Metro

Mayor Bloomberg defends stop-and-frisk in speech at Brooklyn church

Mayor Bloomberg strongly defended the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program to a packed church in one of Brooklyn’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods yesterday.

“Police officers make stops in Brownsville and East New York not because of race — it is because of crime,” Bloomberg told worshippers at the First Baptist Church in Brownsville.

“Brownsville and East New York remain two of the highest-crime areas in our city,” he said.

Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who sat in the first pew, explained that the policy saves lives — especially those of blacks and Latinos, who account for 90 percent of city murder victims.

“By making it ‘too hot to carry,’ the NYPD is preventing guns from being carried on our streets,” the mayor said.

Hizzoner did acknowledge that stop-and-frisks have rubbed law-abiding residents the wrong way because of “disrespectful language or unnecessary force” from cops.

“I would be angry, too. And so I understand why some people have called for stops to be eliminated entirely,” he said. “The practice needs to be mended, not ended.”

Congregants gave Bloomberg loud applause during his address — but afterward, their reactions were mixed.

“I’ve been stopped and frisked about five times and I have no problem showing them that I’m not carrying a weapon or drugs, but the police treat me like I’m already guilty,” said Timothy Coleman, 55, a drug counselor.

“They make you go spread-eagle against a wall and they give you a little shove while they’re at it . . . Treat us with respect.”

And the church’s 90-year-old pastor, Bishop A.D. Lyons, said the community was frustrated with the aggressive tactics.

“We have a lot of police who don’t want to be in Brownsville, and they have an attitude when they come into Brownsville and you’ve got to deal with that,” Lyons said.

“I’ll agree that a lot of it is blacks carrying guns. But we’ve got to respect them, even if they are carrying guns.”

City cops stopped and frisked 685,724 people in 2011, and the program has come under criticism from civil libertarians because most of the people stopped are black or Latino.

The program is also at the center of a class-action federal lawsuit against the city.