Philly ex-mayor Frank Rizzo was a cruel, racist cop who said 'vote white' and smashed students' heads with bats
The statue of Frank Rizzo was removed from its place of honor across from City Hall, Philadelphia, in the early hours of June 3, amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd. The 46-year-old African-American died in police custody on May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.
The 10-foot-tall bronze statue of Rizzo was vandalized several times in recent years. Most recently, it was damaged on Saturday, May 30, when people tried to bring it down, and eventually set it on fire to protest against racism and police brutality.
The statue of the former Philadelphia mayor and police commissioner, who once told people to “vote white”, has been a matter of contention for several years after it was erected in 1998, seven years after his death. Though Rizzo was praised by supporters as he was tough on crime, many criticized and accused him of discrimination against minorities. His statue was a gift to the city from his family, friends, and supporters.
Speaking about the statue's removal, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said: “This is the beginning of the healing process in our city. This is not the end of the process. Taking that statue down is not the be-all and end-all of where we need to go. We have a long way to go. I think the protests over the last week, and hopefully, we're winding down, have shown us the anger and the stress that people of color have in this country. That statue was representative of that era and had to go away in order for us to understand where we need to go going forward.”
The mayor also posted about the same on Twitter as he shared a 'before-after' image of the empty spot where the large statue once stood. “The Frank Rizzo statue represented bigotry, hatred, and oppression for too many people, for too long. It is finally gone,” Kenney tweeted.
You can see the picture here.
Who was Frank Rizzo and why his statue was controversial?
Born in October 1920, Rizzo was raised in an Italian-American South Philadelphia rowhouse neighborhood. He rose through the ranks of the Philadelphia Police Department, to the commissioner, and then to two terms as mayor, serving from 1972 to 1980.
When Rizzo was head of the police department, he became known for brutal “law-and-order” tactics that pitted him against civil-rights activists. He was seen as a heavy-handed enforcer of the law, who was too quick to use and order force against black people of Philadelphia. Under his regimen, police raided the Black Panther Party after a series of attacks on lawmen. The targets of the raid were humiliated and stripped to their underwear, or even naked, and paraded in front of newspaper cameras.
Besides, Rizzo also attracted a lot of attention for his hyperbolic statements, like “[The Black Panthers] should be strung up. I mean, within the law. This is actual warfare” — and macho posturing, including an incident where he wore a tuxedo with nightstick sticking out from his cummerbund.
It has been said that Rizzo was an ardent practitioner of police brutality. He was also fond of relishing in violent imagery. “If I were you, I’d grab one of those big baseball bats and lay right into the sides of their heads,” he once said. And many police officers took those words of him by heart as they busted the heads of high school students campaigning for a black history curriculum in the public schools in the 1960s. Rizzo was himself present at the scene.
After serving as Philadelphia police commissioner from 1968 to 1971, Rizzo worked as the mayor of the city from 1972 to 1980. His form of identity politics became clearest in 1978 when he attempted to run for a third term and asked his supporters to “vote white”. “I’m asking white people and blacks who think like me to vote like Frank Rizzo. I say vote white,” he said at the time.