Another Bloomberg Absurdity

Mayor: we'll honor him by opening the Nelson Mandela School of Social Justice, small school in famed Boys and Girls HS building in Bed-Stuy
— Lindsey Christ (@LindseyChrist) December 6, 2013

Mayor Bloomberg ran New York City as Soweto on the Hudson, a place where hundreds of thousands of men of color were stopped and searched just because they were of color.

His police chief, Raymond Kelly, is famed for saying he wanted every black and brown man to leave his home in fear that he could be searched by the police.

Why would a mayor who has fought so long and so hard to ensure this city used stop and frisk tactics to harass black and brown people want to open a school named for Nelson Mandela?

Quite frankly, Bloomberg has more in common with P.W. Botha than Nelson Mandela.

Not De Blasio's Fault

In two months, the NY Post will directly blame this kind of incident on Bill de Blasio:

Blood stained the ice at the Bryant Park rink Saturday night, after a feud over a coat erupted in gunfire and two skaters who had been struck by bullets were rushed to the hospital still wearing their skates.

Screams rose from a crowd of 150 park-goers as four or five shots rang out at just after 11 p.m. The gunman had been sitting at a nearby table before he rose and opened fire into the rink, striking not only his apparent target but a 14-year-old boy who happened to skate into the shooter’s path.

The boy, Adonis Mera, of Manhattan, was struck in the back — and doctors told family members early Sunday that the lower half of his body has gone numb.

“They said he has no feelings from the waist down,” said Mera’s distraught brother, Jorge Arias, 29.

“He was just there to go skating with friends,” the anguished brother said of Adonis, who had been joyfully posting to his Facebook page about being at the rink moments before being shot.

“Bryant dead ass packed!” the boy posted.

“He took out the gun and held it up and squinted like he was aiming,” said one terrified eyewitness, Frances Vasques, 17, of Brooklyn. “He shot three times and ran.”

“The shots went off and people started jumping over the side of the rink,” said another witness, Andres Seixas, 21, of Queens. “They were climbing over each other to get out.”

The gunman, described as in his 20s, and wearing dreadlocks and a green and black North Face jacket, immediately fled the scene with his pals, and was being sought.

He left behind a scene that one eyewitness described as “mayhem.”

Rink staff began shouting for evervone to get down, as skaters hobbled through the skate house to escape, many of them throwing their rental skates at workers and scrambling away in their stocking feet.

“No one could run because they all had skates on,” said Raghuram Krishnamachari, 29, of Brooklyn. “Two minutes later, everyone was gone except one guy lying there on the ice.”

Cops tried to keep everyone in the skate house for questioning, but “people just wanted to get out,” said Halie Colon, 16, of The Bronx.

The gunman’s apparent intended victim, Javier Conteras, 20, of The Bronx, was hit in his hand and hip. Both were rushed to Bellevue Hospital.

Before rising from his seat and opening fire, the gunman was heard to say to the passing Conteras, “Give me your jacket,” a law-enforcement source said.

When Conteras passed by the gunman a second time, “he feels a burning sensation and sees he’s bleeding from the hand and hip,” the source said.

Rattled eyewitnesses told The Post a similar story — a taunt over a coat, gunfire, and then panic at one of Manhattan’s most beloved landmarks.

“He started walking real quick toward the ice, and I heard him say to the two guys with him that he was going to go talk to the guy who tried to steal his coat,” said witness Danny Betances, 15, of The Bronx. “Then he walked by,” Betances remembered. “I saw him holding a gun in his waistband — and then I ran the other way.”

Shocked skater Brenda Sabater, 15, of Manhattan, called the park “the safest place you could be.”

“This is the last place I thought something like this could happen,” she said. “I’ve seen stuff like this happen, but never in a place I felt safe.”

Notice, no mention of Mayor Bloomberg in this article.

After January 1, they'll cover this article much, much differently.

They'll prominently blame it on de Blasio and say we're heading back to the bad ol' days.

Bill Thompson And Black Community Support

This NY Times article looks at Thompson and de Blasio on stop-and-frisk and finds most people just don't buy Thompson's position:

Mr. Thompson, a former city comptroller, enjoyed overwhelming support among blacks when he ran against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2009. But this year, he must win over voters like Anthony Padgett, 55, a father of two who works as a housekeeper at a Brooklyn hospital. Mr. Padgett, who had seen Mr. de Blasio’s television ad, said the candidate’s outspoken stance on the stop-and-frisk tactic had helped secure his support. 

