In 2012, I sat on a “Stop & Frisk” task force in the New York Attorney General Office that reviewed the police tactic under Mayor Bloomberg. Last night Mr. Bloomberg said he inherited the policy, had apologized for it, & chose to cut it by 95%. Here’s a timeline of facts: (1/12)
Mr. Bloomberg stated he “inherited” the stop & frisk policy. While it began with GOP Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it was significantly expanded by Mr. Bloomberg, starting with 97,296 stops in 2002 & climbing steadily until a record 685,724 New York City men were stopped in 2011. (2/12)
In 2011, Bloomberg’s NYPD made more stops of young black men (168,126) than the number of young black men living in the city (158,406). And 9 in 10 of those stopped by NYPD were ultimately found innocent of any crime, each year from 2003-2013. (3/12) blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/201…
Mayor Bloomberg’s officers testified that reasons to be stopped & frisked included "being fidgety, changing directions, walking a certain way, grabbing at a pocket or looking over one’s shoulder." These were officially called “furtive” movements. (4/12) nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyr…
Those stopped by NYPD during this time described the encounters as invasive, humiliating and in some cases, violent. Being stopped on the way home from church, or school, or getting their work clothes dirty because they were forced to lie face-down on a filthy sidewalk. (5/12)
Mr. Bloomberg repeatedly defended the tactic, arguing crime would soar without it. In '13, he said if you don't want to be stopped, don’t “look like a suspect.” In '12, he said, “We're not going to walk away" from the tactic because we "would lose control of our streets.” (6/12)
Recently, Mr. Bloomberg told CBS: “Nobody asked me about [Stop & Frisk] till I started running for president.” A Daily News editorial called this claim “idiotic,” adding, “This was the highest-stakes legal fight of the mayor’s 12-year tenure.” (7/12) nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…
Mr. Bloomberg says he reduced the practice by 95%. In fact, stops rose steadily from 2002-2011 before a real drop in 2013. That year, a class action suit filed against Mr. Bloomberg led a federal judge to rule the policy unconstitutional (which Mr. Bloomberg would appeal). (8/12)
In 2014, a year after Mr. Bloomberg left office, there was a 79 percent drop in stops from the previous year. The result: crime continued to fall by 4.6 %, reaching a record low in modern New York City history at the time. More details here👇 (9/12) salon.com/2015/01/10/ame…
A few years later in August 2016, The Daily News, one of Mr. Bloomberg’s staunchest editorial allies, issued a formal apology for its longstanding defense of the practice, saying, “We were wrong: Ending stop and frisk did not end stopping crime.” (10/12)
In January 2019, Mr. Bloomberg continued to issue a ”full-throated defense” of the tactic, “attributing the city's declining murder rate... to the controversial policy,” at the 2019 U.S. Naval Academy Leadership Conference. (11/12) cnn.com/2019/01/22/pol…
12/ Three months ago, Mr. Bloomberg changed his long-held position, telling a black audience in Brooklyn, “I want you to know I realize that back then, I was wrong & I’m sorry.”
7 days later, Bloomberg declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. /END
7 days later, Bloomberg declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. /END
