On Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani took on the reaction of his successor, current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for his reaction to Wednesday’s announcement of a grand jury decision not to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for a chokehold that allegedly led to the death of Eric Garner.
“This helps to create this atmosphere of protests and sometimes even violence,” Giuliani said. “First of all, there was no racism in this case. There is no indication if this man were a white man resisting arrest, the same thing would happen. If I recall, there was an African-American sergeant on the scene observing, in charge of the entire situation, never did anything to stop … observing the technique used.”
“As far as I know,” he continued. “Again, I haven’t seen the grand jury’s transcript. She did nothing to interrupt it. That might have weighed in the grand jury’s decision. But to suggest racism was involved, just because it’s a white man and black man, and then also to talk about families worried about their children? There are a handful of police shootings of blacks — a handful. I don’t know the exact percentage. Different city, 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent. Ninety-six percent of the time it’s a black child being killed by a black.”
“So this is like you have two streets,” Giuliani added. “Ninety-six percent of your action takes place on one street. Two percent takes place on the other. And the mayor is telling his son, worry about the one with the 2 percent, not the one with the 96 percent. If he wants to train young black men and how to avoid being killed in a city, you can talk about police. Police should never kill anybody unjustifiably. I’ve put them in jail when that happens. But you should spend 90 percent of your time talking about the way they’re actually probably going to get killed, which is by another black. To avoid that fact, to avoid that fact, I think is racism.”
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