Mr. de Blasio, currently the public advocate, “knows what’s going on out there,” Mr. Padgett said as he rode a G train on Monday. “I know he would raise holy hell if his son got roughed up because he has an Afro.” 

By contrast, Mr. Padgett said, Mr. Thompson had been “wishy-washy” on the stop-and-frisk practice, adding, “No one knows where he stands on the issue.” 

In fact, Mr. de Blasio’s and Mr. Thompson’s aims are not far apart: they both want to reform the stop-and-frisk practice, which this month was found by a judge to be violating the constitutional rights of minorities. Both candidates say they would reduce the number of police stops, particularly in neighborhoods with predominantly black and Latino residents. 

But Mr. Thompson had long shied away from the more heated remarks of his rival, even warning of an “overreaction” among the tactic’s critics. And Mr. de Blasio has gone further in his policy proposals, supporting police oversight measures passed by the City Council that Mr. Thompson has said are the wrong approach. 

In interviews on Monday with African-Americans across Brooklyn, where Mr. Thompson and Mr. de Blasio both have roots, there was a clear gap in perception of the candidates’ positions, with many residents saying that they felt uncertain about where Mr. Thompson stood, and that they supported Mr. de Blasio because of his forceful statements and his persuasive advertising. 

Vincent Tolliver, 60, said that he had been frequently stopped on the street by the police, and that he would vote for Mr. de Blasio “for the simple fact that he has a real stance on stop-and-frisk,” adding, “He doesn’t want his son going through the same thing that other black kids do.” 

Belinda Becker, 48, a D.J. who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant — “the heart of stop-and-frisk country,” she called it — said Mr. Thompson did not seem as committed as Mr. de Blasio to changing policies she associated with Mr. Bloomberg. And Robert Pressley, 50, a public-housing employee, said Mr. de Blasio’s ad with his son had deeply affected him. “My son and daughter are biracial,” Mr. Pressley said. “It made me think of my family.” 

Even Mr. Sharpton, whose endorsement — not yet made — is coveted by the candidates, acknowledged that the de Blasio commercial had made a strong impact with black voters. 

“I’ve probably heard more about that ad than any ad in the campaign,” Mr. Sharpton said. 

The CW is that Thompson will over-perform his poll numbers, especially with black voters, as he did in 2009.

But what if his incoherence on stop-and-frisk undercuts that support?

What if de Blasio's biracial family helps de Blasio with black voters.

The ad with de Blasio's son has resonated with voters, especially black voters.

It will be interesting to see if Thompson can pull in the support from the black community that he got in 2009.

He certainly needs to if he wants to make the runoff.

Unfortunately for him, he thought he had the black community vote sewn up, so he tried to straddle the middle ground on stop-and-frisk and now he's paying for that strategy.

UFT Sends Out Deceptive Bill Thompson Mailer

Daily Politics reports that the UFT has sent out a Bill Thompson mailer using the tragic deaths of Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Ramarley Graham and Patrick Dorismond to sell voters on Thompson's candidacy:

“We know the Trayvon tragedy here in New York. We’ve lived it, over and over again, from Amadou Diallo to Patrick Dorismond to Ramarley Graham,” reads the piece from United for the Future, a political spending arm of the United Federation of Teachers, which backs Thompson.

"Each time we hear of another innocent young black man killed, with our hearts torn open we hand our heads and pray, "Please Lord, not again, not again," says the reverse of the lit.

"Bill Thompson knows that keeping communities safe from crime doesn't have to come at the expense of feeling unsafe around the police," the mailer continues, in text set next to an image of a black child sitting on a soccer ball and staring down at the pavement.

The flier, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News, appears to reflect a doubling down on Thompson’s new hard-line stance against stop and frisk, which he has explicitly connected to Martin's shooting in the past.

After the acquittal of Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman, Thompson had said, “Here in New York, we have institutionalized Mr. Zimmerman's suspicion with a policy that all but requires our police officers to treat young black and Latino men with suspicion.”

An excerpt of that quote, part of a talk Thompson -- the only African-American candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary -- gave at Abundant Life Church in Brooklyn, appears on the front of the mailer.

