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 Still, something about Sharpton's appearance with Mayor Bill de
Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton late last month left
some observers, and possibly even some of the participants, feeling
off-kilter.
The event, called to discuss the death of a Staten Island man put in
a choke hold by police as they arrested him for selling untaxed
cigarettes, highlighted the adjustments that de Blasio and Sharpton,
who has often been kept at arm's length at City Hall, are having to
make since the liberal mayor's election.
It is an open question whether Sharpton, for years a polarizing
figure who many saw as inflammatory, wields more power under de
Blasio, the city's most progressive mayor in a generation, than he
did with the more conservative Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
But there can be little doubt that Sharpton's ideas about police
reform carry more heft at the heart of de Blasio's City Hall, just
as they appear to be gaining traction in the rest of country.
"The mayor is more deliberate and more contemplative than they're
probably used to," Sharpton said in a recent interview, referring to
the perception of some New Yorkers that de Blasio's softer approach
is a sign of weakness.
"Giuliani was more confrontational. Bloomberg was more abrupt. And
this mayor, he reminds me in some way of Obama: he listens," he
said.
WHO'S THE BOSS?
Over the years, Sharpton has achieved national stature as a civil
rights leader. He will deliver the eulogy on Monday at the funeral
of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teen shot dead by a police
officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The incident triggered more than a
week of angry protests and violent confrontations that have made
international news.
But a quarter-century ago, Sharpton was a firebrand shouting in the
streets outside City Hall, giving voice to black and Latino New
Yorkers who often felt ignored in their grievances against the
police. He infuriated critics, not least the police unions, who
found his manner self-aggrandizing and divisive.
His arguably most divisive moment came in 1987 over his involvement
in the case of Tawana Brawley, an African-American teen-ager who
claimed to have been abducted and raped by a group of white men. In
a case filled with allegations of racist abuse, Sharpton took up her
cause. Months later, a New York state grand jury found that the
entire story was fabricated by the teen.
Looking back, Sharpton recalls what motivated him.
"I just got up every morning ready for a fight," he said, sitting in
his corner office near Times Square. "It was easy - nothing to
figure out."
Now, at 59, the civil rights activist has evolved into a gray-haired
elder, a role that afforded him the second-best seat in the room
during the recent roundtable, alongside a mayor with whom he has
been friendly for years.
Absent an obvious foil, Sharpton now must determine how to adjust
the adversarial tactics that had served him in the past.
"Al Sharpton's values have been institutionalized by the mayor and
the police commissioner," Bruce Berg, a political sciences professor
at Fordham University, said.
De Blasio, for his part, has had to figure out how to adapt his
unfettered campaign rhetoric against the police's use of
stop-and-frisk tactics, seen as unfair harassment of young black
men. With restraints of office, the mayor cannot alienate the force
he now commands.
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Last month's roundtable to discuss the death of Eric Garner on
Staten Island provided evidence that Sharpton hasn't lost his bite.
In a propulsive voice honed in the pulpit, Sharpton decried the
"broken windows" philosophy of policing espoused by Bratton, which
holds that going after petty infractions like turnstile-jumping in
subway stations or selling loose cigarettes can keep more serious
crime at bay. Sharpton told the mayor, seated to his immediate
right, and Bratton that he would become their "worst enemy" if the
police was not reformed, as the pair listened with gnomic
expressions.
He then invoked de Blasio's biracial son, Dante, saying the teenager
would be "a candidate" for a police frisking if he was not the
mayor's son - a point that de Blasio himself made while campaigning
last year.
There was uproar, at least in some corners. The New York Post
slapped it on the next day's front page under the headline "Who's
The Boss!" and witheringly calling Sharpton the self-appointed
police commissioner.
De Blasio said he was not afraid of strong opinions. "That is part
of what the democratic process is about," he said after Sharpton had
spoken. "It should never be feared, it should never be held back."
Sharpton is dismissive of the commotion.
"Nobody says that what I said was wrong," he said. "They're just
saying I shouldn't have said it."
VALUES INSTITUTIONALIZED
Every recent New York mayor has had an inevitable and telling
encounter with Sharpton.
Giuliani, who was mayor when police killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed
black man, in a hail of 41 bullets in 1999, would not even have
Sharpton inside City Hall. Indeed, Giuliani called de Blasio's
invite a "big mistake" in a recent radio interview.
By 2006, when Sean Bell, another unarmed black man, was shot at by
police 50 times hours before his wedding, Bloomberg was mayor. In
response to Bell's death, Bloomberg held a City Hall roundtable with
community leaders that was remarkably similar to de Blasio's.
But at no point was Sharpton given free rein to tell Bloomberg what
he thought while television cameras rolled: that happened behind
closed doors, or on the steps of City Hall with Bloomberg nowhere in
the frame.
Still, Sharpton says he has no intention of giving de Blasio an easy
ride.
"While he is mastering his job, don't blame me that 30 years ago I
figured out mine," he said. "I think that the only way that he's
undercut is if he doesn't do what he says."
(Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)
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