Caroline Giuliani Must Be Punished

Earlier this week, the daughter of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Caroline Giuliani, was arrested for shoplifting over a $100 worth of cosmetics from a Sephora store.

Can we say poetic justice?

As a born and bred New Yorker, I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly New York City has to offer. I remember when crime was so bad that it was common for people to be robbed in the day just as much as in the night. So when the former renegade prosecutor took a stance on defeating and eliminating crime in his quest for mayor, he probably won because people had had enough of it and understandably so.

During his two terms as mayor, the still controversial ‘Stop and Frisk’ tactic used heavily and disproportionately in minority (Well, Black and Latino) neighborhoods by the NYPD was in full force. The former mayor’s reasoning was that if you stop low level crimes it will decrease the chance for those same ‘criminals’ to advance to more high level ones.

Now, his daughter, a 20 year-old Harvard student has been arrested for the petty crime of shoplifting. I’m curious to see how this case is handled by the authorities especially when if you use Rudy’s logic, she would serve jail time for her offense.

But of course, she doesn’t fit the profile of anyone Giuliani and his police force used to target for crimes, real and/or imagined. She comes from a privileged background and goes to an Ivy League college, so the cries of ghetto life and/or poverty will not have a seat in this situation. Yet, from my understanding, she was caught red-handed on video and arrested for her offense. But her jail time will be limited as Sephora has decided against pressing charges.

In the end, I do know that if she was a person of color, she would still be in jail and they would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. But this isn’t the world we live in. The world we live in is one where the priveleged will be excused because of their connections. In this case, Caroline has her father to thank; the same father who took the lead in making sure the same crime she committed was dealt with in a severe manner.

But it would be silly for me to say what if Caroline was black and her father was a serviceman. How would this offense be treated?

But we all know the answer to that one.