Gee, that mailer makes Bill Thompson seem like a real staunch defender of people of color, especially against stop-and-frisk.

Ah, but Bill Thompson used to be for Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy before he was against it.

But Thompson's words on the subject were not always so harsh, with his moderate stance on the tactic garnering him criticism from some black officials. As recently as late July, Thompson was still defending stop and frisk as a misused but potentially “useful police tool."

In one of his most passionate moments of the earlier part of the race, Thompson flared up at Democratic primary rival John Liu during a discussion of the tactic at a March candidate forum in Queens.

The ex-controller sharply chastised his successor after Liu urged Thompson to join him in calling for an outright ban on stop and frisk, with Thompson saying he was the one who had to worry about the cops targeting his child based on the color of his skin.

When asked why the UFT was sending out a deceptive mailer making Thompson sound like a staunch long-time opponent to stop-and-frisk, the UFT issued a no comment:

A UFT representative responded to questions about the mailer with an email saying "we have taken a decision not to comment on our IE activities during this election cycle."

Does it bother me that the UFT leadership has decided to use my union dues to send out deceptive mailers making Bill Thompson sound like somebody he isn't?

You bet.

Thompson was a supporter of stop-and-frisk up until the Thompson campaign realized they were losing black voters over the issue.

That's when they made a political calculation to have Thompson go to a black congregation and speak out against stop-and-frisk.

The reality is, had Thompson's support in the black community not been lagging, he'd STILL be supporting the policy and calling it a “useful police tool."

Just another example of how Bill Thompson has no core political beliefs and ideals other than political expediency and his own career advancement.

Kinda like the UFT leadership.

Mayor Bloomberg Gets Frothy Over Stop-And-Frisk Ruling

A judge said NYC shouldn't be like Pretoria in the 80's and placed limits on how the NYPD can carry out its stop-and-frisk policy.

Bloomberg had a temper tantrum at his press conference over that ruling, as well as at the City Council for passing a law providing oversight for the NYPD:

At a press conference littered with grisly imagery, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ripped apart a federal court ruling today that found current stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional.

“This is a very dangerous decision made by a judge that does not understand how policing works and what is compliant with the Constitution as determined by the Supreme Court,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a jam-packed City Hall event with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at his side.

“I worry for my kids and I worry for your kids and I worry for you and I worry for me. Crime can come back at any time,” he warned.

Mr. Bloomberg vowed to appeal the ruling, handed down by Judge Shira Scheindlin, which found that the NYPD adopted a policy of “indirect racial profiling” by targeting blacks and Latinos in far higher numbers than other groups. Ms. Scheindlin’s ruling, if upheld, would place the NYPD under federal oversight, a development that Mr. Bloomberg called “disturbing.”

When asked if stop-and-frisk would continue to be implemented during the appeal process and potentially into the next mayoralty, the term-limited Bloomberg bluntly implied it would.

“Boy, I hope so,” he answered. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a lot of people dying.”

Maybe if you had a police commissioner who didn't brag about how he wants every black man in the city to be in fear that he will be stopped by the NYPD at any time for any reason, the NYPD wouldn't now be subject to federal oversight.

In this case, NYPD overreach + Bloomberg/Kelly arrogance = federal oversight.

Bloomberg and Kelly have dismissed concerns over stop-and-frisk for years.

Bloomberg figured he had more money than God and no one would dare challenge his policy.

Now Mikey discovers that some judges actually don't care about his money.

They care about the Constitution.

Imagine that.

Bloomberg's "Legacy" In Tatters

In the past two weeks, Michael Bloomberg has seen his education legacy and his crime fighting legacy implode before his very eyes.

On Wednesday, the state released test score data that exposes Bloomberg's test-based education reform program as a failure.

Today a judge declared his stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional.

These are huge blows to Bloomberg's ego and Bloomberg's so-called legacy.

Even Bloomberg shills like Bill Keller will have a hard time selling Bloomberg's legacy when two of his main policies - test-based education reform and stop-and-frisk policing - have been shot down.

Bloomberg is set to give a 1 PM press conference about the stop-and-frisk case.

That should be a fun press conference to watch.

Bloomberg's Stop-And-Frisk Policy Declared Unconstitutional

Excellent news:

A Manhattan federal court judge today ruled against the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk practices, saying the city acted with “deliberate indifference” to these “unconstitutional” stops.

