Sharpton’s Got a Past, But So Does the NYPD

Back during the 1997 mayoral campaign, a friend of mine spent several days with the Rev. Al Sharpton for a three-part series on the street activist’s march away from rabble-rousing toward respectability, and came away fairly impressed.

His take came as something of a surprise: whatever entertainment value Reverend Al brought to the campaign, even if you were inclined to chalk up his disgraceful antics during the Tawana Brawley hoax or his incendiary comments about Jewish “diamond merchants” at the funeral of Gavin Cato, the 7-year-old boy whose death when struck by the car of a Hasidic motorist touched off the 1991 Crown Heights riots, to youthful foolishness, as recently as 1995 Mr. Sharpton during a boycott of a Harlem clothing store denounced its owner as a “white interloper” just a few days before a deranged man killed seven people by setting fire to the store.