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Mayor Bloomberg: Stop-And-Frisk Should Be "Mended, Not Ended"
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 10, 2012
Modified Jun 10, 2012
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 10, 2012
Modified Jun 10, 2012
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This morning Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the congregation at The First Baptist Church of Brownsville and seemed to acknowledge the anger of communities who are most affected by the NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactic. "I understand why some people have called for stops to be eliminated entirely," Bloomberg said. “But there is no denying that stops take guns off the street and save lives…I believe the practice needs to be mended, not ended, to ensure that stops are conducted appropriately, with as much courtesy as possible." This seems counter to the opinion of Justice Shira Scheindlin, who in a ruling last month charged that many of the central tenets of stop-and-frisk led to violations of New Yorkers' constitutional rights.
The mayor also cited a falling murder rate, a lower incarceration rate, and a 34% reduction in overall crime during his ten years in office, but seemingly gazed into a crystal ball by saying, "There would have been an additional 5,600 additional people murdered over the past 10 years and more than one million additional people would have been victims of rape, robbery, violent assault, or car theft." And how much of that 34% can be attributed to stat-juking?
Bloomberg himself acknowledged that the skyrocketing number of stop-and-frisks have done little to curb shootings. Still, the mayor sought to assuage doubts that the NYPD will continue to stop a record number of New Yorkers without any regard to damage its doing to law enforcement's relationship to neighborhoods—like Brownsville—that are most affected by the policy, using the word "respect" five times in his speech.
“I firmly believe that we can drive down crime even further and we can do it while bringing our city even closer together," he said. “As long as I am mayor, we will not choose between safety and civility. We will demand both and we will continue to do even more to deliver both, to every community in our city.
Tagged
brownsville
mayor bloomberg
nyclu
nypd
Ray Kelly
stop and frisk
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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