City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is taking credit for reducing the number of NYPD stop and frisks last year — a bit of campaign chest-thumping that raised eyebrows among critics of the tactic.
“Let’s be clear,” Quinn said Wednesday in response to charges from a campaign opponent who accused of her being too cozy with the Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD. “My office, myself and the City Council — we are the only ones who have actually gotten reform of stop, question and frisk.”
The mayoral candidate was taking heat from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who trashed her as “Bloomberg light” for her relationship with the mayor and his support of the controversial stop-and-frisk police tactic.
Quinn responded that she held Council hearings on the tactic, which critics say unfairly targets minorities. She also pointed to a letter she wrote to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly in February 2012 that urged the department to create a system to identify officers who were overusing the tactic.
The department adopted those changes a few months later, which led to a 22% drop in the number of people stopped and frisked last year.
But advocates who have been fighting the practice for more than a decade said Quinn was claiming credit for other people’s work.
“That’s a bit unrealistic,” said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center Constitutional Rights, which has been suing to end the practice. “Whatever changes that will happen to stop and frisk are a function of 13 years of litigation and 13 years of community mobilization and not a magic wand from the City Council.”
Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan), a longtime stop-and-frisk critic, said community protests were the driving force behind changes. “I think a comment like [Quinn’s] reduces the level of engagement from the grass roots,” she said.
Just another example of why Christine Quinn should not be mayor.
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