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Rudy, kin enjoy guarded lifestyle
August 26, 2002
Donna Hanover and her daughter, Caroline, 13, attended a New York Liberty game recently, each arriving in a city car with her own detective detail. After the game, Hanover left with her detail while Caroline took off with hers for New England.
Guess who paid for gas and tolls?
It's been eight months since Rudolph Giuliani left City Hall. In the past year, he's earned literally millions of dollars from speeches he's given about the World Trade Center attack. Hanover's divorce settlement six weeks ago was for $6.8 million.
So why are Hanover, Caroline, Andrew, Giuliani, his mother and his girlfriend, Judy, still receiving round-the-clock police protection in numbers that exceed those of Mayor Michael Bloomberg? And why, despite the millions of dollars Giuliani and Hanover each have, are New Yorkers paying for it?
So far, no one has been forthcoming with answers, including how many detectives are in the details and at what cost to taxpayers.
Despite his promise to provide an answer, Police Department spokesman Michael O'Looney didn't return a call, instructing an aide to tell Newsday he had nothing to say.
O'Looney has been hiding behind the aegis of the department's new Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence David Cohen - formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency - who, according to top police officials, likens any explanation of the Giuliani clan's police protection to a breach of national security.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has also been silent.
This, of course, is all part of a now-familiar pattern. Besides the former and current Giulianis, Rudy, while mayor, forced then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik to provide his predecessor, Howard Safir, with 16 months of so-called police protection so that detectives could deliver Safir's laundry for him. This column has in the past explained how "security" for politicians and their families and friends has nothing to do with security. It has to do with perks and power.
As a former chief of the Intelligence Division put it with barely an exaggeration: "Ask yourself how many women have been killed in the past five years by their husbands and boyfriends. Then ask yourself when the last public official was killed in New York State. It was [President William] McKinley at the turn of the century."
Hanover did not return a message left on her home phone. Over at Giuliani Partners, the former mayor's new clubhouse, where his old gang - Kerik, Richie Sheirer, Denny Young et al - has offices, Giuliani's spokeswoman Sunny "The Silent" Mindel was as good as her name.
I
Love New York, by Ed Norris. Yes, that's former Deputy Commissioner
Eddie Norris, now police commissioner of Baltimore, who last week acknowledged
having spent $178,000 from a secret police slush fund.
During his two years in Baltimore, Norris used the fund to pay for such baubles as gold-plated cuff-links that he offered as souvenirs; sweatshirts and jackets for police commanders attending an Orioles game; and $20,000 for travel, including eight trips to Manhattan, where he spent $2,500 on meals at Smith and Wollensky steakhouse and $3,700 for the W hotel in midtown.
Norris told The Baltimore Sun that his New York trips were to attend police seminars, meet high-ranking New York police officials and recruit for the Baltimore Police Department.
Norris' job is safe. Baltimore's mayor loves him, although his high-spending hijinks may blunt his goal of returning here as commissioner. (He interviewed with Bloomberg during the campaign.)
But before anyone becomes too exercised, it's only fair to note that such overspending is commonplace at One Police Plaza, courtesy of the Police Foundation and other police buffs.
Bill Bratton used the Police Foundation to award his professor buddy George Kelling lucrative consulting contracts. (In one report, Kelling compared Bratton to Plato.)
Kerik used the foundation to pay for busts of himself that he planned to give away as souvenirs, until he became so embarrassed when a picture of the bust appeared on the front page of this newspaper that he demanded they all be destroyed.
And Safir used the Finest Foundation to buy him dinner at Taormina in Little Italy, a joint off-limits to cops because of its alleged mob ties.
