Bill de Blasio said Democratic candidate Mike Bloomberg made ‘racist’ comments about his stop and frisk policies towards minorities.
The New York City Mayor was talking about a recently resurfaced speech his predecessor made in 2015 in which he described how police targeted minorities who had to be thrown ‘up against the wall’ to be disarmed.
De Blasio told Fox News that Bloomberg was ‘totally out of touch with the people of his own city’ when he made the comments to the Aspen Institute in which he defended his controversial stop and frisk policies.
Bloomberg was heard in the tape from 2015 saying: ‘We put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.
‘Ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops.’
He went on to say that ‘the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them’.
Bill de Blasio said Mike Bloomberg’s 2015 comments about his stop and frisk policies as New York mayor were ‘racist’
Appearing on Fox News, current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Bloomberg was ‘totally out of touch with the people of his own city’
Last night Bloomberg’s successor to the post of New York mayor, de Blasio, denounced the comments as ‘racist’.
Host Sean Hannity asked the Democrat, who previously dropped out of the race to win the presidential nomination: ‘Is that [Bloomberg’s remarks] racist to you?’
He replied: ‘Oh sure, Sean. And thank you for playing that for your millions of viewers, because now more people get to see who Mike Bloomberg really is.’
De Blasio added that because of Bloomberg’s expansion of stop and frisk use during his time in office from 2002 to 2013, it made policing in minority areas much harder.
He added: ‘He [Bloomberg] is totally out of touch with the people of his own city when he says that [his 2015 comments]. It’s derogatory, it’s unfair, it’s not truthful.
‘But on top of that, what happened? It made it harder for the police and the community to communicate and be on the same page.
‘It created tons of pain for parents, grandparents, trying to bring up their kids the right way.
‘Look, if you’re stopped, your’e a law abiding guy your whole life, you’re a young person, and you’re stopped and frisked over and over again. Imagine what that does to someone?
Mayor Bill de Blasio with Dr Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, yesterday
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg during the South Carolina Democratic debate in Charleston on Tuesday
‘It takes away any sense of self-esteem or self-confidence. Look what happened, people came to him – clergy, elected officials – and said ”please, this isn’t working it’s hurting us”. He disdained them, he dismissed them.’
The current New York mayor told Hannity that in the six years since the policy was stopped crime went down and more police were put on the streets.
De Blasio, who endorsed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, also slammed Bloomberg as someone who is part of the ‘elite’ and who cannot relate to ‘everyday people’.
He added: ‘When you watch Michael Bloomberg on that debate stage, he’s got no clue what everyday people are going through. He doesn’t care to know.
‘When he was mayor here, if you tried to talk about what’s happening in neighborhoods, what was happening to everyday people, all he could think about was that elite he comes from.’
Bloomberg apologized earlier this month for the comments he made, saying hie heart ‘was in the right place’ in his efforts to reduce murders in the city.
He said in an interview with his Bloomberg media company: ‘I apologize. I own it. And there’s nothing – I’m going to live with it.
‘My heart, I think, was in the right place of trying to do something of reducing murders but the police – I didn’t pay as much attention to them as I should have. And you know, I apologize.’
Candidates including former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Bernie Sanders, talking after a Democratic presidential primary debate at the Gaillard Center on Tuesday
In his previous Aspen Institute speech, Bloomberg claimed the fear of getting caught during stop and frisk initiatives led to guns being ‘left at home’.
He said: ‘They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city
‘And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed,’ he said.
‘So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ”Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities”. Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods,’ Bloomberg said.
‘Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them…And then they start…”Oh I don’t want to get caught”. So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.’
Bloomberg has spent the most out of all the Democratic presidential hopefuls, dropping $377 million on 444,000 ads since entering the race just three months ago.
He goes into Super Tuesday in Texas having spent more than $100 million on the airwaves combined in Texas and California with over $13.5 million on television ads around Houston alone.