‘Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Hours after a new poll showed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg surging among African–American voters, a 2015 audio recording surfaced in which Bloomberg appears to advocate for racial profiling to reduce crime.
The former New York City mayor made the comments at a 2015 appearance at the Aspen Institute. He defended the city’s “stop and frisk policy”—which current NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio did away with a few years ago.
It’s necessary to “put a lot of cops” in minority neighborhoods because that’s where “all the crime is,” Bloomberg argued.
“Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O.,” Bloomberg said, according to the audio.
“You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” he continued. “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city. And that’s where the real crime is.”
Bloomberg also claimed that the increased police presence in those neighborhoods to protect against violent crimes had sometimes resulted in stricter enforcement of lesser infractions.
“So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities,’” Bloomberg said. “Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”
Audio of @MikeBloomberg’s 2015 @AspenInstitute speech where he explains that “you can just Xerox (copy)” the description of male, minorities 16-25 and hand to cops.
Bloomberg had video of speech blocked.
Perhaps because of the problematic explanation he gives for #StopAndFrisk pic.twitter.com/Fm0YCi4ZRy
— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) February 10, 2020
After the audio surfaced on Tuesday, Bloomberg issued an apology and said his 2015 remarks “do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity.”
But those were not the only comments Bloomberg has made in support of racial profiling. In a different interview, Bloomberg argued that, if anything, the city’s law enforcement “disproportionately stops whites too much, and minorities too little.”
Jfc, and I thought the other clip was bad! ? #BloombergIsRacist pic.twitter.com/mkI5Y3vZ1U
— HootHootBerns?? (@HootHootBerns) February 11, 2020
Just yesterday, a national poll found that Bloomberg was the second favorite among African American voters, with 22% of the vote, while former Vice President Joe Biden dropped down to 27%.