“I find that the City is liable for violating plaintiffs’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights,” US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote.

“The City acted with deliberate indifference toward the NYPD’s practice of making unconstitutional stops and conducting unconstitutional frisks.”

The judge found that "in each of these stops, a person's life was interrupted."

There were 4.4 million people between 2004 and 2008, and 80 percent of them black or Hispanic, according to the judge.

More on this when we get more details.

Bill De Blasio Hits Bill Thompson Over Stop And Frisk

Public Advocate Bill De Blasio received the endorsement of Harry Belafonte today and took the opportunity to hit Bill Thompson for the stop and frisk speech he gave a couple of days ago:

Mr. de Blasio also took a whack at rival Bill Thompson, the only African-American candidate in the race, for his impassioned speech last Sunday criticizing stop-and-frisk as racial profiling while simultaneously opposing the City Council’s controversial bill to strengthen the city’s racial profiling laws.

“Racial profiling happened in Florida. Racial profiling is happening here. It’s unacceptable in both places,” Mr. de Blasio told Politicker, his voice rising. “The incidents were different, but the reality is the same. If you believe that then take the next step and be in favor of a ban on racial profiling.”

According to Politicker, De Blasio spoke to one of his largest crowds of the campaign today, a crowd that began to chant "Hypocrite! Hypocrite!" at Bill Thompson when De Blasio talked about Thompson's stop and frisk speech.

De Blasio was also endorsed by Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, but Belafonte was the star of this show:

“I am pleased and honored to stand before you today endorsing Bill de Blasio for the next mayor of the City of New York,” Ms. Clarke, who is of Jamaican descent, declared. “Bill de Blasio literally stands tall in this race among peers for the mayor of the city of New York.”

“We are on the side of Bill de Blasio,” Mr. Belafonte added, referring to the batch of de Blasio supporters waving signs behind them. “We encourage all of our citizens to pay attention and put him in as our next mayor."

De Blasio went on MSNBC's Morning Joe today to get some national exposure and as Politicker notes, received good notices at both Salon and in the NY Times.  There was also a positive article about his family in the Daily News yesterday.

With de Blasio getting some good press, with his poll numbers looking up, with some high profile endorsements rolling in and with his crowd numbers growing, Bill De Blasio is starting to look like the real thing.

It was great to see the crowd chant  "Hypocrite! Hypocrite!" at Bill Thompson when Thompson's name was mentioned.

That's exactly what that Trayvon Martin/stop and frisk speech was - a desperate, hypocritical move by candidate looking to shore up his support in the black community.

If he cared about these issues, he would have been out there talking about them before Sunday.

Bill Thompson Gives Speech Comparing Trayvon Martin Killing To Stop And Frisk, Fails To Mention NYPD Shootings

From Daily Politics:

The only black candidate for mayor said Sunday Trayvon Martin was killed because he was black - and the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy is driven by the same kind of bias. 

“Trayvon Martin did die because he was black. Of that there is no doubt,” ex-City Controller Bill Thompson told the congregation at Abundant Life Church in Brooklyn, saying that regardless of legal merits of George Zimmerman’s acquittal, “George Zimmerman was suspicious of Trayvon because he was young and because he was black.” 

 

He turned the issue into his most forceful attack to date on the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy.
 

“Here in New York City, we've institutionalized Mr. Zimmerman’s suspicion with a policy that all but requires our police officers to treat young black and Latino men with suspicion, to stop them and frisk them because of the color of their skin,” he said, charging young men of color “are profiled, as Trayvon was profiled. If our government profiles people because of skin plot and treats them as potential criminals, how can we expect citizens to do any less?"
 

Thompson said his natural instinct is to steer clear of the topic of race.
 

He has taken a moderate stand on stop and frisk compared to some of his Democratic rivals, criticizing it as abusive and calling for an overhaul but opposing its abolition as well as bills to create an NYPD inspector general and allow people to sue over racial profiling.
 

But in an unusually passionate speech for the typically subdued candidate, he said he felt compelled to speak out after the not guilty verdict in Martin’s killing, “after a jury of our peers declared the killing of an innocent black youth to not be a crime."
 

He said the verdict prompted tough conversations between children and parents, “especially those of us like me with young black sons.”
 

