Mayor Bloomberg stepped up the pressure today on City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to back off her plan for to installing an NYPD inspector general, blasting the proposal as “total politics and total pandering to a handful of people.”
In a sign of the chill between the two longtime political allies, Bloomberg went out of his way to praise Bill Thompson, Quinn’s chief rival in the Democratic race for mayor.
“I thought Bill Thompson, who is running for mayor, said it very well,” Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show.
“I didn’t listen to his whole speech. The one part I did hear he said, `I’m worried about stop and frisk. I’m also worried about my son getting killed.'”
Thompson made the remark at a forum this week where he rejected an invitation from Comptroller John Liu, another mayoral contender, to push for the abolishment of stop-and-frisk.
Quinn has come under political pressure to take a harder line on the NYPD and her decision to back the IG plan has created a rift with the mayor, who has warned it would create confusion about who is running the police force and would tamper with a system that has brought down crime to record lows.
“This is just one of the worst conceived ideas and all I can hope is that the Speaker manages to get this bill withdrawn and doesn’t let it see the light of day,” Bloomberg told his radio listeners.
He questioned why the candidates running for his job would want to undermine the powers they would need to govern at City Hall.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen people who want to be the executive try to denude the office before they get it,” the mayor said.