Shortly after Plaxico Burress made his perp walk this morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to a podium to deliver a stern rebuke for everyone involved in Friday night's shenanigans. He excoriated New York Cornell Hospital for not reporting the gunshot wound to "Harris Smith" aka Burress after he went there for treatment and slammed Plax's employers as well. Contrary to previous reports, Bloomberg said the team did not notify the NYPD about the shooting.
In fact, according to the Mayor, the police only learned about it when word leaked onto television 12 hours after the shooting. He castigated the Giants as poor citizens in the community and encouraged the DA to prosecute the hospital. He saved some vitriol for the self-assailant as well. He began by saying that anything less than a minimum three-and-a-half year sentence would be "a sham, a mockery of the law."
"I think it would be an outrage if we didn't prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, particularly people who live in the public domain," Bloomberg said. "If we didn't prosecute to the fullest extent, then I don't know who on earth you would."
Coming on the heels of word about his demands for luxurious digs in the new Yankee Stadium, it would be easy for the Mayor to use this issue to jump back into the good graces in the millions of sports fans whose vote he'll need in less than a year. Bloomberg has made cutting down on guns a priority, however, and this is more than just a bit of political grandstanding.
It should also make it much more difficult for Burress to escape with just a slap on the wrist from prosecutors. This story was already going to be generating so much back page copy that the end of the Stephon Marbury saga may be relegated to a blurb. Now that the Mayor's involved, it may just push Starbury out of the papers altogether.