“I do not believe our government can fully stop racism, but I do believe we must constantly look to see how it may enable it, even unintentionally,” he said. “So we must ask ourselves, when fear of young black men ends in deadly violence against the innocent, has our government perpetuated that fear by targeting people of color with suspicion?”

 

Let me know when Thompson feels "passionate" enough to connect Trayvon Martin's tragic death to the tragic deaths of young black men shot and killed by the NYPD here in NYC and call for the NYPD to stop killing black men for crimes like having a hand in a waistband or trying to flush dope down the toilet.

 

Somebody said in a comment on another post here at Perdido Street School that they could never vote for Bill Thompson because he is the ultimate hack.

 

I think there is something to that.

 

Even in this supposed "passionate" speech which Thompson gives about an issue he says he cares a lot about, he takes the hack route and softballs his criticism against the NYPD.

 

Here's a part of the speech Thompson conveniently left out:

 

Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman because Martin was black, there is no doubt about that.

 

Kimani Gray was killed by the NYPD because he was black, there is no doubt about that.

Ramarley Graham was killed by the NYPD because he was black, there is no doubt about that.

Just as George Zimmerman targeted Trayvon Martin because of his race, ultimately killing him with impunity and walking away a free man from the crime, the NYPD targets black men in this city every day and every so often, they too ultimately kill one with impunity, as has happened in both the Graham and Gray cases.

See - you can connect the Trayvon tragedy to the NYPD's killing of black men in this city.

 

Thompson should be taking a stand on these NYPD tragedies instead of giving a speech on stop and frisk that he's had poll tested to death for a couple of weeks before he had the guts to go public with it. 

 

He has been trying to thread the needle on stop and frisk and NYPD police brutality for the entire campaign.

 

But you can't thread the needle on this issue.

 

You just can't.

 

Trayvon's killing was a tragedy and an outrage.

 

But so were the murders of Ramarley Graham and Kimani Gray.

 

POSTSCRIPT: And don't get me started on Thompson's aggrandizing Obama's Trayvon speech.  

 

I'm sure it hasn't occurred to a hack like Thompson, but given Obama's drone bomb killing track record killing men of color, Obama is, in the words of Cornell West, "a global George Zimmerman."

Mayor Bloomberg's "Legacy"

Along with the CityTime fraud (which Bloomberg said yesterday was the swellest thing that ever happened to NYC) and the 911 system mess and the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard Disaster (9 dead - Go see a play!) and phonied up test scores, graduation rates, crime stats and emergency response stats is a New York City police department completely out of control:

A college-bound  Brooklyn teen says a vengeful cop handcuffed him and dragged him off to jail for leaving his bicycle on the sidewalk — eight days after he slapped the officer with a lawsuit alleging false arrest.

Officer Daniel Berardi and Rayquan Callahan, 19, first crossed paths on Feb. 24 in Brownsville. Callahan, then a senior at Brooklyn Collegiate High School and working seven days a week at McDonald’s, was walking out of the Rockaway Ave. subway station with two friends.

The trio stopped to talk to a 16-year-old acquaintance, according to court papers, when Berardi and several plainclothes cops started frisking the young men. The 16-year-old bolted.

The cops chased him down and recovered a gun he had tossed under a car — then inexplicably put a call over the police radio for officers to be on the lookout for Callahan and his two friends, who had already been searched and were found not to be carrying anything illegal.

They were arrested and spent 15 hours in custody before the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office declined to press charges. Callahan filed suit and a related complaint was served on June 26 at the 73rd Precinct stationhouse where Berardi was assigned.

Just over a week later — on July 4 — Callahan and Berardi, 25, crossed paths again. The cop, sued twice in three years, immediately recognized the teen on Pitkin Ave.

“This is the guy who’s suing us,” Berardi told his fellow cops, according to the complaint. “I don’t care, the money isn’t coming out of my pocket.”

Callahan, who has been accepted to Ohio State University, had left his bicycle on the sidewalk while he was inside a check-cashing business. Berardi handcuffed the teen on a fabricated charge of riding on the sidewalk, according to court papers filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Callahan denies he ever rode his bike on the sidewalk.

The teen should have been issued a summons for the alleged bike violation, but was instead taken to central booking. He spent 30 hours in custody before a judge dismissed the charges. Before the encounters with Berardi, Callahan had a clean record. “I have nothing to say to you,” Berardi told the Daily News in a brief telephone interview.

