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The NYPD’s new chief of department was stopped and frisked growing up in Brooklyn — but he’s still in favor of the controversial police tactic.
“I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like what the officer said to me. But when he stopped me — in retrospect — he had the right to stop me,” Philip Banks III told The Post yesterday.
“I’ve been stopped a few items when I was a youth.”
But the 26-year NYPD veteran — who is the force’s highest-ranking black cop and was promoted Wednesday — reiterated that he believes the stop-and-frisk policy is an effective tool.
“I do believe that, when done correctly, stop-and-frisk will achieve the desired results — and those results are less people being shot,” he said.
“When done incorrectly, you certainly put a divide between the police and the community.”
Roughly 90 percent of stop-and-frisks are performed on black or Hispanic people. Cops stopped 533,042 people last year.
Philip Banks Jr., the new chief’s dad — a retired 27-year NYPD veteran — taught his children what to do if stopped by cops.
“I instructed them how to respond by saying, ‘This is where I’m going, this is where I started, and this what I’m doing,’ ” he said. “A lot of times in our communities, police officers can’t tell a good guy from a bad guy. You have to be aware of things.”
He said that his sons wanted to wear trendy clothes growing up but that he told them, “Dressing like that is going to cause you to be stopped at some point because there’s nothing on your forehead that says you’re a good guy.”
Banks started out patrolling the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the crime-ridden ’80s.
“In Brooklyn North, the overwhelming majority of the time — especially years ago, when crime and violence was at its height — you’re going to always have those harrowing situations,” he said.
He has since held a series of lofty posts, including commanding officer of Patrol Borough Manhattan North and the 79th, 81st and Central Park precincts.
Banks fell in line when asked whether he agreed with the City Council’s proposal to install an inspector general to monitor the NYPD. Both Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg have blasted the plan.
“I don’t think that an inspector general is warranted. I’m not sure what results it would produce,” Banks said.
He would like to continue to build ties with the community.
“It’s something that police officers and people in the community have to realize — that it’s not two separate entities, it’s actually joined in one, and what could be achieved when the community thinks of themselves as police and the police think of themselves as the community,” he said.
He didn’t say whether he wanted his current boss to stay on for the next administration.
“I have not thought about Commissioner Kelly being here at all. That’s not my job to do,” he said.