Mayor Bloomberg was never more right than he was yesterday when he slammed local candidates for playing “election-year politics with the safety of our city.”
The mayor named no names, but it’s no secret that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — the leading candidate to succeed Bloomberg — was a prime target. The mayor rightly argues that legislation she supports to install an inspector general to oversee NYPD “policies and strategies” effectively sets up a rival police commissioner.
And what would be the mission of that rival commissioner? To undercut one of the tools that has helped Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Ray Kelly transform New York into the safest big city in America: stop-question-and-frisk.
Quinn isn’t the only candidate who’s putting that program in jeopardy with her politicking. At a forum Tuesday evening for mayoral candidates, Comptroller John Liu called for the outright abolishment of stop-and-frisk — and challenged fellow candidate Bill Thompson to do the same.
Thompson’s response was revealing: “I’m the one who has to worry about my son being stopped and frisked,” said Thompson. But: “I’m worried also about my son being shot by someone who’s a member of a gang in the street.”
Give Thompson credit for recognizing that stop-and-frisk is saving young minorities from finding themselves shot or killed by criminals. Perhaps if leaders such as Thompson had been emphasizing that point over the years, we wouldn’t have the class-action lawsuit now being heard by Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin — who may make all talk of inspector generals moot by throwing out stop-and-frisk on her own.
The issue comes down to this: The Quinns and Thompsons are trying to have it both ways. So they say they don’t want to get rid of stop-and-frisk, they just want to tinker with it to make it better.
Mayor Bloomberg is telling us a vote for an inspector general to “improve” the policy is really a vote to strangle it.
He’s exactly right.