Voting Station

Frank Rizzo

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Mayor

The Resume

    (October 23, 1920-July 16, 1991)
    Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Police officer
    Police commissioner of Philadelphia (1967-71)
    Mayor of Philadelphia (1972-80)
    Democrat
    Changed party affiliation to Republican (1986)
    Died while campaigning for the Republican nomination for mayor

Why he might be annoying:

    He remarked about a group of anti-police protestors, ‘When I’m through with them, I’ll make Attila the Hun look like a faggot.’
    He ordered a police raid (later ruled illegal) against the headquarters of the Black Panther Party and had officers strip search arrestees in the street in front of news cameras (August 31, 1970).
    He alienated other Democrats on city council by endorsing Richard Nixon’s reelection.
    During an investigation into abuse of the patronage system, he offered to take a lie detector test, proclaiming, ‘If this machine says a man lied, he lied.’
    Once he flunked the test, his opinion switched to ‘This examination is not worth the paper it’s printed on/’
    After the lie detector test, he refused to hold press conferences for nearly two years.
    He campaigned for his second term under the slogan ‘He held the line on taxes.’
    After being re-elected, he pushed through a 25% increase in the city’s wage tax.

Why he might not be annoying:

    As police commissioner, he ended practices that had kept black officers from being assigned to patrol cars.
    He sent black and white officers in tandem to patrol the city’s black neighborhoods to try to reduce friction with residents.
    When he was commissioner, 20% of police officers were black, at a time when many large cities had little or no success in recruiting minority officers.
    When rioting broke out while he was attending a black tie dinner, he stuck a nightstick in his cummerbund and hit the streets.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 33 Votes: 39.39% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 17 Votes: 52.94% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 16 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying