Giuliani defends role in firing of NYC workers who paraded in blackface
By The Associated Press
01.09.03
NEW YORK — Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani testified yesterday that his fear of race riots led him to urge the firing of three city employees who rode on a parade float in blackface.
The white employees — firefighters Jonathan Walters and Robert Steiner and police officer Joseph Locurto — were fired after the 1998 Labor Day incident and are suing the city to get their jobs back.
They have testified that they had no racist intent and that their actions were protected by the First Amendment because the float was a parody.
Those on the float threw chunks of watermelon and fried chicken to parade-goers and made it appear as if one of the men in blackface was being dragged, city lawyer Jonathan Pines said. The incident occurred the same summer that James Byrd Jr., a black man in Jasper, Texas, was dragged to his death from a pickup truck.
At the time, Giuliani publicly declared, “They will be fired.”
Giuliani testified that he was particularly offended by the re-enactment of the killing of Byrd, and he appeared visibly upset by a reshowing in court of a television news report of the float with the man being dragged behind.
Giuliani told U.S. District Judge John E. Sprizzo, who will decide the issue without a jury, that the float “was outrageous and it had the potential of causing serious disruption, civil unrest.”
He said he worried that the “Black to the Future: 2098” float in the parade in Broad Channel, Queens, had the potential to create “civil unrest leading to violence and a riot.”
Giuliani said he needed to use strong language to show that racist behavior by city workers would not be tolerated.
Giuliani, whose fame blossomed nationally after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, found himself facing questions mostly from Chris Dunn, a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, which had repeatedly accused him of violating constitutional rights with his policies as mayor.
Dunn accused him of saying the men on the float would be fired because he was facing enormous criticism from the black community after police abruptly shut down a primarily black rally in Harlem two days before the parade. Giuliani said the events were unrelated.
The “fired” remark, Giuliani testified, was a prediction and could have been ignored by the men’s bosses, the fire commissioner and the police commissioner.
The judge said Giuliani’s comments were in part political and might have been “most improper,” and he suggested that the mayor’s “fired” remark may have forced the commissioners to dismiss the men.
“You are the boss, and if people disagree with you, they may find their way to the door,” the judge said.
The judge found support for his reasoning in the testimony later in the day of Thomas Von Essen, the city’s fire commissioner in 1998, who said he thought at first that the men deserved leniency.
“I thought it was a big, big mistake and they screwed up big time,” Von Essen said. “I didn’t think it warranted dismissal at that time.”
He said he began to change his mind after Giuliani impressed upon him the need to send a strong message that the city would not tolerate racist behavior and as the public outcry grew louder.
“What I learned later was how upsetting it was to people,” he said.
The judge said Von Essen’s testimony and demeanor on the witness stand led him to think “in your heart of hearts, you thought dismissal was a little harsh.”
Attorney Marvin Kornberg, conducting a cross-examination of Von Essen, then pulled out a book by the commissioner in which he wrote that his gut feelings told him that the firefighters were acting as private citizens and were “entitled to their constitutional rights to be idiots.”
In the book, Von Essen recalled telling Giuliani, “I agree, boss, but can we really fire somebody for exercising free speech? That bothers me,” Kornberg said.
The judge pressed his point again, saying, “It appears to me that you still feel the (firing) was perhaps excessive punishment for stupid behavior on the float.”
“No,” Von Essen said. “I don’t think that.”
“I’m not sure I believe that, but we’ll see,” the judge said.