Bloomberg embraces stop and frisk in resurfaced 2015 audio.
WASHINGTON >> Michael Bloomberg is under fire for resurfaced comments in which the Democratic presidential candidate says the way to bring down murder rates is to “put a lot of cops” in minority neighborhoods because that’s where “all the crime is.”
The billionaire and former New York City mayor made the comments at a 2015 appearance at the Aspen Institute, as part of an overall defense of his support for the controversial “stop and frisk” policing tactic that has been found to disproportionately affect minorities.
Bloomberg launched his presidential bid late last year with an apology for his support for the policy.
He’s spent recent days courting black voters whose support will be crucial to winning the Democratic nomination and will begin a campaign swing through the South today. Seeking to blunt any political fallout from the comments, Bloomberg said Tuesday the remarks “do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity.”
But the audio of his Aspen speech highlights his embrace of the policy just a few years ago and suggests he was aware of the disproportionate impact of stop and frisk on minorities. Bloomberg says that “95%” of murders and murder victims are young male minorities and that “you can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops.” To combat crime, he says, “put a lot of cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods.”
In the audio, he acknowledges that focusing police forces in minority neighborhoods means minorities are disproportionately arrested for marijuana possession but dismisses that as a necessary consequence. “Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is,” Bloomberg said.
And to “get the guns out of the kids’ hands,” Bloomberg says, police must “throw ‘em against the wall and frisk ‘em.”
“And they say, ‘Oh, I don’t want that. I don’t wanna get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun,” he says.