You’d never know it from his squeaky clean Wikipedia entry, but Howard Safir is one of the many skeletons in Rudy Giuliani’s closet.
One topic Giuliani will be seeking to avoid during the campaign is police commissioners. Giuliani fired his first commish, William Bratton, for reasons that everyone agrees had almost entirely to do with the mayor’s ego. Bratton was the man who instituted the CompStat program, which is widely credited as having been a critical component of crime reduction in New York during the 1990s (though not everyone agrees). Giuliani’s last commissioner, Bernie Kerik, was a well-known disaster.
But after Rudy fired the well-regarded Bratton, and before he hired the corrupt and incompetent Kerik, he hired Howard Safir. How did he do? New Yorkers remember Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, and Patrick Dorismond — incidents of egregious police brutality to which Safir responded with a mixture of incompetence and cruelty. There was the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association’s unanimous vote of no-confidence in the commissioner, and Frank Serpico’s call for Safir to resign and end the “reign of terror.” There was the Revlon-sponsored free trip to the Oscars (which came when he should have been in New York dealing with the Diallo fiasco).
But the man Giuliani chose to replace William Bratton is even now making headlines for walking the line between poor judgment and corruption.
The New York Daily News reports:
A DNA lab with financial ties to former Police Commissioner Howard Safir has reaped millions in city contracts despite serious questions about its performance.
The Bode Technology Group has two city contracts worth $20 million with the NYPD and city medical examiner. Both pacts have been repeatedly extended without competition from other bidders.
Two of those extensions came months after Bode was fired by Illinois State Police in 2005 for botching the DNA testing on an unusually high percentage of rape-evidence kits.
For one of the contracts, a $3.8 million job to test DNA of rape kits for the New York Police Department, Bode finished the job it was hired to do four years ago.
In possible violation of city bidding rules, the contract was expanded by multiple extensions to include DNA testing that was not authorized by the original contract.
City Controller William Thompson told the Daily News he was troubled by the Bode contract expansion and said it appears the NYPD misrepresented what the contract involved.
As police commissioner, Safir had a hand in approving the original contracts. In 2003 the job was finished, yet Bode continued to be employed by the NYPD on other work — despite city laws requiring that any new work be opened up to fresh bidding. Meanwhile, Safir had gained a financial stake in Bode:
During this time, Safir left the department and went to work for a data collection firm, ChoicePoint, and within four months of leaving 1 Police Plaza, persuaded ChoicePoint to buy Bode.
Now a consultant to Bode’s parent company, Safir boasted about the contract with the NYPD in press releases and on TV – apparently as a way to attract more business….
He stated outright that he “was able to go to [then-Mayor] Rudy Giuliani and have [rape kits] tested at our laboratory in Virginia,” Safir said. “We – ChoicePoint has a laboratory in Virginia that does this.”
Six months later in an Aug. 1, 2002, press release, Bode touted its selection by the NYPD to eliminate the backlog of rape kits.
The Daily News has also reported on Safir’s highly profitable line in 9/11-related endorsements (despite the fact that he wasn’t even commissioner at the time of the attacks):
In each case, the companies sell goods and services by specifically mentioning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or by offering devices to thwart terrorists.
A Daily News investigation found Safir is financially linked to six companies. He even made money selling a flawed “skyscraper escape” device that resulted in a near-fatal accident [More on that here].
A candidate for president should be judged, in part, on the kind of people he has hired; this tells us a great deal about not only what kind of people he would hire once in the White House, but about his own judgment and integrity. So what does it say about Rudy Giuliani that he fired a highly respected man like Bill Bratton, only to replace him with men like Bernie Kerik and Howard Safir?
3 Responses to “Rudy’s Howard Safir Problem”
What always interested me was how Bernie Kerik became a wealthy man having a huge block of stock in the Taser manufacture that the Giuliani’s city of New York endorsed. Someone has to prove to me that Giuliani didn’t have his hand in the deal.
I see that the Wikipedia article on Howard Safir has recently been updated and now includes the following:
“After Safir resigned as Police Comissioner in 2000, he immediately went to work as a consultant to the chief executive of ChoicePoint, Inc. and ultimately ran their Bode Technology Group subsidiary, which they purchased at Safir’s urging in April 2001.
In February 2007, Safir became CEO of Bode Technology when GlobalOptions Group, Inc. acquired The Bode Technology Group from ChoicePoint in a cash purchase for $12.5 million.
Mr. Safir is also CEO of another GlobalOptions company, SafirRosetti, a security and investigation company.
Recently, questions have been raised about Safir’s post-9/11 business dealings and whether he has profited from his connections with then-Mayor Giuliani in gaining DNA analysis contracts for Bode Technology with the City of New York.”
Something to say?
I agree that a candidate should be judged on the type of people that he surrounds himself with. Of course their can always be one bad choice. Lets hear about some of the other people he surrounds himself with. What types of skills and leadership styles does he usually bring to his teams. This is a good article to bring to the attention of the voters. Thanks for your good work!
Left by MJN
August 22, 2007 at 1:32am