Saturday, December 5, 2009

Giuliani Named Security Chief for 2016 Rio Olympic Games
  Politics piece by Jim Kouri

While pundits, news analysts, and reporters attempt to predict former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s political future—including talk of a run for the US Senate—the latest news coming from his security firm appears to quash those predictions.

According to officials from Giuliani Safety & Security, Inc., the Brazilian government hired the man known as “America’s Mayor” to serve as security advisor for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“He’s going to help us in day-to-day security and, especially, with an eye toward ... the Olympic Games,“ said the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral, in a press statement released on Thursday. Giuliani was meeting with Governor Cabral to discuss the immense project.

While some political observers claim Giuliani’s contract to provide security services for the Olympics is a major role for a man who made a name for himself going after organized crime figures, it would not eliminate the possibility that he could still run for public office.

While considered a beautiful city, Rio has a reputation for an unsettling amount of violence and crime. In just one month, Brazilian gang wars resulted in 40 murders in Rio, including the killing of three policemen who were flying in a helicopter that was shot down by criminals in October.

Upon graduation from New York University Law School in Manhattan, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. In 1970, Giuliani joined the office of the U.S. Attorney. At age 29, he was named Chief of the Narcotics Unit and rose to serve as executive US Attorney.

In 1975, Giuliani was recruited to Washington, D.C., where he was named Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General. In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan Administration, the number three spot in the US Justice Department. As Associate Attorney General, he supervised all of the US Attorney Offices’ Federal law enforcement agencies, the Bureau of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the US Marshals.

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he spearheaded the effort to jail drug dealers, fight organized crime (the infamous “Pizza Connection” case), break the web of corruption in government, and prosecute white-collar criminals. Few US Attorneys in history can match his record of 4,152 convictions with only 25 reversals.

While losing the race for mayor of New York City in 1989 as a candidate of the Republican Party, in 1993, his campaign focusing on quality of life, crime, business and education made him the 107th Mayor of the City of New York. In 1997 he was re-elected by a wide margin, carrying four out of New York City’s five boroughs.

Under his leadership, overall crime went down 57%, murders were reduced 65%, and New York City—once infamous around the world for its dangerous streets—was recognized as the safest large city in America for the past five years, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.

New York policing techniques and operations became models for other cities, particularly the CompStat program, which won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

CompStat allows police to statistically monitor criminal activity on specific street corners as well as citywide, holding precinct commanders accountable for criminal activity in their neighborhoods. Because this data is updated constantly, it enables the police to become a proactive force in fighting crime, stopping crime trends before they become crime waves that negatively effect the quality of life for neighborhood residents.

While reporters and commentators were harsh in their coverage of then-Mayor Giuliani, he was popular with citizens and police officers. He was dubbed “America’s Mayor” following his response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Jim Kouri

Posted by Jim Kouri on 12/5/09

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