THE MUD-SLINGERS

I am curious. I wonder when it was that the mayor of New York misplaced
his humanity.

Most of the city knows by now that Patrick Dorismond is dead. He and a
friend were just minding their own business, trying to hail a cab on
Eighth Avenue when they had the terrible misfortune to be approached
for no good reason by a hyperactive undercover cop.

Mr. Dorismond had given no indication whatsoever that he was involved
in any wrongdoing. But the cop felt the need to bolster his arrest
totals, so he decided to intrude on Mr. Dorismond and bug him about
drugs.

Mr. Dorismond had no way of knowing he was suddenly in mortal danger.
Angered by what he thought was a street nuisance, he told the cop to
get lost. A scuffle broke out, backups rushed in, and within moments
Patrick Dorismond, just 26, was history.

Such a turn of events would evoke feelings of sorrow in most people.
You wouldn't have to know Mr. Dorismond to be moved by the tragic
waste of a young man's life. And you could feel for his two young
daughters, who will grow up without their father.

Mr. Dorismond's friend, Kevin Kaiser, was quoted in The Times as
saying: "The last memory I have of this man is him rolling on the
ground, gasping for air, with blood coming out of his mouth."

You might read that and think: Well, how can we prevent a similar
awful occurrence? What can we do about this problem of cops shooting
civilians for reasons that elude the average sane person?

You might think that. But your mayor wouldn't.

The first impulse of Rudolph Giuliani and his trained seal of a police
commissioner, Howard Safir, was to try to dig up as much dirt as
possible on Mr. Dorismond. The fouler the better. Just smear this
newly dead man and embarrass his family with as much filth as
possible. The worse he looks, the less hideous the shooting will seem.
Never mind that this execrable effort is irrelevant to the matter at
hand. That's the way to minimize the political fallout.

On Saturday, though he knew Mr. Dorismond had never been convicted of
a crime -- only of minor disorderly conduct violations -- Mr. Giuliani
nevertheless said: "When a person has shown a propensity to violence,
a propensity to hitting other people, a propensity to robbery, and to
attempted robbery, and a propensity to being involved in drug
transactions, that doesn't necessarily negate the whole thing, but
these are relevant facts that the people have a right to know."

Yesterday he was at it again, sliming Mr. Dorismond on national
TV.

Try to keep this in mind, even if the mayor can't: The man was trying
to hail a taxi, bothering nobody. The police came out of nowhere and,
for no good reason, began to bother him. Moments later he was dead.

The anger at the police in New York is growing daily. Instead of
trying to defuse that anger, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Safir seem intent on
fanning it into a full-blown rage.

"They've made us the enemy more than we ever were," said a
high-ranking police official I spoke to over the weekend. He said he
and many other dedicated cops are becoming increasingly upset over the
damage done to the department's reputation by some of the mindlessly
aggressive policies imposed by Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Safir.

"There is no humanistic or humane approach to the service that we do,"
the official said. "It's just numbers, numbers, numbers. All they want
is to get the arrest numbers up. And when you look at Diallo -- when
you look at the results of that. And when you look at what they did to
the Street Crime Unit, which was a good outfit. And when you look at
this latest shooting -- this, what's his name, Dorismond? This all
comes from Giuliani's over-the-top, take-no-prisoners attitude. And
you cannot police New York City like that. It cannot be done."

There was a mixture of anger and dismay in his tone. "Giuliani and
Safir are really hurting us," he said. "The damage they've done to
this job -- I won't see the repair of it in my time."

If the mayor cares about that, he's not letting on. He and Mr. Safir
remain committed to policies that push cops who are deficient in
judgment, training and supervision into situations they are not
prepared to handle. Inevitably some of those cops will degrade, maim
and kill the innocent.

To trash the victims of such excesses is really sick.