For year, New York City had an infamous policy of “stop-and-frisk”, which referred to the policy of randomly stopping and frisking “suspicious” looking people by police. It provoked a torrent of outrage and lead to a lot of lawsuits as well as accusations of racism and became a hotly contested subject. Now Bloomberg, who is attempting to run for president, finds himself in a political bind as he was seen on an old video defending the stop-and-frisk program, saying to those accosting people in it, ‘throw them up against a wall.’
Newly released audio from a 2015 speech given by Michael Bloomberg shows the former NYC mayor vehemently defending his controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy — a policing procedure that the 2020 presidential candidate has since apologized for.
In the speech, which the billionaire gave to the Aspen Institute, Bloomberg sounded unapologetic in his acknowledgment of how the policy targeted minority kids in minority neighborhoods, arguing that they were targeted “because that’s where all the crime is.”
“Ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg said, “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. 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 people that are getting killed.
“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. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.”
The former mayor went on to defend why he had implemented the controversial policing policy: to get guns out of the hands of kids.
“And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them … And then they start … ‘Oh, I don’t want to get caught,’ so they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.” (source)