Mayor Bloomberg Says NYPD ‘Stops Whites Too Much And Minorities Too Little’ (DETAILS)

Jeezus help us! 

Friday morning, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the police department’s controversial ‘stop and frisk’ program during a radio interview and complained that the NYPD was stopping too many white people and not enough minorities.

WOR-NY host John Gambling, questioned the mayor about some of the troubling statistics of the city’s stop and frisk program and the city’s falling murder rate and the mayor responded:

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 [crime]. 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.

Really mayor? ThinkProgress reports:

An independent study of the city’s stop-and-frisk program found that 87 percent of the 685,724 stops in 2011 — a record high — were of blacks and latinos. Young black men between the ages of 14 and 24 were stopped 106% of the time — as in, there were more stops of young black men than the entire population of young black men.

And contrary to Bloomberg’s belief, a study by the city’s own Public Advocate found that stops of white people were twice as likely to yield a weapon, and a third more likely to yield some form of contraband as compared to stops of black people.

Since hearing Bloomberg’s comments, Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the NYCLU, issued a statement to ThinkProgress on Friday afternoon saying:

“Mayor Bloomberg needs a math lesson. The NYPD’s own data shows that only 11 percent of stops last year were based on suspicion that the individual has committed of a violent crime. More than half of the stops were based on ‘furtive movement’ a catch-all category that encompasses all sorts of innocent behavior. But perhaps the most compelling fact is that since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, nearly 9-10 of more than 5 million police stops were of completely innocent people. That is some truly troubling math.

It’s time for the Mayor to turn down the rhetoric and consider meaningful solutions to a problem that is apparent to everyone in the city except him.”

Agreed! C’mon Mayor! Get it together! Check out the audio of his statement for yourself below:

SOURCE: TP