Bill de Blasio said Friday his policies as mayor would make a federal monitor over the NYPD — which he supports — “a temporary reality.”
Federal judge Shira Scheindlin recently appointed the Police Department watchdog after ruling that the city’s implementation of stop and frisk – which targeted vast numbers of black and Hispanic citizens – had been racially biased.
“This is a temporary reality,” de Blasio said on WOR’s John Gambling show.
“I think the fact is when we have a new police commissioner in place with a strong and independent inspector general, with our profiling bill that’s just been passed, I don’t expect that that situation with the federal monitor is going to go on too long,” he added. “I think it’s something that we’ll work through.”
De Blasio has said for months that it was the city’s inability to clean its own house that made the federal oversight necessary, even as Mayor Bloomberg and others blasted the appointment as a terrible idea.
Critics worry that the oversight, on top of the inspector general position created by City Council and a number of other built-in safeguards, would create too much bureaucracy and second-guessing of the police.
Asked by Gambling whether his position means he would work to marginalize the federal monitor, de Blasio said he simply intends to work with the judge.
“I’m saying if we’re constructive and cooperative and keep moving toward the reforms that I believe in and I know her ruling suggests, we will get it done,” he said. “And I think it’ll hasten the day when the monitor is no longer needed.”
Bloomberg, meanwhile, addressed the alarming spike in shootings first reported by The Post.
“There’s been a blip – maybe it’s just a blip, maybe it’s a trend – in terms of shootings going up in the last few weeks,” Bloomberg said on WOR.
“What’s clear to me is if you take off the pressure the kids who are really dissociated from society will start carrying guns again and then you have the spur-of-the-moment murders.”
He also accused the federal judge Scheindlin of, “trying to take over the police department” — especially after she named 13 law professors as advisors to the monitor and facilitator who will reform stop-and-frisk..
“She now has appointed a panel of academics to run this – this is not a cute thing to play with. We are talking about people’s lives,” he said.
“This judge, she’s one of the most… reversed judges around and the next mayor I just think has a moral responsibility to let the appeals court decide what’s right. You can’t sit here and say oh she’s right. Based on her record there’s an awful lot of reason to believe she would be overturned. And based on the common sense! This gets worst every single day.
“These cops want to get home to their families, they want to be safe.”
Hizzoner had this grim question for Scheindlin:
“What are you gonna say if you’re the judge to any kid that gets killed after this?”