[Giuliani still has time between attending funerals of firemen who died 
because of his ineptitude and taking bows as a "hero" to do what he does 
best - have innocent people arrested. Good to know we are back to "normal" 
in NYC.  http://baltech.org/lederman/ ]

NY Times
Subject: Trumping Charity

December 20, 2001

Trumping Charity
By BOB HERBERT
 
 
The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church is on the northwest corner of Fifth 
Avenue and 55th Street, just north of Rockefeller Center. It's in the heart 
of a neighborhood that is saturated with money.
 
The St. Regis Hotel is on the southeast corner. On the ground floor of the 
St. Regis is a Godiva chocolatier and a Louis Vuitton showroom. If you're 
contemplating a cruise, you should drop by Louis Vuitton. You can pick up 
anexquisite handmade Damier trunk for a shade over $10,000. Grab some 
chocolates at Godiva on the way back to your limousine.
 
There are princesses and pink Christmas trees to delight the shoppers in the 
Disney Store on the northeast corner. And on the southwest corner is the 
Peninsula Hotel, where you can kick back and blow $400 or $500 on room 
service in a suite that, since Sept. 11, can be had for the bargain rate of 
$1,390 a night.
 
It's a nice neighborhood. And everything would be swell if the Fifth Avenue 
Presbyterian Church could only manage to take its Christian charity mandates 
a little less seriously. You see, the church has been allowing homeless 
people to sleep on its property.
 
They sleep on the steps and on the ground adjacent to the church — 20 or 30 
of them spending the night in cardboard boxes and other makeshift shelters. 
The church makes bathrooms available to them and allows them to come in and 
warm up in the morning, before they take off for the day.
 
This may sound like just the sort of thing President Bush had in mind when 
he suggested that faith-based organizations fill some of society's social 
service needs. But the thing you have to remember about the homeless, if you 
want to look at this from, say, the point of view of the Giuliani 
administration, is that they are unsightly. You can't have a couple of dozen 
people in threadbare clothes sleeping right out there where rich people can 
see them. Some of them were snoring away just a few yards from the 
double-parked limousines.
 
So the city sicced the cops on them.
 
At least three times this month the police have raided the area and forced 
the homeless, under threat of arrest, to go elsewhere. The most obnoxious 
raid came on the night of Dec. 11. Margaret Shafer, director of the church's 
outreach program, said five police cars and three vans arrived at the church 
about midnight and police officers chased away most of the sleepers, leaving 
only those who had taken refuge on the church steps and under an archway.
 
"Then," said Ms. Shafer, "about every hour for the rest of the night they 
came up to the people they had left in place and they beat on the boxes with 
billy clubs and woke them up and asked them how their health was. It was not 
the police's finest hour."
 
In fairness to the individual police officers, they did not seem happy with 
this duty. Ms. Shafer said the church generally has very good relations with 
the police. And a couple of the cops I spoke with at the church this week 
made it clear that harassing the homeless was not their idea of appropriate 
police work.
 
"The orders came from on high," said one officer.
 
When I asked another officer to explain the crackdown, he pointed toward the 
Fifth Avenue street sign. "They think it's bad for the area's image," he said.
 
The homeless have been sleeping outside the church, with the blessings of 
its congregation, for about two years. The police were generally tolerant.
But Ms. Shafer noted that church officials had been asked to clear the area 
a few nights in late November and early December because dignitaries were 
staying in nearby hotels. She said officers on the beat told her one of the 
dignitaries was Vice President Dick Cheney.
 
Church officials complied, asking the homeless to stay away on those 
particular nights. When the homeless returned, the crackdown came.
 
Yesterday a federal judge issued a temporary ruling barring the police from 
taking additional action against the homeless at the church. The matter will 
be argued further in court.
 
But the ultimate issue remains. Where is the city's heart? Why, in hard 
times, is the Giuliani administration pursuing this particularly 
mean-spirited case?
 
Well, it's a tough time for business, too. Ten-thousand-dollar Damier trunks 
are not exactly hopping off the shelves. And when the crunch comes, commerce 
almost always trumps charity, Christian or otherwise.
 
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/opinion/20HERB.html

LAME-DUCK MAYOR LETS HIS COLD HEART RULE AGAIN

By DOUGLAS MONTERO
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
----

December 20, 2001 -- HAS the "dark side" of Mayor Giuliani, hidden since the 
Sept. 11 terror attacks, re-emerged just as he's leaving office?
Leo Sacks, a parishioner at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, thinks so.

While he continues to admire Giuliani's leadership of the city's fight 
against terror, he can't understand the city's new war on the homeless.

The first shot was fired by the NYPD three weeks ago, when it first told the 
church to limit the hours homeless could sleep on the steps and along the 
outside wall of its pricey real estate at 55th Street and Fifth Avenue. It 
escalated into a demand to get rid of them altogether.

Yesterday, the city lost a round when federal Judge Lawrence McKenna granted 
a temporary restraining order, sought by the church, barring cops from 
rousting the sleepers.

"There is no reason to consider homeless people sleeping a public nuisance," 
the judge said.

Sacks agrees wholeheartedly.

"For all of his grace under fire since September, this is the darker side of 
the Giuliani legacy," he said.

"There is something very noble and Christian about caring for another human 
being and that's what people in this community are trying to do."

In court, the city accused the church of operating the "world's worst 
homeless center."

"I'm not suggesting their heart is in the wrong place . . . but there are 
rules and there are laws," said city lawyer Daniel Connolly, insisting 
public-nuisance laws are being violated.

But McKenna said the round-ups would "impinge" on the church's First 
Amendment rights and cause irreparable harm to its ministry.

Besides, said the judge, the city has allowed the homeless to sleep on the 
steps for two years.

The trouble began when cops, "under pressure from City Hall," asked the 
church to relocate the homeless for one night because Vice President Dick 
Cheney was staying at the nearby St. Regis Hotel, said Margaret Shafer, who 
runs the shelter.

The cops called back the next day, mentioned that Israeli Prime Minister 
Ariel Sharon was in town, and said the church should toss the homeless for 
three more nights, said Joe Vadella, another shelter worker.

Then the cops wanted the church to keep the homeless from setting up their 
cardboard tents until 9 p.m., three hours later than they usually do.

The church, which has a permit to accommodate only 10 homeless people 
indoors, complied with all the requests, but filed its lawsuit Monday after 
cops began strong-arming the homeless off church property.

The homeless mess would be a non-issue if the church were located on another 
Fifth Avenue - like the one in Brooklyn's Sunset Park.

But seeing the other side of life can provide a good lesson for the rich, 
particularly at Christmas.

As Shafer put it: "We insist on providing this service because we have a 
right and obligation to help the city remember that we have homeless people."