Freddy Will Pick Own Top Cop by Pete Hamill New York Daily News 10-10-01 One supposedly major question hovers over tomorrow's Democratic primary runoff: Who will pick the next police commissioner of New York? If Freddy Ferrer wins, there is great fear about who will make the pick. Will it be Ed Koch? He is a three-time mayor, knows how the city government works and is an enthusiastic supporter of Freddy Ferrer. Will it be Peter Vallone? He has more experience in city government than anyone in town, and he is an enthusiastic supporter of Freddy Ferrer. Will it be Daniel Patrick Moynihan? He has been living in and writing about New York for most of his life, and in his time was one of the glories of the U.S. Senate. He is an enthusiastic supporter of Freddy Ferrer. Will it be Geraldine Ferraro? She once ran for the vice presidency of this country and has devoted much of her life to various forms of public service. She is an enthusiastic supporter of Freddy Ferrer. Forget Koch, Vallone, Moynihan and Ferrer. Nobody is afraid of any of them. But if you believe some of the more fevered talk about this election, only one man will choose the next police commissioner. Al Sharpton. Who is, of course, an enthusiastic supporter of Freddy Ferrer. This would be comical if it didn't contain the seeds of a dreadful future. The depiction of Sharpton as the bogeyman, and Ferrer as the bogeyman's puppet, inflames passions that should have ended forever Sept. 11. On that day, blacks, Latinos and whites died together. Jews and Muslims died together, Christians and Buddhists and atheists. Black firefighters died with white firefighters. Latino cops died with white cops. That should have been the end of it. That was the day when all idiotic racial theories should have been blown into the stained air of New York, exposed once more as empty trivialities. When killers come out of the sky to destroy lives without discrimination, all blood has one color: red. But if black and Spanish-speaking voters come to believe that Ferrer was rejected because his roots are in Puerto Rico instead of Europe, and because he welcomes the votes of African-Americans, then we will have a very hard time holding this wounded town together. If Ferrer wins, only one man will choose the next police commissioner: Freddy Ferrer. His Own Man Moynihan will have no veto power. Nor will Koch, Vallone or Ferraro. Not even newspaper columnists, in their boundless wisdom, will make that choice. (My own vote would be for John Timoney, now head of the Philadelphia police department, a tough, fair, intelligent cop and an original member of the Bill Bratton-Jack Maple team. I hope my endorsement doesn't disqualify him.) To assume that Ferrer is some namby-pamby liberal who will choose a namby-pamby liberal police commissioner is ludicrous. If you grow up on Fox St. in the South Bronx — as Ferrer did — and have lived each day among decent working people, you are never soft on predatory criminals or drug dealers. Again, the race factor is largely absurd. Ferrer, after all, is white (some of his friends call him fondly "el blanquito"). The ability to speak Spanish has nothing to do with any category based on race. To be able to read Gabriel García Márquez or Pablo Neruda or Octavio Paz in the original Spanish is the mark of a civilized person — not proof of some blurry racial category. "Latino," like "Hispanic," is a kind of crude shorthand, describing people whose parents (and who themselves) speak Spanish. That's all. Some are white. Some are black. Some are of mixed origins. When Spanish-speaking people — many of them as white as Mark Green or Mike Bloomberg — think about choosing a mayor, they worry about the same things everyone else does: education, drugs, crime, sanitation. Do they also vote out of a sense of pride in one of their own? Of course they do. Or at least some of them do (since all generalizations must be suspect). They are free to vote the way Irish-Americans once did, and Jewish Americans did, and Italian-Americans did. Such votes were cast — as many votes will be cast for Ferrer — out of pride in the way so many New York parents faced, and overcame, adversity. That is, as a vivid embrace of the truth of the American myth. On Fox St., the Irish once filled the tenements that later housed Ferrer's people. If some Spanish-speaking voters see Ferrer as a symbol, and vote for him as a validation of the hardships they and their parents endured, that should be an occasion of cheer to other Americans. If some Spanish-speaking voters look at Ferrer in disdain — disagreeing with his ideas about education, drugs, crime and sanitation — their votes against him also should be an occasion for celebration. The ultimate triumph of our system is the freedom to choose. Extraordinary Challenges Obviously, the next mayor faces extraordinary challenges. New York is in a true crisis. The next mayor will have to work with the federal and state governments to prevent the New York economy from collapsing. He could face a terrible — and expensive — increase in welfare rolls while tax revenues shrink. As jobs are lost, crime will increase (as it always has in hard times). The next mayor will need to work closely with Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer to make certain we get our hard-earned share of federal relief. He will have to gather the city's best minds — politicians, businessmen, artists, urban planners, intellectuals — to shape the future city. The crisis can't be confronted with glib slogans. No New York revival can be possible in a climate of racial division. Mark Green is an honorable man — absolutely not a racist — and thousands of voters will choose him tomorrow for perfectly honorable reasons. One hopes they will vote for him, not against Ferrer (or, by extension, Sharpton). If Green wins the primary and the November election, he will need the support of all New Yorkers as he plays his crucial part in shaping the post-Sept. 11 city. He will need Freddy Ferrer (who, if he wins, will need Green). He will need all those who chose Ferrer for perfectly decent reasons. And, yes, he will need Al Sharpton.