A couple of City Council midgets tried to mix it up with Ray Kelly this week, and wound up wearing lumps all over.
Kelly, New York City’s longest-serving police commissioner, has never suffered fools well, and he made no exception for council worthies Jumaane Williams, Robert Jackson and — especially — Melissa Mark-Viverito of Harlem.
Quick as a wink, the trio went right at Kelly during a budget hearing Thursday.
Commissioners usually sit and take it when grandstanding council members go at them during public hearings.
But not Kelly.
Not this time.
When Mark-Viverito wanted Kelly to apologize to minorities for using stop-and-frisk tactics to clear guns from the streets, the commissioner shot right back:
“If we conducted stops according to Census data, half of all stops would be women.”
Does stop-and-frisk discriminate against minorities?
Said Kelly: “Ninety-six percent of the shooting victims in this city are people of color, 90 percent of the murder victims are people of color,” said Kelly.
And then he turned the tables:
“Who do you think’s lives are being saved?”
The council went dumb as a stump at that, so Kelly answered his own question: “What I haven’t heard is any solution to the violence problem in these communities.
“People are upset about being stopped, yet what is the answer? What have you said about how do we stop this violence? What have leaders of the communities of color said? What is their strategy to get guns off the street?”
The answer, of course:
Absolutely nothing.
Williams suggested that stop-and-frisk, which has recovered thousands of illegal firearms, is woefully ineffective — then feebly touted gun buy-back programs as an alternative.
Williams, of course, has been nipping at Kelly’s ankles ever since the councilman tried to bull his way through an NYPD line during last summer’s West Indian Day parade and wound up in handcuffs.
But even if he didn’t have an ax to grind, stop-and-frisk gets weapons from folks who aren’t interested in selling their guns to church deacons — that is, the very people most likely to use deadly weapons.
Buy-backs help, Kelly said, “but that’s all you hear from elected people. That’s the only answer that elected officials have.”
No wonder they jaw at Kelly — never mind that the commissioner scored a 64 percent favorability rating in a public poll last week.
No surprise there.
Ray Kelly has proved himself one of New York’s finest public servants over the last decade.
He has answers.
His council critics have complaints.
They should just give it a rest.