Giuliani's efforts to improve the quality of life as we New Yorkers experienced it everyday as we went about our daily lives was much appreciated. Calling it 'broken windows' seemed more PR gimmick than reality. It was a crackdown.

To many New Yorkers the reality was, the rank-and-file police had been feuding with city administrations for years going back to the 1960s. In the 1970s there had been a whole series of investigations of the police. Many were fired, some went to prison. At the same time, because of a severe fiscal crisis, about 20% of the patrol force was laid off. Understandably, this caused a huge amount of resentment of the City within the ranks of the police.

In the 1970s, a scaled down police department had to ignore petty crime to handle serious crime. This ignoring prostitutes, low-level drug dealing in the streets, vandalism, panhandling, etc. became entrenched. In the 1980s Edward Koch was our mayor. It was rumored he was gay. The cops didn't like him. He was followed by our first (and only) Black mayor, David Dinkins. A police union official once famously referred to Dinkins as 'a washroom attendant.'

Starting with Mayor John Lindsey in the 1960s, the city urged the police use better restraint in dealing with the public. More resentment on the part of the men in blue. By 1990 the police were ignoring all kinds of things. Most New Yorkers felt this was 'payback' to city residents for failing to show proper respect to the police, exacerbated by the fact, many of the officers lived in the suburbs.

With Giuliani's background as a prosecutor he was able to end all this and get the police to start policing the streets again, in ways they hadn't done in decades. It was the first time in almost forty years the city had a mayor most of the police liked. Obviously, Giuliani couldn't call it, 'Making the police do their job,' but that's what it was. Instead they rolled out the 'broken windows' campaign.

And it worked. Older New Yorkers say, back then, when you went out at night you literally took your life in your hands. Younger people think we're exaggerating, only we're not. Back in the 1980s I was held up at gunpoint in the street twice and narrowly avoided being held up several other times. I used to ride the subway to work, from the Bronx to Manhattan. Every morning I had to walk past panhandlers in the subway station. Some were aggressive and scary. More panhandlers would troop through the train as I rode downtown. One morning, after I told a panhandler I didn't have "a buck" for him, he stood over me and demanded I give him a sip of coffee from the container I was holding. Not fun.
 

Attachments

  • NY City subway 1980s.jpg
    NY City subway 1980s.jpg
    142.1 KB · Views: 16
  • NY City street 1980s.jpg
    NY City street 1980s.jpg
    145.2 KB · Views: 15
The fact that crime was declining and declining everywhere in the early and mid-1990s is indisputable. Nonetheless, Mayor Giuliani's efforts to improve the quality of life as we New Yorkers experienced it everyday as we went about our daily lives was much appreciated. Calling it 'broken windows' seemed more PR gimmick than reality. It was a crackdown.

To many New Yorkers the reality was, the rank-and-file police had been feuding with city administrations for years going back to the 1960s. In the 1970s there had been a whole series of investigations of the police. Many were fired, some went to prison. At the same time, because of a severe fiscal crisis, about 20% of the patrol force was laid off. Understandably, this caused a huge amount of resentment of the City within the ranks of the police.

In the 1970s, a scaled down police department had to ignore petty crime to handle serious crime. This ignoring prostitutes, low-level drug dealing in the streets, vandalism, panhandling, etc. became entrenched. In the 1980s Edward Koch was our mayor. It was rumored he was gay. The cops didn't like him. He was followed by our first (and only) Black mayor, David Dinkins. A police union official once famously referred to Dinkins as 'a washroom attendant.'

Starting with Mayor John Lindsey in the 1960s, the city urged the police use better restraint in dealing with the public. More resentment on the part of the men in blue. By 1990 the police were ignoring all kinds of things. Most New Yorkers felt this was 'payback' to city residents for failing to show proper respect to the police, exacerbated by the fact, many of the officers lived in the suburbs.

With Giuliani's background as a prosecutor he was able to end all this and get the police to start policing the streets again, in ways they hadn't done in decades. It was the first time in almost forty years the city had a mayor most of the police liked. Obviously, Giuliani couldn't call it, 'Making the police do their job,' but that's what it was. Instead they rolled out the 'broken windows' campaign.

And it worked. Older New Yorkers say, back then, when you went out at night you literally took your life in your hands. Younger people think we're exaggerating, only we're not. Back in the 1980s I was held up at gunpoint in the street twice and narrowly avoided being held up several other times. I used to ride the subway to work, from the Bronx to Manhattan. Every morning I had to walk past panhandlers in the subway station. Some were aggressive and scary. More panhandlers would troop through the train as I rode downtown. One morning, after I told a panhandler I didn't have "a buck" for him, he stood over me and demanded I give him a sip of coffee from the container I was holding. Not fun.

Thing is, similar crime drops were happening in Philly without the gimmick of broken windows. We never had the super aggressive panhandling I have encountered in NYC but there was an element of it. The fact is, cities were revitalizing after decades of decline because people moved back in, finding the suburbs to sterile for their tastes.

Giuliani was a decent cheerleader for NYC, I’ll grant him that much, but Rendell was the same for Philly. It was a time that was hard to credit crime drops to police programs as there were so many other factors in play. Sometimes crime drops were due to police efforts (my primary neighborhood, Fairmount, was cleaned up by police closure of crack houses but this was brought about by the crackheads use of the posh Center City as a burglary target, but really the houses just went to other neighborhoods, but a new livable zone was carved out.)
 
And... the plot thickens...

From: Politico
Justice Department investigators have asked questions about Rudy Giuliani’s work connected to Romania...

(It is just at the 'investigation' phase, which means that it may be a dead end. But, it wouldn't be surprising if the man with so many sketchy ties ended up in bed with more than just Ukranians.)
 

Back
Top Bottom