Giuliani: De Blasio Resorting To Personal Attacks Because He's 'On The Defensive'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The back-and-forth between former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and current Mayor Bill de Blasio over the city's homeless problem continued Tuesday.
In an op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Post, Giuliani argued it's the city's responsibility to clear the homeless from the streets and find them treatment, shelter and even a job.
Then he took a shot at the current mayor, writing, "The so-called 'progressive' view, that people have a right to live on the sidewalk, is not only legally devoid of any merit but is inhumane, indecent and dangerous," Giuliani wrote.
Giuliani: De Blasio Resorting To Personal Attacks Because He's 'On The Defensive'
De Blasio fired back Monday calling Giuliani "delusional."
"If you think about what Rudy Giuliani did as mayor, homelessness went up 40 percent on his watch," the mayor said. "He clearly doesn't remember the fact that … as he said, he chased and chased people, but he also deprived people of benefits they needed."
Asked Tuesday about de Blasio's response, Giuliani replied, "I believe the mayor is engaging in personal attack because he's on the defensive."
NYPD Training Cops To Deal With Homeless
"The reality is, if you lived in this city when I was mayor, you knew there was a tremendous decline in homelessness, tremendous decline in crime," he told reporters, including WCBS 880's Peter Haskell.
As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, Giuliani also noted that he aggressively got the homelessness on the streets and aggressively fought crime.
At the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn this past weekend, which left Carey Gabay, an aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, critically wounded. Gabay was hit in the head by a stray bullet when suspected gang members started shooting.
Altogether, four people were shot and two were stabbed at the parade.
Giuliani's police force often went after guns in the area several days before the parade began, Kramer reported.
"Mayor de Blasio should concentrate on governing rather than, you know, traveling around, and he should return to stop, question and frisk," de Blasio said. "If they had been stop, questioning and frisking in the three, four days leading up to the parade – which is when we began policing it – that might not have happened."
Meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said people should not be living on the streets. He's training up to 10,000 cops to handle the homeless, 1010 WINS' Juliet Papa reported.
"And also trying to give our officers guidance on how to police the streets as it relates to those service-resistant people -- the beggars, etc. -- within the law," Bratton said.
Kramer asked police Commissioner Bill Bratton whether he believed in Giuliani's policy on homelessness and guns when he served under the former mayor.
"In terms of what went on in the '90s, we first began to address the issue of crime and homeless-related activities in the subways," Bratton said. "We dramatically reduced that population because we had the rules and regulations – we could work to do that."
Bratton said new laws or interpretations currently allow people to stay on the sidewalk and others have the obligation to walk around them.
He's consulting with constitutional attorneys to see if present laws can be interpreted differently or challenged. He said the City Council could also potentially draft legislation that would give police more tools to address the issue, but he admitted that would be an uphill battle.
