Sunday, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” while commenting on the recent police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota and a sniper targeting and killing five Dallas police officers, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said African-Americans must, “teach your children to be respectful to the police, and you’ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, the real danger to them, 99 out of 100 times, 9,900 out of 1,000 times are other black kids who are going to kill them.”
Transcript as follows:
JOHN DICKERSON: Welcome back to “Face the Nation” With us now is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Mr. Mayor, I want to ask you about something former speaker Newt Gingrich said, which is that he said, white Americans can’t understand the extra risk that comes with being black in America and that whites “instinctively underestimate the danger of the black experience.” What do you think about that?
GIULIANI: I agree with that completely. I agree largely with the sentiments of Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD). The reality is, we have to look differently at race in America if we’re going to change this. We’ve been looking at it the same way for 20 years and, here’s where we are. And, we both have to try to understand each other. First, let me say, my deep sympathy for the people of Minnesota, the people of Louisiana, the people of Texas and of Dallas, and I’d like them all to remember that although these incidents happened in different ways, they all share it together as Americans. And we share this violence together as Americans. So, maybe whites have to look at it differently, and blacks have to look at it differently. Whites have to realize that African-American men have a fear — and boys, have a fear of being confronted by the police, because of some of these incidents. Some people may consider it rational. Some people may consider it irrational. But it’s a reality. It exists. And there’s a second reality in the black community. And the second reality in the black community is, there’s too much violence in the black community. So, a black will die 1 percent, or less, at the hands of the police and 99 percent of the hands of a civilian, most often another black. So, if you want to protect black lives, then you’ve got to protect black lives, not just against police, which happens rarely, although with tremendous attention, and which happens every 14 hours in Chicago. Every 14 hours. And we never hear from Black Lives Matter.
DICKERSON: Well, then —
GIULIANI: So, if you want to deal with this, on the black side, you’ve got to teach your children to be respectful to the police, and you’ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, the real danger to them, 99 out of 100 times, 9,900 out of 1,000 times are other black kids who are going to kill them. That’s the way they’re going to die.
DICKERSON: So, Mr. Mayor —
GIULIANI: Now, on the white side, we have to understand that, whether we get it or not, there is this extraordinary fear of the police, and police have to be — have to institute a policy of zero tolerance, like we did for crime in New York. Zero tolerance. No disrespect. Way back, 14 year ago, Commissioner Howard Safir began a program in New York City called Courtesy, Professionalism, and Respect. It was continued by the next three police commissioners, including the one just had on now.
DICKERSON: Mr. Mayor, let me just ask you, you started out by saying that white Americans have to understand that this is happening in the black community, and then at the end you said, members of the black community have to teach their children to behave in front of the police. That — those messages seem to conflict with one another.
GIULIANI: Of course they don’t. If I were a black father, and I was concerned about the safety of my child, really concerned about it, and not in a politically activist sense, I would say, be very respectful of the police. Most of them are good. Some can be very bad. And just be very careful.
DICKERSON: And so what do police —
GIULIANI: I’d also say, be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood, and don’t get involved with them, because, son, there’s a 99 percent chance they’re going to kill you, not the police. And we’ve got to hear that from the black community. And what we’ve got to hear from the black community is, how and what they are doing, among themselves, about the crime problem in the black community. When there are 60 shootings in Chicago over the 4th of July, and 14 murders, and Black Lives Matter is nonexistent, and then there’s one police murder, of very questionable circumstances, and we hear from Black Lives Matter, we wonder, do black lives matter, or only the very few black lives that are killed by white policeman —
DICKERSON: Mr. Mayor —
GIULIANI: But not all those black lives that are killed by other blacks?
DICKERSON: Do you —
GIULIANI: And on the black side, what they hear from us, is constantly defending the police.
Now, I’ll give you an example. I had a police officer who brutally attacked a gentlemen named Amadou Diallo. That police officer is now sitting in jail for 25 years, due to the work of my police commissioner, Howard Safir, and the prosecution of now Attorney General Loretta Lynch. I also had police officers who were wrongly accused, and acquitted by a jury, even though mobs were calling for them to be put in jail, despite the fact that a jury found them not guilty.
DICKERSON: Mr. —
GIULIANI: So, these are complicated situations and we have to try to understand each other.
DICKERSON: Right.
The — just a final question, sir. You said that the Black Lives Matter movement has put a target on the back of police officers. When members of the African-American community see videos, as they have this week, they feel like there is a target on young black men. Explain your response about how they’ve put a target on police officers, how that can match up when people see these videos.
GIULIANI: Well, when they talk about killing police officers.
DICKERSON: But they don’t —
GIULIANI: When they sing — well, they sure do. They sing rap songs about killing police officer,s and they talk about killing police officers, and they yell it out at their rallies and the police officers hear it.
DICKERSON: But, Mr. Mayor, what you seem to be doing is taking —
GIULIANI: And the reality is — please, please let me finish. And when you say black lives matter, that’s inherently racist.
DICKERSON: Well, I think their argument would —
GIULIANI: Black lives matter. White lives matter. Asian lives matter. Hispanic lives matter. That’s anti-American and it’s racist.
DICKERSON: Well —
GIULIANI: Of course black lives matter, and they matter greatly, but when you focus in on one percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that’s going on in America, and you make it a national thing, and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid who’s getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you create a disproportion.
DICKERSON: All right.
GIULIANI: The police understand it, and it puts a target on their back. Every cop in America will tell you that if you ask him.
DICKERSON: All right, Mayor Giuliani, thanks so much for being with us.
GIULIANI: Thank you.
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