NEW YORK MAYOR TILTS TO TOTALITARIANISM

NEW YORK - It may be that Rudolph Giuliani never has a reflective moment. He
just likes to push people around. He's pretty indiscriminate about it. One
day it's an indisputably worthy target, like violent criminals, the next day
it's jaywalkers. One moment it's the organized thugs at the Fulton Fish
Market, the next it's cab drivers and food vendors.

Mark Green, Carl McCall, New York magazine -- they've all been targets.
Giuliani shut down an entire neighborhood in Harlem and buzzed its residents
with police helicopters because he didn't like Khallid Muhammad. Solid
citizens trying to exercise their right to protest peacefully have been
fought at every conceivable turn. Many gave up, their protests succumbing to
fear or exhaustion.

Civil rights? Civil liberties? Forget about it. When the mayor gets it in
his head to give somebody a hard time -- frequently through his enforcers in
the Police Department -- the niceties of the First Amendment and other
constitutional protections get very short shrift.

The latest targets are people suspected of driving drunk. The cops have been
given the power to seize their vehicles on the spot. Why not? Why wait for a
more sober mind -- say, a judge -- to assess the merits of the case? Why
even bother with an annoyance like due process? Hizzoner -- who would like
to be known as His Majesty -- makes the rules. And he says even if the
drivers are acquitted they may not get their cars back.

Listen to him: "Let's say somebody is acquitted, and it's one of those
acquittals in which the person was guilty but there is just not quite enough
evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. That might be a situation in which the
car would still be forfeited."

Bring on the royal robes and the crown. And get rid of those pesky
legislators and judges.

Richard Emery, whose Manhattan law firm, Emery, Cuti, Brinckerhoff & Abady,
is frequently called on to combat abusive government practices, was blunt in
his criticism of the mayor.

"The problem," said Emery, "is that Giuliani has a vision of what is
essentially an unconstitutional society. He views privacy and the rights of
innocent citizens as a far lower value than law enforcement's domination of
not only the streets, but also private areas of people's lives. He's doing
it for what he believes are good reasons. He wants a civilized society. One
understands his vision. It's not new. But it's an idealistic, totalitarian
vision that tramples on everything a free society stands for."

For the first few years of Giuliani's mayoralty most New Yorkers, enjoying
the increased order and the reductions in crime, turned a blind eye to the
abuses.

But in the wake of the killing of Amadou Diallo, the abuses are being more
closely scrutinized. And the extent of the erosion of rights and liberties
is coming into much sharper relief. (One example: the thousands upon
thousands of innocent young people, most of them black and Hispanic, who are
stopped and searched for no good reason by the police.)

I asked Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, why it
is important for law-abiding citizens to be concerned about any weakening of
civil rights and civil liberties.

Speaking generally, and not about the situation in New York, Tribe said,
"The character of America and the nature of the society that people have
struggled to preserve and died to protect turns on not just the
opportunities for material advancement but at least as importantly on the
protection of basic aspects of human dignity and personal freedom."

He said the apparent increase in security that can follow "the sacrifice of
what we tend to describe as civil liberties" is often illusory. But even if
there were some gains in security, he said, the price would be too high.

"Freedom of speech and freedom of expression," he said, "are important not
just to the dignity of the individual who otherwise feels stifled and
silenced, but are a critical part of an active and informed electorate
without which we really are giving up not just personal freedom but the very
ideal of government of the people, by the people and for the people. And
that kind of sacrifice essentially amounts to a sacrifice of really the very
essence of our whole way of life."