It seemed like a throwback to New York’s bad old days of the ’80s and early ’90s: random shots ringing out, bodies dropping to the ground.
Thankfully, no one died from Monday’s hellish gunfire in Harlem. But six teens were left with bullet holes in them and another was stabbed – for reasons that remain unclear.
If ever there was a case to be made for the NYPD’s much-bashed stop-and-frisk policies, this is it.
Consider: Cops arriving on the scene stopped a group of young black men who fit witnesses’ descriptions of the perps.
One youth bolted as the cops approached, tossing a gun as he ran.
Police retrieved the weapon and eventually caught the boy, who turned out to be 15. He claimed he’d just found the gun.
The NYPD, of course, is examining it to see if it was used in the shootings.
But the key point is that the cops had uncovered a dangerous illegal weapon by stopping and confronting the group.
And, indeed, such action is precisely what leads to fewer guns on New York’s streets generally.
Yet the NYPD has taken enormous heat over it – largely because those stopped are often minorities.
Indeed, the cop-haters – the New York Civil Liberties Union, in particular, backed by The New York Times – claim such police stops are biased and constitute racial profiling.
We wonder if the six Harlem teens hit by bullets agree with that. Or if they wish that police had stopped and frisked their assailants before the shootings.
Bottom line: With more stops, not less, this tragedy might have been averted.
Not that the NYPD-bashers care about that, of course.