Intelligencer

Rudy’s Way Would Be to Shun Rev. Al

Bloomie embraces and Randy Mastro rolls his eyes.

By Ben Mathis-Lilley
Published Dec 3, 2006

At least one person is ready to stand up and criticize Mike Bloomberg for the way he handled the Sean Bell shooting: Randy Mastro, deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani. Since the impending groom was killed in a hail of 50 police bullets, the mayor’s team has worked hard to defuse the situation in part by being respectful toward the Reverend Al Sharpton (who even stood next to the mayor at Monday’s press conference). “To bring in local elected leaders, local clergy, to meet with the family, those are all things that I think that mayors have done successfully over many administrations,” says Mastro. “The one thing that we didn’t ever do, if some sort of incident happened with the police, was call Al Sharpton into City Hall. It’s something the current administration may come to regret.” Mastro adds, “Some people have histories of being uniters, and some people have well-deserved reputations for being dividers.”