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There’s not going to be any retreat on the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” strategy because the program is saving lives, a defiant Mayor Bloomberg declared yesterday.
“We’re not going to walk away from tactics that work, and we’re not going to walk away from bringing down crime,” the mayor said, less than 24 hours after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told the City Council he’s made changes to increase training and heighten supervision of the controversial program.
Kelly’s announcement appeared designed to mollify critics who charge that stop-and-frisk unfairly targets young blacks and Latinos.
But Bloomberg was giving no ground yesterday on his weekly radio show.
“This is a program that’s effective,” he insisted.
“People say there’s a divide between the public and the police. There may be a divide between some of the public and the police, but the divide that is no longer there is that you used to not be able to walk the streets of this city, and today you can walk every neighborhood during the day and most neighborhoods at night.”
The mayor rejected the idea the NYPD was acting only after a federal judge this week granted class-action status to a 2008 lawsuit against the city involving stop-and-frisk.
“This is something if you look and go back six weeks ago, Kelly began a process really of making local precinct commanders responsible for the stop-and-frisk and reporting, checking the quality,” he said.
Bloomberg pointed out that the murder rate has dropped sharply since he took office. With more than seven months before the year ends, he predicted the number of murders reported this year would set another record low.
Without mentioning Chicago by name, Bloomberg also noted that crime is “off the charts” in that city — up a startling 60 percent this year.
He didn’t have to say anything more to deliver the message of what would happen if stop-and-frisk was curtailed here.
“Once you start to convince people they can get away with carrying guns, then you lose control of them,” the mayor said. “We cannot do that.”
Five hours after the mayor delivered his impassioned defense, critics were hammering him and the NYPD at an Assembly hearing across the street from City Hall.
Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, dismissed Kelly’s plan as a p.r. stunt.
“We can’t let the commissioner off the hook with this garbage, this substitute for meaningful reform, “ she said.
“The police commissioner’s response is not about acknowledging that the system of policing in New York City is fundamentally flawed and needs a fundamental overhaul. It’s about winning the battle in the media. They’re making a couple of baby steps.”
David Jones, president of the Community Service Society, held out no hope that Bloomberg or Kelly would make significant modifications.
“This administration is not going to change,” Jones said.
Mayor Bloomberg boosted the idea of continuing stop-and-frisk, though with closer adherence to NYPD protocol (below).