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Este informe no está disponible en español. THE NEW YORK TIMESPublic Lives: Thriving on Noise, Political or OtherwiseBy ROBIN FINNApril 4, 2001 HER son's oversized pit bull, Tula, who once mistook a bathroom door for a marrow bone and who now does all her house- guarding outdoors, is barking with gusto behind a locked gate, holding her own against the roar of the next-door neighbor, the elevated subway that certifies Jerome Avenue as a double-decker noise nuisance. A forklift operator calls out greetings from the warehouse across the street. The phone is ringing. This is the chaos that welcomes Iris Baez, still nursing goose bumps (from the chill, not stage fright) after speaking at an outdoor demonstration on the steps of City Hall, back home to 6 Anthony Baez Place in the Bronx. Her street was renamed last summer for her dead son, Tony, one of New York City's renowned victims of police brutality. Thankfully, Ms. Baez thrives on noise, be it street music, sibling squabbles or, lately, the rhetoric of politicians: it was Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's disparagement of her candidacy for the vacant Bronx seat on the 13-member Civilian Complaint Review Board, the agency that investigates claims of police misconduct, that provoked today's trip to City Hall. There, she and her supporters, a coalition of Puerto Rican pastors, jostled for space on the steps with several mayoral candidates with their own agendas. (She has yet to endorse a candidate, she says, because she is not sure what each "is bringing to the table.") Welfare, housing and education are big-ticket items on Ms. Baez's issue list. But now that Bernard B. Kerik is police commissioner, she's giving the department a probationary thumbs-up. She is not, as the mayor hints, anti-police. "I don't know why the mayor said I wasn't capable of sitting on the board, that I couldn't be objective. He should look straight at his conscience," says Ms. Baez, a plain-spoken, ponytailed woman in her late 50's whose only adornment is a shiny plastic pin on her chest that bears the image of her slain son. "It's an insult to me and to my community; the Bronx is the one borough that lacks representation. I'm not mad at the police; I'm upset with the system. I have relatives in the Police Department. When my kids were growing up, our relationship with the police was perfect. Some of them would stop by the house for coffee, or to use the bathroom. My house was open for them, same as for the kids." Her affinity for crowds is why, after having a half dozen children of her own, she adopted five more, stuck bunk beds in six of the cookie-cutter bedrooms upstairs and kept them at full occupancy, always taking in strays when asked. But she mourns her fourth son, Tony, the family peacemaker, the one with the special gift "for defusing any argument," she says. "My pastor wanted him to become a pastor." Brick-faced in front, whitewashed on the side that faces the El and displays the mural of her son (a Florida security guard and Miami police officer wannabe who died in police custody on Dec. 22, 1994 after an altercation over an errant football toss that struck a parked cruiser), her home is the only bright spot – and only home – on a blighted block. To sit with Iris Baez in her chilly kitchen, scrubbed clean but cluttered with chairs, the coffeepot hissing, is to attend a town hall meeting: her husband, her brother-in-law, two corrections officers and another mother of a slain son – Ms. Baez established the Anthony Baez Foundation for women whose children are police brutality victims – eagerly weigh in on her candidacy and Mr. Giuliani's negativism. A stream of children, foster children and grandchildren pass through post-school, kiss her cheek, then stampede upstairs. THERE was a time when Ms. Baez wondered why regular people held irate rallies and demonstrations outside City Hall, but that was before an illegal chokehold applied by Francis X. Livoti, an officer later fired from the force and given a seven-and-a-half-year prison term, ended her son's life and shocked her into activism. There had been nine abuse complaints lodged against Mr. Livoti before the tragedy: where was the review board then? "I was naïve about everything," she says, warming her hands in a wool scarf patterned with reindeer and skiers. "Now I tell people, `Don't wait until tragedy knocks on your door.' Justice for all, that's why I want to be on the board. To make sure no mother loses her son like this again." Mr. Giuliani, who can veto her nomination to the review board, skipped the noontime rallies outside City Hall. Suddenly Ms. Baez remembers why. It being opening day at Yankee Stadium, the mayor must be right here in the Bronx! Alas, he does not swing by her kitchen for a cup of coffee and a heart-to-heart after the game, though she says her door is open to him, too. "Can you believe it, my husband voted for him the first time – we really ate up that story that he was going to clean these streets from top to bottom." In 1998, the Baez family received a settlement of nearly $3 million from the city, using a portion to pay legal fees. Ms. Baez was not a party to the suit, but says her husband, who witnessed the fatal confrontation, her two sons arrested with Tony, and Tony's widow were: "Money means nothing when you've lost your son forever." Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, she moved to Manhattan when she was 1, then to the Bronx. Raised by a single mother who found work here as a seamstress, Ms. Baez dreamed of becoming a stewardess; instead, she left school after junior high to care for her four younger siblings. A sacrifice? She shakes her head.
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