The fallout continues from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s irrational statement that New York’s Police stop too many White people relative to Blacks and Latino, with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries now calling for a federal monitor for the NYPD.
“In the wake of disturbing remarks made by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that essentially endorse the racial profiling of communities of color, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries will call for the appointment of a federal monitor to reign in the New York Police Department’s controversial stop and frisk program,” Rep. Jeffries’ office said in a press statement today.
“Given the Mayor’s unambiguous support for presumptively treating everyone in the black and Latino community as a criminal or murder suspect, Rep. Jeffries will put forth federal intervention as the only option to protect the constitutionality of law-abiding citizens,” the statement adds.
Following his radio show Bloomberg complained about critics who point out that 90% of the nearly 700,000 people summarily stopped-and-frisked last year were Black and Latino, by saying: “One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be. But it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murders…”
He also said, “In that case, incidentally, I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little….It’s exactly the reverse of what they’re saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course, or a logic course.”
More New York elected officials have lambasted Bloomberg for his comments.
Councilmember Jumaane Williams, a sponsor of the Safety Act bill said, of Bloomberg: “I think he’s taken a course in how to misuse numbers most effectively.”
Yesterday, City Comptroller John C. Liu who is also a mayoral candidate, said: “Mayor Bloomberg has once again demonstrated how far out of touch he is with the majority of New Yorkers. His most recent comments on stop-and-frisk from this morning are insensitive, outrageous, and just plain weird. He just doesn’t get it. He needs to realize that stop-and-frisk must be ended not mended.”
Bloomberg was annoyed that the New York City Council had voted to approve the Community Safety Act, calling for an Inspector General for the NYPD to monitor the out-of-control Stop-and-Frisk regime and also to allow New Yorkers to sue for wrongful stops based on racial profiling.
Bill Thompson, also mayoral candidate and a former comptroller said, of Bloomberg: “He basically said that if you’re black or Latino, you’re automatically a murder suspect — It just continues to show how out of touch the mayor is.” Another mayoral candidate, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, said, “To say that we stop too little shows just how out of touch Mayor Bloomberg has become…We urgently need both an Inspector General for the NYPD and a ban on racial profiling so that we start to heal community and police relations.”
Noted Bloomberg ally Christine Quinn, the Council Speaker and mayoral candidate also said she disagreed with the mayor’s comments.
