By FRANK LOMBARDI
Daily News Staff Writer
7-1-98
Mayor Giuliani said out-numbered cops were
"playing catchup" at yesterday's huge construction workers'
rally but denied the raucous protest that left 20 cops injured ever got "out of
control."
The mayor and Police Commissioner Howard Safir said authorities
were prepared for a crowd of 10,000 but had to scramble after the protesters' ranks
swelled to four times that number.
"Although the Police Department was playing catchup, they
always kept it within some degree of bounds," Giuliani said.
The Building & Construction Trades Council
and Local 79 had told police last week to expect about 10,000 demonstrators, according to
the mayor. Union officials said they warned the city to expect up to 40,000.
The NYPD initially assigned about 550 officers to the protest,
which Giuliani said would have been enough to handle up to 17,000 demonstrators. "I
think we were operating on the best information available," Safir said.
Giuliani, meanwhile, defended leaving the city on
an aborted campaign tour with state Attorney General Dennis Vacco in the late morning as
disturbances continued.
After endorsing Vacco at City Hall about 11 a.m., he accompanied
his fellow Republican to a campaign event in Garden City, L.I.
The two were then to fly to Albany for a final event at 3 p.m. But
the mayor abandoned the Albany lap of the trip and started back to the city about 1:30
p.m., by van.
"I decided to come back when I heard that there were police
officers in the hospital," the mayor said.
Still, Giuliani defended leaving the city to go to Long Island
"because the whole situation was under control."
He and Safir said they had talked a dozen times about the status
of the demonstration, starting with a phone conversation about 8 a.m. and
continuing throughout the morning and early afternoon.
But Giuliani's trip brought criticism from former
Mayor Ed Koch, who, in an interview on New York 1, likened the move to then-Mayor David
Dinkins "staying in Gracie Mansion when there was a riot in Crown Heights."
Giuliani dismissed Koch as a "a bitter former mayor."
The mayor's rhetoric on the demonstration
sharpened as the day went on. Talking with reporters shortly after his City Hall
endorsement of Vacco, Giuliani mildly rebuked the construction workers, saying, "This
was wrong. They shouldn't have done it."
The mayor clashed with reporters who asked if he had been more
permissive with the construction workers than when he cracked down on a threatened cabby
motorcade protest in May. "You can do what you want in falsely trying to force
comparisons," he said.
At a second news conference, about 3 p.m., the
mayor sharply rebuked the construction workers and urged the district attorney to
prosecute them on "maximum" charges.
He also said he would sue the Building & Construction Trades Council for damages. The union endorsed Giuliani for reelection last year.