An unearthed recording from a 2015 Aspen Institute event reveals former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defending the city’s stop-and-frisk policy by justifying police disproportionately stationed in minority neighborhoods “because that’s where all the crime is.”
“Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O.” Bloomberg said in audio released by podcaster Benjamin Dixon. “You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25.”
Bloomberg continued.
That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city (inaudible). And, that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed. You want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.
Share this far and wide. Unless the mainstream media picks it up, it will be isolated to twitter. pic.twitter.com/Fm0YCi4ZRy
— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) February 11, 2020
Since making his late entrance into the Democratic presidential primary last fall, Bloomberg has apologized for championing the city’s aggressive “stop-and-frisk” policing for a decade that a federal judge ruled in 2013 as racial harassment.
As The Federalist’s New York Correspondent David Marcus points out however, the revolutionary method of policing more accurately described as “Stop, Question, and Frisk” dramatically reduced crime in the city. Thus Bloomberg’s apology is little more than a sop to African-American voters, who are a key voting bloc essential to securing the Democratic nomination.
Bloomberg, who has a Forbes estimated net worth of $61.5 billion, has spent more than $300 million on his campaign and is polling fourth in nationwide polls, according to RealClearPolitics’ latest aggregate. of surveys.
