New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio made race a central theme of his statement on the grand jury’s decision not to indict anyone in the death of Eric Garner.
After speaking about the case, De Blasio said, “We’re not just dealing with a problem in 2014, we’re not dealing with years of racism leading up to it, or decades or racism, we are dealing with centuries of racism that have brought us to this day. That is how profound the crisis is.”
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani responded to De Blasio’s comments Thursday morning on “Fox and Friends.”
“This helps to create this atmosphere of protest and sometimes even violence,” Giuliani said. “First of all there was no racism in this case. There’s no indication if this man were a white man and resisting arrest, at that same size, the same thing would happen.”
“If I recall correctly,” he continued, “There was an African-American sergeant on the scene, observing, in charge of the entire situation. Never did anything to stop it. Observing the technique that was used. As far as I know, now again, I haven’t seen the grand jury minutes, she did nothing to interrupt it. That might’ve weighed in the grand jury decision. But to suggest that racism was involved here, just because it’s a white man and a black man.”
“And also to talk about families worried about their children. There are a handful of police shootings of blacks, a handful,” he said. “I don’t know the exact percentage, different cities one percent, two percent, three percent, 96 percent of the time it is a black child being killed by a black. So this is like you have two streets — 96 percent of your accidents take place on one street, two percent take place on the other. And the mayor is telling his son ‘Worry about the one with the two percent, not the one with the 96 percent.'”