I often advise readers to learn lessons from the success of 21st Century New York City: do as they do, not as they say. But crime-fighting billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg is getting old and close to retirement, so today he just flat out said what he does. From the New York Post:
Bloomberg: 'We disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little' in stop-frisk checks
By YOAV GONEN and JENSEN WERLEY
Mayor Bloomberg claimed that people of color should be stopped and frisked more — not less — while whites are stopped too frequently.
"I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It's exactly the reverse of what they say," Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show, in response to the City Council passing two bills aimed at reining in the controversial policing tactic.
"I don't know where they went to school but they certainly didn't take a math course. Or a logic course.”
... The mayor was referring to statistics showing that a majority of serious crimes in the city are carried out by young men of color.
Eighty seven percent of all stops last year were for blacks or latinos, who constituted 90 percent of murder suspects, according to city stats. Only nine percent of stops were for white people, who made up 7 percent of all murder suspects.
“People say, well you know, cops shouldn't be stopping so many of any one group,” he said. “The cops' job is to stop so many of groups fitting the description. It's society's job to make sure that no one group is disproportionately represented as potential perpetrators.
"That's not the test. The test is are you stopping a disproportionate percentage of people who fit the description that witnesses or victims have come up with of crimes that have been committed.
Keep in mind that Bloomberg has been wildly popular with the media during his 12 years as mayor, in large part because of his success at keeping crime down and driving NAMs out of increasing amounts of New York. For example, there was a term limit, of the kind that has caused inconvenience to rulers like Erdogan and Putin, but was swept away by media acclamation to allow Bloomberg a third term. It also helps that Bloomberg employs a lot of journalists, whom he let spy on his clients through his $2,000 per month Bloomberg terminals.
