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Labeling her “some woman,” Mayor Bloomberg yesterday eviscerated the federal judge in the explosive stop-and-frisk case as unqualified to tell the NYPD how to do its job.
“What does she know about policing? Absolutely zero,” Bloomberg declared on his weekly radio show in a stinging rebuke to Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin.
“Your safety and the safety of your kids is now in the hands of some woman who does not have the expertise to do it.”
Scheindlin infuriated the mayor this week by ruling that the controversial practice violated the Constitution and employed “indirect racial profiling.”
She said the policy disproportionately impacts minorities and ordered a federal monitor to oversee its overhaul.
Bloomberg has vigorously defended stop-and-frisk as a necessary tool to fight crime, pointing out that the city’s murder rate keeps tumbling to historic lows.
“It’s easy for somebody in a court to say, ‘Oh, [the cop] should have done this or should have done this’ . . . It’s not the job of the judges to run [city] agencies,” the mayor added, hours before city lawyers filed a notice of appeal.
Through a spokeswoman, Scheindlin declined to comment at Manhattan federal court.
Although City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is frequently attacked as too close to the mayor, she quickly announced she would ask Scheindlin to implement the ruling immediately and not grant the city its request for a delay.
“Communities across the city have suffered long enough under unjust, unfair and unconstitutional practices,” Quinn said. “There should be no further delay in the long-needed reforms to stop-and-frisk.”
Her leading Democratic rivals, Bill Thompson and Bill de Blasio, said they would drop the city’s appeal if elected.
“It is offensive that the current administration can’t see that the effective quotas they have imposed on the police and their treatment of entire minority communities with suspicion is unconstitutional,” Thompson said.
De Blasio also seized the chance to get in another shot at Quinn.
“For eight years as speaker, Christine Quinn acquiesced to Mayor Bloomberg and did nothing as stop-and-frisk exploded in communities of color across New York City,” he said.
“Quinn’s talk, 26 days before an election, is cheap.”
Quinn is the only Democratic mayoral candidate who has said she would retain Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, but only if he agreed to “stop unconstitutional stops” in her administration.
Every Democrat running for mayor has vowed to reform stop-and- frisk; Comptroller John Liu has promised to end it completely.
Bloomberg slammed the “campaign rhetoric” of all the Democratic contenders.
“They want to be mayor but they want to have outside monitors come in and tell them what to do,” he said.
“You would think if they were looking for the job they’d want to take on the responsibility.”