Giuliani Lies Again…

Oh man. Maybe the next time Rudy makes a statement, he should confirm it with his wife. I hear they speak on the phone a lot.

Factcheck.org caught Giuliani in an outright lie.

At least twice on his presidential campaign Web site, Giuliani claims to have increased New York City’s police force by 12,000 officers – from 28,000 to 40,000 – between Jan. 1, 1994, and the summer of 2000. The candidate makes the claim on a page in the “News” section under the heading “Rudy Giuliani Cleaned Up New York City” and in a Sept. 24 blog entry that boasts, “Under mayor Giuliani the number of police officers in New York City skyrocketed.”

That rocket looks more like a sparkler to us. The number Giuliani uses as his starting point in 1994 includes only New York Police Department officers. He doesn’t count transit police, who patrolled NYC’s subways and other transportation lines, or housing police, who dealt with any trouble in the city’s public housing. Neither of those types of officers were part of the NYPD; they fell under different bureaucracies.

But Giuliani does add the housing and transit police to his later tally. In fact, he officially merged the transit and housing cops into the NYPD in fiscal year 1995. That added close to 7,100 officers to the NYPD’s rolls, the bulk of the 12,000 cops Giuliani claims to have tacked on. But the administrative move didn’t put any new police on the city’s streets. Those officers were already patrolling crime-ridden subways and housing projects.

Oopsies…

Even the figure Giuliani uses for the number of NYPD officers when he took office – 28,000 – is inaccurate. That would have been about right six months earlier, under Mayor David Dinkins. But the NYPD numbered 29,450 when Giuliani took office, again according to the FY 1996 Message of the Mayor. By using the earlier figure, Giuliani takes credit for 1,450 officers that Dinkins, who had undertaken a special anti-crime initiative, added to the NYPD.

Oopsies…

Giuliani says he took the police force from 28,000 to 40,000. His actual starting number for the NYPD should be 29,450, plus the housing and transit cops on the city payroll, which brings it to 36,340 as of Jan. 1994 when he took office. By mid-2000, the total had moved up to 40,000. So we’re left with an increase of 3,660, or about 10 percent. That’s perfectly respectable, but you need a long pole to vault from there to 12,000. And it’s only fair to point out that the federal government, under the auspices of one of President Clinton’s favorite programs, passed by Congress as part of the 1994 crime bill, gave New York City enough money to cover the first $25,000 of the salaries of about 3,500 new officers from 1997 to 2000, according to the city’s nonpartisan Independent Budget Office.

I’ve said it before quite often… The only person that’s going to keep Rudy from winning this election is the guy he sees in the mirror. Every time he opens his mouth he either says something stupid, gets something wrong, or outwardly lies. Frankly, if this is the great hope of the Republicans, they’re doomed.