New York City murders have plummeted through the administrations of Rudy Giuliani and Mayor Bloomberg, who expanded the use of stop-and-frisks by cops. (Getty Images for Women’s Campaig)
Tampering with the NYPD’s effective stop-and-frisk program could return the city to the days when it was “one of the crime capitals of the United States,” Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday in his sharpest pushback yet against critics of the controversial policy.
It was the second day in a row that the administration invoked frightening images of the city’s crime-ridden past to repel calls for scaling down the policing program.
“Let me put this in perspective, OK?” the mayor said, when the issue was raised at a press conference in Queens on truancy. “This city used to be one of the crime capitals of the United States. We used to have 2,000 murders a year. Think about that — 2,000 murders a year.”
The murder rate peaked at 2,245 in 1990, the first year of the David Dinkins administration.
Now, the mayor pointed out, “we are the safest big city in the country — by far.”
A day earlier, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson went after Public Advocate Bill de Blasio for demanding limits to the number of individuals getting stopped and frisked.
Last year, there were 685,724 such stops.
Like the mayor, Wolfson suggested crime would increase if de Blasio had his way.
The public advocate, a candidate for mayor in 2013, denounced that response as “arrogant.”
“I find it troubling because it simply wasn’t serious,” de Blasio said, adding that the real issue is whether the stops have become counterproductive because they antagonize minority communities.
He noted that the NYPD was making great strides against crime in Bloomberg’s earlier years, when far fewer people were approached.
His office put a reporter in contact with a police official who — anonymously — confirmed that NYPD brass keep pressing for more stops.
When Bloomberg took office in 2002, cops questioned just 97,296 people on the street.
Bloomberg said stop-and-frisks — which he called “stop-question-and-frisk” — had resulted in about 5,600 fewer murders over the past decade.
“That is 5,600 men, women and children who are alive today who would not be,” Bloomberg said. “We know from the data that 90 percent of the murder victims in this city are black and Hispanic. So 90 percent of those 5,600 probably would have been minorities.”
He rejected the New York Civil Liberties Union’s contention it was time for an overhaul because more stops hadn’t resulted in a proportionate increase in weapons seizures.
“That’s exactly the point,” said the mayor. “Stops are a deterrent. They prevent people from carrying guns in the first place. If you think you may be stopped on the street, you are a lot less likely to carry a gun. It’s that simple.”