Bloomberg thinks NYPD should frisk more black people.

[Correction]

Some background: The New York city council voted overwhelmingly to rein in the NYPD's notorious stop-and-frisk program. Bloomberg threatened a veto but the legislative vote is more than enough to override it.

But it was the two policing bills that for months have stirred a heated public debate between its supporters, who are seeking a legal means to change the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who have warned that the measures would hamstring police officers and lead to a dangerous spike in crime.

One, known as Intro 1079, would create an independent inspector general to monitor and review police policy, conduct investigations and recommend changes to the department. The monitor would be part of the city’s Investigation Department alongside the inspectors general for other city agencies.

The law would go into effect Jan. 1, 2014, leaving the matter of choosing the monitor to the next mayor.

"Fuck you Bloomberg you don't get to put a lackey in charge of enforcing this."

The other bill, Intro 1080, would expand the definition of bias-based profiling to include age, gender, housing status and sexual orientation. It also would allow individuals to sue the Police Department in state court — not only for individual instances of bias, but also for policies that disproportionately affect people in any protected categories without serving a significant law enforcement goal.

"Hey maybe targetting 9 blacks for every white with stop and frisk constitues institutional racism."

So Bloomberg said this Friday:

“One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be. But it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murders,” Bloomberg said.

“In that case, incidentally, I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little,” the mayor said. “It’s exactly the reverse of what they’re saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course, or a logic course.”

To buttress the mayor’s remarks, his office released a set of statistics. The numbers showed that 87% of the people stopped under stop-and-frisk in 2012 were black or Latino, and that 9% were white. That same year, more than 90% of those identified as murder suspects were blacks or Latino; just 7% were white.

The NYPD is coming in 3% under quota on humiliating innocent blax and spix on the streets, clearly. We close that gap and they'll learn their lesson about being overrepresented in the murder and violent crime statistics in new york.

And today:

New York's billionaire mayor said Monday he has the right to use some of his personal fortune to garner support from City Council members on police reform bills he plans to veto.

On Monday, Bloomberg responded to a New York Post article reporting that he could use his wealth to influence City Council members up for re-election, saying he was willing to support candidates with whom he agrees, financially or otherwise.

Bloomberg has long channeled some of his fortune into political donations, and he stepped up his efforts last fall by forming a super PAC, Independence USA, to help candidates around the country who share his opinions — and oppose some who don't — on such issues as gun control and same-sex marriage. It has spent about $12 million, Federal Election Commission records show.

He is not the first opponent of the legislation to pledge to influence the outcome. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the city's largest police union, last week promised to dedicate resources toward challenging candidates who supported the bills.

The mayor has 30 days from the bills' passage to issue a veto, at which point the City Council would have another 30 days to override.

[Plow]

“One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be. But it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murders,” Bloomberg said.

This sounds like some fuckwit in Georgia being interviewed by Fox News, for fuck's sake.

[Plow]

“One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be. But it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murders,” Bloomberg said.

This sounds like some fuckwit in Georgia being interviewed by Fox News, for fuck's sake.

[archibaldcrane]

How exactly does "stop and frisk" work again? Serious question.

[archibaldcrane]

Ah, just read the wiki.

On its face the description of:

a police officer who reasonably suspects a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a penal law misdemeanor, stops and questions that person, and, if the officer reasonably suspects he or she is in danger of physical injury, frisks the person stopped for weapons.

seems kinda like common sense, but is this basically that they are taking what would normally be the M.O. in "probable cause" and reducing the threshold to "reasonable suspicion"?

[archibaldcrane]

And can't you just reply to such a "stop and question" with "Am I free to go?" They aren't detaining you...right?

[Nephlite]

NYPD had a rule where they were given a quota to stop x amount of people during their tour. It originally was designed as a community outreach program intent on getting officers to make more contact with people on the street. Sometimes they carried "Contact Cards" where they recorded the information of the person they were talking to and a brief summary of the words exchanged so that an analyst would later comb through them to see if anything specific came out that would help an investigation. After a while, people stopped talking to the police and sometimes they would run (not everyone likes to talk to the police and rightfully so).

If you look in to the legal definition of "Stop and Frisk", it'll give you the definition of a stop as an investigative measure officers use under reasonable suspicion a person is committing or has committed a crime to build probable cause. Frisk is a pat-down of the outer clothing to check for weapons. There are more nuances to the definitions but at the basic level, that's what officers were doing. Stopping people and when they stopped them, they would use their words to build PC to arrest them or sometimes they would observe things on the person they were stopping (bulges, clips for knives, holsters, etc.) and they would frisk them. Running away from police can sometimes raise suspicion enough for a stop but it depends on the location (high crime area, known accomplices, even a choice of words), depends on the circumstances, and even depends on weather or not it's night or day.

What once was a nice program to reach out to the community turned in to this huge program designed to deter crime. Eventually, people realized they could easily say "Fuck you I ain't talking to you" and walk away then win their resulting lawsuit when some badass tries to tackle them.

On the plus side, the few years the program was in effect, they saw a dramatic drop in crime in some areas and NYPD had one of the largest gun recovery stats for a municipality in the nation. It was a good program in it's infant stages and just spiraled out of control.

[Howie Roary]

so because some black people that get offended that they resemble the large portion of the people described as suspects, should police back off and do a crappier job of policing for fear of offending someone?

[Churchill]

no, but we are talking about cops so yes

[Nephlite]

Politics plays a heavy role in these types of decisions. Racial profiling is one of those big no-no's you never want to bring up during a command staff meeting with outsiders sitting in the room. Bringing up suspicions based upon clothing style or body language sounds better on paper than "He was African American with Corn-Rows and wearing a blue bandana. That's the style of a gang-member.", but it can still be profiling. Just about everything a cop does from a business check to a proactive patrol is some sort of profiling. We're trained to profile and at the same time, trained to not profile or say directly that we profile. It's definitely not transparent or wide in it's scope, but what can you do?

[Deejay]

so because some black people that get offended that they resemble the large portion of the people described as suspects, should police back off and do a crappier job of policing for fear of offending someone?

The police are already doing a crappy job because the cops are literally cherry picking black people and harassing them

[Correction]

so because some black people that get offended that they resemble the large portion of the people described as suspects, should police back off and do a crappier job of policing for fear of offending someone?

Stop & Frisk is not an example of good policing.