There’s a great moment in one of the early series of Family Guy where Peter Griffin invents a ‘new type of flying machine’ with ten wings. “You know,” says baby Stewie, “I vaguely recall seeing footage somewhere of something exactly like this that, uh… leads me to believe this probably won’t work.”
I couldn’t help remember that scene when I read that Rio state governor Sergio Cabral is to hire former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani as a security advisor. The plan, it seems, is for Giuliani to advise the Rio authorities on a new ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy towards crime in the build up to the city’s hosting of the 2016 Olympic Games.
The New York Daily News carries a fine example of the kind of insight Giuliani has to offer, straight from the horse’s mouth:
“You have to pay attention to big and small things,” Giuliani told reporters after visiting a local shantytown. “And you also have to make the community safer, cleaner, healthier – plus educating the children.”
Right. Good. Thank you.
It seems unhelpful to suggest that this might be – at best – a complete waste of money and, at worst, an absolute disaster. But even leaving aside the fact that the supposed effectiveness of Giuliani’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy and ‘Broken Window Theory’ has been pretty comprehensively debunked, there is genuine cause for concern here.
In 2003, Giuliani Partners (“Integrity. Optimism. Courage. Preparedness. Communication. Accountability”) were paid $4.3 million to suggest solutions to Mexico city’s endemic crime problems.
How did it go? Not that well, actually. Murders went down, but rapes went up. And so did drug offences. And aggravated assaults. And fraud.
So I suppose all we can do is hope that, this time around, Mister Giuliani’s incredible flying machine turns out to be more of a Hercules and a bit less of a Hindenburg.
