George's Greatest Hits: "Harlem Rally, Through Cop's Eyes" (originally published in the New York Daily News, Wednesday, September 16, 1998)

Introduction:  This past Saturday--August 13th, 2011--I had the occasion in my professional capacity to make the scene at an event in Harlem billed as the "Million Youth Rally."  A long stretch of Lenox Avenue had been reserved for the million youths--from the stage at around 112th Street all the way up to 125th, the authorities were ready with rows of metal barricades to close as many blocks as necessary to accommodate the crowds.

But despite the inclusion of a few crowd-pleasers--poet Amiri Baraka recited his vaguely anti-Semitic poem about 9/11, with sax backing, and Louis Farrakhan himself closed the show with a rambling speech about Libya--the entire audience barely filled a block or two.

Perhaps the low turnout can be blamed on the absence of Al Sharpton--guarding his newly-won mainstream credibility as a mother wolf guards her cubs, he was nowhere to be found.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help but reminisce with a sort of warm nostalgia about the original Million Youth March, at the very same location, in September of 1998.  Now that was the real deal.  It had it all--Sharpton; huge crowds; hours of racist and anti-Semitic speeches; the late Khalid Abdul Muhammad whipping everyone up to a froth; and the oppressive sense of imminent violence.  And me, who wrote this swell piece in the New York Daily News (Wednesday, September 16, 1998) about the whole thing.

-George Molé
  08/17/2011

Harlem Rally, Through Cop's Eyes

by George Molé

New York Daily News

Wednesday, September 16, 1998

Recently, I stood with a group of my fellow police officers on Lenox Ave. in Harlem at the controversial rally known as the Million Youth March and listened as Khalid Abdul Muhammad told the crowds that surrounded us to kill us.

Soon after, the rotors of police helicopters made a cleansing wind that blew Muhammad’s foul words from the New York streets.

Cops turned off the sound system and cleared the stage, and the rally was over—at just the time a court had said it must end.

Some have claimed that, despite the court order to end at 4 p.m., the NYPD was overzealous in bringing the rally to a close when it did—that the event was peaceful and should have been allowed to continue.

As one who was there, I disagree.

Although I was not involved in the fracas near the stage and had no hand in planning the Police Department’s actions, I was stationed in the thickest part of the crowd and felt the tension build as Muhammad’s call to arms began to resonate with many of his listeners.  For the safety of everyone present—cops and spectators—the event had to end when it did.

For most of the day the rally had indeed been peaceful.  Much of the language coming from the stage was ignorant and ugly, but the ideas expressed at a rally are not a cop’s business—as long as everyone is safe.  None of the speakers was urging immediate violence, and the spectators were largely orderly.

The mood changed when Khalid Muhammad took the stage.  With rolling cadences that a benevolent clergyman might use to express faith in God or to comfort the oppressed, he urged his listeners to assault and kill cops.  To “disconnect the railing…and beat the hell out of them.”  To “take their nightsticks…and ram it up their behinds and jam it down their damn throats.”  And to “take their goddamn guns from them and use their guns on them.”

Every exhortation contained a conditional phrase designed to allow Muhammad to sound militant to his audience, yet escape criminal liability (a strategy that will not work if those who examine the case exhibit any common sense).  Only brutalize or murder a cop “if they attack you,” he would say.

But what legitimate action by a police officer might a hostile crowd, brought to a boil by a hypnotic speaker, choose to call an “attack”?  The making of a valid arrest, the issuing of a summons—indeed, even a cop asking someone to exit in this direction instead of that one—might have become an occasion for conflict that left someone hurt.

It was not hard to see as Muhammad spoke that his message was being received by many with enthusiasm.  Fists pumped in the air, and glares and curses came our way.

Would the crowd have erupted into violence?  I don’t know.  But history teaches that evil words, persuasively spoken, can cause people to do things they otherwise would not.

When cops stand for many hours in the sun surrounded by people who profess to hate them, they often talk to each other to pass the time.

I spoke for a while with a female officer of Hispanic descent I know, a single mother of two who is also raising her younger brother.  At one point she said, looking around, her voice sad, “I don’t believe in all this race stuff.  I think we’re all just people.”