Callahan’s lawyer, Joel Berger, was livid. “Never in 45 years of practicing civil rights law have I encountered such a brazen retaliation against a plaintiff by the very officer he has just sued,” Berger said.

Berardi is also being sued by eight plaintiffs who were allegedly rounded up by Berardi on March 9 because they were in the vicinity of a shooting near Dumont Ave., their lawyer David Zelman said. Six were released after 12 hours without seeing a judge; two spent the night at Rikers Island and were also cut loose without being charged, court papers state.

A spokeswoman for the city Law Department said Callahan’s allegations were being reviewed.

An NYPD spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Now Bill Keller and the rest of the suck of journalists busy lapping at Bloomberg's ass with their "legacy" pieces don't care about this sort of thing because they're white and they're kids are white and they're not subject to the abuse.

But you can bet if Keller's kid or grand kid was the kid in this story, Keller would see Bloomberg's "legacy" differently.

John Liu: Stop-And-Frisk As Bad As Stand Your Ground

Comptroller John Liu attacked Mayor Bloomberg for his hypocrisy over his stop-and-frisk policy yesterday:

In a statement released earlier this afternoon, Mr. Liu equated the attitude officers use when stopping New Yorkers with George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watchman who was found not guilty Saturday in the high-profile fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

In particular, Mr. Liu blasted Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s response to the controversial verdict, which had largely focused on criticizing Florida’s “shoot first” laws.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s statement on Saturday’s verdict rings hollow. If he were truly concerned, he would realize that the same mindset that allowed Zimmerman to believe he was justified in following an innocent young black man permits the NYPD to justify the targeting of black and Hispanic youth in its stop-and-frisk operation,” Mr. Liu said.

“We must work to undo the misguided perception that black and Hispanic youth are guilty until proven innocent,” he added. “Just as states like Florida must repeal their dangerous Stand Your Ground legislation, the City must abandon its stop-and-frisk campaign.”

NYPD Commissioner Kelly has been quoted as saying the goal behind stop-and-frisk is to "instill fear" in every young black and Latino male in the city "that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police."

Liu is correct to say that stop-and-frisk is every bit as racist as Stand Your Ground laws and to call Bloomberg out for his hypocrisy.

The mayor's office did not respond to Liu's statement.

In all honesty, that's because there is no way to respond to it.

What Liu said is absolutely true.

Stop-and-frisk and Stand Your Ground come from the same infected place.

Bloomberg Wrong On Stop-And-Frisk Race Comments

Last week the Mayor of Money said the NYPD stops too many white people and not enough people of color.

Those comments were controversial, to say the least, but the mayor doubled down on them, saying any City Council member who doesn't vote with him on the stop-and-frisk issue may have to deal with the Bloomberg PAC using its money against them.

Today the NY Daily News looks at the Bloomberg comments on stop-and-frisk and finds them wanting:

The mayor made headlines last week with his assertion that white New Yorkers were stopped too often by officers patrolling the five boroughs, and minority-group members weren’t stopped often enough.

But it’s right there in black and white: The mayoral math on stop-and-frisk doesn’t add up.

A Daily News analysis of NYPD data contradicts Bloomberg’s claim, by looking at all crime suspects versus just violent crime suspects — particularly in neighborhoods where blacks and Hispanics are in the population minority, but make up the majority of stops.

 ...
 
City Hall released statistics to support Bloomberg’s controversial claim about stop-and-frisk and race.
The NYPD numbers showed 6.9% of the violent crime suspects were white — although whites made up 9.7% of the total number of people stopped.

But The News’ review of NYPD data found police listed a “violent” offense as the suspected crime on little more than one-quarter of the 532,911 stops made last year — mostly for “robbery.” The rest listed “nonviolent” offenses like weapons possession, larceny, pot possession and criminal trespass.

When the lesser offenses are included, whites comprise 13.8% all crime suspects in the city — meaning they were stopped too infrequently.

The 109th Precinct in Queens — where whites and Asians constitute more than 80% of the population — produced the biggest discrepancy: 48% of local crime suspects were black, while 65% of those stopped were black or Hispanic.

The 17-percentage point difference was the largest of any precinct, followed by the 6th Precinct (Greenwich and West Village, 15.6); Midtown North (Hell’s Kitchen, 15), Central Park (14) and the 104th Precinct (Ridgewood, Queens, 13).

