An audio has been leaked of a speech by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg where he is heard defending his stop-and-frisk policy. The audio went viral on Twitter after being featured on “The Benjamin P. Dixon Show” on Monday night. According to the New York Post, the speech took place in 2015 at the Aspen Institute in which the billionaire made a request for the footage not to be released.
“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.
Bloomberg acknowledged the fact that only minority children were targets and used the crime rate in minority neighborhoods as his reason behind the policy.
“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.”
He went on to justify the unruly approach of “stop-and-frisk” by saying the policy was in place to stop unforeseen murders from happening.
“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.”
“If you can stop them from getting murdered, I would argue everything else you do is less important,” he added.
The presidential hopeful recently apologized for the demeaning policy at the East New York Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn where he confessed to his wrongdoing.
“I can’t change history,” he said. “Today, I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong, and I am sorry.”
In a recent statement to the New York Post, he stood strong on his intent to end New York gun violence and claimed to believe the policy was “overused.”
“I inherited the police practice of stop-and-frisk, and as part of our effort to stop gun violence, it was overused. By the time I left office, I cut it back by 95%, but I should’ve done it faster and sooner. I regret that and I have apologized — and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities.”
While Bloomberg has since apologized for the controversial policy, the release of the Aspen Institute audio reveals how aligned stop-and-frisk was to racial profiling with the Xerox reference and “throw them up against the walls” order. It reveals the former mayor might be responsible for the aggression showcased by NYPD during stop-and-frisk stops, which has affected several innocent black and latino New York residents. Bloomberg just might be back in the hot seat leaving plenty of room to possibly weaken his presidential campaign.
