This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, and aggressive "squeegeemen", on the principle that this would send a message that order would be maintained and that the city would be "cleaned up".

One of Bratton's first initiatives was the institution in 1994 of CompStat, a comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically in order to identify emerging criminal patterns and chart officer performance by quantifying apprehensions.

The implementation of CompStat gave precinct commanders more power, based on the assumption that local authorities best knew their neighborhoods and thus could best determine what tactics to use to reduce crime.

More controversial still were several police shootings of unarmed suspects,[9] and the scandals surrounding the sexual torture of Abner Louima and the killing of Amadou Diallo.

In a case less nationally publicized than those of Louima and Diallo, unarmed bar patron Patrick Dorismond was killed shortly after declining the overtures of what turned out to be an undercover officer soliciting illegal drugs.

Even while hundreds of outraged New Yorkers protested, Giuliani staunchly supported the New York City Police Department, going so far as to take the unprecedented step of releasing Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public,[10] for which he came under wide criticism.

While many New Yorkers accused Giuliani of racism during his terms, former mayor Ed Koch defended him as even-handedly harsh: "Blacks and Hispanics ... would say to me, 'He's a racist!'

[17] Among those crediting Giuliani for making New York safer were several other cities nationwide whose police departments subsequently instituted programs similar to Bratton's CompStat.

[26] Following up from an initiative started with the Walt Disney Company by the Dinkins administration, and preceded by planning and eminent domain seizures that went back to the Koch administration, under Giuliani the Times Square redevelopment project saw Times Square transformed from a center for small privately owned businesses such as tourist attractions, game parlors, and peep shows, to a district where media outlets and studios, theaters, financial companies, and restaurants predominate, including MTV Studios, an ESPN Zone, and (formerly) a large Virgin Megastore and theater.

[33] These measures, combined with the upward swing of the mid-late 1990s dot-com bubble, which especially benefited New York's financial sector, resulted in greatly increased tax revenues for the city by Giuliani's second term; soon there was a budget surplus of $3 billion.

While Giuliani's debate with the ferret fan described above became the show's most well-remembered exchange,[43] there were many others, on a wide variety of topics: a complaint about handling of the Amadou Diallo case brought the Giuliani response "Either you don't read the newspapers carefully enough or you're so prejudiced and biased that you block out the truth";[41] a query about parking privileges for a well-to-do firm received "Well, let me give you another view of that rather than the sort of Marxist class concept that you're introducing";[42] a question about flag handling brought "Isn't there something more important that you want to ask me?

[44] Hynes accused the New York City Human Resources Administration of repeatedly opening fraud investigations on him, then dropping the case for lack of evidence, only to re-open it.

[61] "Maybe we should wake people up to the way this terrorist is being romanticized," Giuliani said, and noted that Arafat's Palestinianian Liberation Organization had been linked to the murder of American civilians and diplomatic personnel.

[62] The New York Times criticized Giuliani's action in an editorial, saying that Arafat had met with Jewish leaders earlier that day and held a Nobel Peace Prize: "It is fortunate that New York City does not need a foreign policy, because Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who evicted Yasir Arafat from a city-sponsored concert for United Nations dignitaries on Monday night, clearly lacks the diplomatic touch ...

The proper role of New York, as the UN's home city, is to play gracious host to all of the 140 or so world leaders present for the organization's gala 50th birthday celebrations ...

[61] In 1999, Giuliani threatened to cut off city funding for the Brooklyn Museum if it did not remove a number of works in an exhibit entitled "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection."

[64] Giuliani's position was that the museum's display of such works amounted to a government-supported attack on Christianity; the artist, who claimed to be referring to African cultural tropes, Ofili decided to say nothing.

[65][66] The museum's lawsuit was successful; the mayor was ordered to resume funding, and the judge, Federal District Judge Nina Gershon, declared: "There is no federal constitutional issue more grave than the effort by government officials to censor works of expression and to threaten the vitality of a major cultural institution as punishment for failing to abide by governmental demands for orthodoxy.

Empire State Pride Agenda, an LGBT political advocacy group, described the law as "a new national benchmark for domestic partner recognition.

[71] David Guthartz, founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ferrets, called a radio show Giuliani was hosting to complain about the citywide ban.

However, the Yankees' public relations firm produced documents that the rings were sold to Giuliani for a total of $16,000 in 2003 and 2004, although this departs from usual industry practice.

[85] In an editorial, The New York Times called the event a "dispiriting political vendetta" and asserted that "selecting sites [for homeless shelters] as a punishment for crossing the Mayor is outrageous.

"[86] A well-known Harlem minister, Calvin O. Butts, who had previously supported Giuliani for re-election, said of the mayor, "I don't believe he likes black people.

"[80] State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, who is black, claimed that Giuliani ignored his requests to meet for years, and then met with him after the Amadou Diallo shooting "for show.

"[89] Giuliani has been accused of supporting racial profiling,[90] specifically in the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant, by the NYPD under his watch.

Giuliani defended her, saying that he did not care whether his press secretary pleased reporters, and at one point gave Lategano a higher post as communications director and a $25,000 raise during a time when his office had called a budget crisis.

"[110] Jerry Nachmann of WCBS-TV said of the Giuliani staff's intrusions with the media, "I say without regret and with no remorse that as editor of The New York Post I used to torture David Dinkins every day of his life.

[111] Time Warner executive Ted Turner suggested that Giuliani had a conflict of interest because his wife, the broadcaster Donna Hanover, was employed by a television station owned by Murdoch.

[115] Some of the court cases which found the Giuliani administration to have violated First Amendment rights included actions barring public events from their previous location at the City Hall steps, not allowing taxi drivers to assemble for a protest, not allowing city workers to speak to the press without permission, barring church members from delivering an AIDS education program in a park, denying a permit for a march to object to police brutality, issuing summons and seizing literature of three workers collecting signatures to get a candidate on the presidential ballot, imposing strict licensing restrictions on sidewalk artists that were struck down by a court of appeals as a violation of artists' rights, using a 1926 cabaret law to ban dancing in bars and clubs, imposing an excessive daily fee on street musicians, imposing varying city fees for newsstand owners based on the content they sold, a case against Time Warner Cable, and an incident in which Giuliani ordered an ad for New York magazine that featured his image taken down from city buses.

"[125] The situation arose when Giuliani closed New York City's existing landfill, Fresh Kills on Staten Island, calling it an "eyesore,"[126] although it contained 20 to 30 more years' worth of space for garbage.