"Giuliani Time" Documentary Takes Critical View Of "America's Mayor"...

Newsweek May 13, 2006 at 08:57 AM

The new documentary "Giuliani Time," takes its title from the scandal surrounding Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was sodomized with a broomstick by New York City police in 1997. Louima claimed one of the officers beating him had said, "It's Giuliani time." That claim turned out to be untrue, but the phrase lived on, crystallizing for many their misgivings about the mayor's "zero tolerance" policy on crimefighting.

The film, which opens Friday in New York, contains no information that will surprise New Yorkers. Rudolph Giuliani, who served two terms between 1994 to 2002, is taken to task on First Amendment issues for threatening to cut funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for an exhibit he considered offensive. Giuliani's welfare-reform policies are portrayed as doing more to hurt the poor than help them, forcing many welfare recipients out of school and into menial, dead-end jobs. He's also criticized for being insensitive on immigration and human-rights issues during his premayoral tenure in the Reagan administration's Justice Department. A spokeswoman for Giuliani told NEWSWEEK that "the mayor hasn't seen the movie, nor does he plan on it."

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