When Muhammad told his listeners to kill cops, he was telling them to kill her.  Because there is no abstract entity called “cops.”  Just people.

But she went home safe.  As did all the misguided people who came out for Muhammad’s hate rally.

Because, thank God, the law, and not Muhammad, was in control that day.

Molé is an NYPD sergeant and writer.

George's Greatest Hits: "Racist? We Risk Our Lives for All New Yorkers" (originally published in the New York Post, Monday, April 19, 1999)

Introduction:  The front pages of today's tabloids show the President of the United States making platonic love to Al Sharpton yesterday--smiling, handshaking and delivering a speech to a convention of Sharpton's front group.  Obama is only the latest elected official to participate in the ongoing effort to legitimize the bigoted, clownish thug who has caused so much disharmony in our city.  I couldn't help but remember something I wrote about Sharpton almost 12 years ago--and not much has changed, has it?  This article appeared in the New York Post on Monday, April 19, 1999.

-George Molé
  04/07/2011 

Racist?  We Risk Our Lives for All New Yorkers

by George Molé

New York Post
Monday, April 19, 1999

On the day four police officers were charged with murder at the Bronx County Courthouse, Al Sharpton preening triumphantly for the cameras, another cop was remembered in The Bronx.

A street in that borough was renamed for Police Officer Vincent Guidice, who was killed three years ago on a domestic dispute call—impaled on shards of broken glass while trying to protect a battered woman.

I’ve often thought of Guidice during the ongoing frenzy of anti-cop protests precipitated by the Diallo shooting.

These demonstrations, which focus on what some say is the racism of the NYPD, are organized by Sharpton, who has referred to Jews as “diamond merchants,” and who appeared last year at an anti-Semitic rally in Harlem—actions that would have landed a cop on the unemployment line.

But the media’s uncritical reporting of the protests makes little of these ironies.  And many mainstream figures—such as Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and state Comptroller Carl McCall—disgracefully chose to turn their backs on the decent men and women of the police department and support Sharpton.

As a proud member of the NYPD, who always believed I was serving the community through my work, I’m hurt by the venom directed against police officers by the protesters—and angered by the dishonesty and ugliness of their message.

In my experience, racism—like brutality and corruption—is not common among police officers.  Cops, who see members of all groups at their best and at their worst, have the clearest understanding of everyone’s common humanity—and so are among the least bigoted of all people.

Guidice, an Italian-American cop who didn’t hesitate to give his life protecting an African-American woman, proved that point.

Rather, it is the anti-cop movement that has the smell of racial prejudice.  Many seem to oppose the NYPD at least partly because—although it is quite ethnically diverse—the majority of its members are white.

Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields, for example, wrote recently of the “intolerable gulf between the way New York’s population looks and the way its police force looks.”

Judging a group by how it “looks”—the ethnicity of its members—is usually called racism.  But apparently it’s acceptable when speaking of police officers.

Sharpton, inserting himself into every tragedy, makes me think of a character in one of Stephen King’s stories—a demon that literally drinks human tears, growing strong on people’s pain and fear.

Now, cloaked in the grief of Diallo’s parents, he cynically exploits understandable public dismay over that case.

I certainly don’t expect people not to be disturbed that the police killed an unarmed man.  Every good cop grieves for that.

But I also hope the public can find some empathy for young people who are given a badge and gun, told they are society’s protectors, and sent out to make life-and-death decisions in a split second on a dark street.

An instant too slow, and they are in a wheelchair, or a grave.

An instant too quick and they are under indictment, called racists and murderers even by our elected officials—and forever have a man’s death on their consciences.

Police officers, still doing their best for our city, need fair New Yorkers of all races to support them, to speak out against the cop haters.

Unfortunately, fair New Yorkers have been silent.  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” as William Butler Yeats wrote.  Only the chanting of bullhorns has been heard.

But if you can see a cop as a person, and not as black or white; if you understand that when cops enforce the law in a community, they do it to protect the working folks who live there; if you appreciate what Vincent Guidice, Irma Lozada, Sean Carrington and other fallen cops have given for all of us—this would be a good time to find your voice.

George Molé is an NYPD lieutenant and freelance writer.