Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani wasn’t a fan of Beyoncé’s performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, taking issue with the pop star’s statement about police brutality in the black community.
Mr. Giuliani, who spearheaded policing reforms and oversaw a massive drop in crime during his tenure as Gotham’s mayor, said he has done more to alleviate the plight of the black community than the pop star, whose full name is Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.
“I ran the largest and best police department in the world, the New York City Police Department,” Mr. Giuliani said Monday on “Fox & Friends.” “And I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage by reducing crime, and in particular homicide, by 75 percent, of which maybe 4[,000] or 5,000 were African-American young people who are alive today because of the policies that I put into effect that weren’t in effect for 35 years.”
Before the award ceremony, Mrs. Knowles-Carter walked the red carpet with Mothers of the Movement, four women who lost their sons to police shootings.
During her performance, she was surrounded by black dancers who one by one dropped to the stage in pools of red light.
Calling the performance a “shame,” Mr. Giuliani said the pop star should have also symbolized “why the police officers are in those neighborhoods,” pointing to failing public schools and meager economic opportunity.
“And what are you going to do about that?” he said. “And what are you doing about it?”
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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