Only four of the 22 precincts with a difference of more than 5 percentage points were home to a majority of black or Hispanic residents.

Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna defended the mayor’s numbers, sticking to the “violent” suspect standard.

Selective use of data to push their ill-begotten policies is a hallmark of this administration.

They're doing it with the stop-and-frisk and crime data.

Later today I'll take a look at how they're doing it with the 911 system too.

In the case of the stop-and-frisk policy, funking with the data to sell it is going to come back to haunt them in court:

The future of stop-and-frisk could hinge on Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling on a class-action lawsuit — a decision that could come as early as this week.

Legal experts predict Scheindlin will likely appoint an independent monitor to oversee the nation’s largest police force if she finds the police procedure is unconstitutional.

Scheindlin is widely expected to rule against the NYPD after taking the cops to task for the “high error rate.”

“You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90% of the time,” the judge said. “That’s a lot of misjudgment of suspicion.”

Legal experts predicted she’s likely to order reforms, including a federal monitor who would report to her on problems solely related to stop-and-frisk. She could then compel the NYPD to make changes.

I highlighted part of the judge's statement because it is so emblematic of what is wrong with Bloomberg and Kelly.

 

They pursue an unjust, racist and unconstitutional policy that, at its core, is not about stopping crime but about intimidation and control.

 

Kelly is on record as saying they want every brown and black man in this city worried that they could be stopped at any moment by police and searched, that the city wanted to "instill" fear into them.

 

Kelly and Bloomberg don't care that 90% of the time, stop-and-frisk searches find nothing.

 

The point is to simply stop men of color and intimidate them.

 

At that, the policy is quite successful.

 

I still do not understand, given the racist polices this mayor has pursued, why he does not enjoy the same reputation of being a racist that his predecessor Rudy Giuliani enjoys.

Alex Pareene: Bloomberg Plans To Use His Money On Council Members Who Vote Against Him On Stop-And-Frisk

Alex Pareene in Salon:

There is one important thing you have to remember about Michael Bloomberg: He is an asshole. It is easy to forget this if you don’t live in New York, or if you live in New York and you are a well-off white person who is never harassed by his NYPD, but it is a fact. Thus far, the billionaire mayor has been using his fortune for nice things that everyone likes like funding ads in support of gay marriage and gun control. But he has enough money to also spend some on capricious meddling in areas Good Liberals are less likely to approve of. According to the New York Post (and admittedly they are often wrong about all sorts of things but you can generally trust their City Hall reporting), Mayor Bloomberg is now planning to spend some money to defeat City Council opponents of stop-and-frisk. Or, if not defeat them, at least scare them into changing their minds.

Stop-and-frisk is an NYPD policy in which cops stop and question and frisk residents of, primarily, very poor neighborhoods, looking for drugs and guns. The people stopped and frisked are nearly always racial or ethnic minorities. No probable cause is required for stopping and frisking. (Cops are supposed to have a reason for the frisking but, as the invaluable stop and frisk Twitter account has shown us, those reasons are so elastic as to be meaningless. One reason is “other.”) Cops stop hundreds of thousands of people each year and arrest only a small fraction of those questioned. The arrests are questionable too: New York led the nation in pointless marijuana arrests throughout Bloomberg’s time in office.

The city is currently defending itself in a class-action lawsuit charging that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional. Each Democrat currently running to replace Bloomberg, whose third and final term ends this year, has promised to reform or eliminate the program. The City Council got tired of waiting, and passed two bills last week aimed as restraining the cops. One created an inspector general to oversee the NYPD, the other allowed citizens to file racial profiling claims against the NYPD. Both bills passed with veto-proof majorities. Without the ability to veto, the mayor is looking for other avenues to getting his way, as he usually does.

With every seat in the council up for grabs this year, Bloomberg’s PAC will “cast a wide net” and try to persuade council members to flip their votes, said Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson.

“I’ve got the time to talk to all members. Basically, we’re going to recanvass as many members as we can and see what we come up with,” Wolfson said.

When loathsome flack Wolfson says “recanvass,” he means threaten to unload a small fortune on small-time city council races until one council member is scared enough to flip his or her vote, because one vote is all the mayor needs to get his veto to stick.

...

Bloomberg, as he often does, is trying his very hardest to get his many liberal admirers to notice how illiberal he is. His money can be used to browbeat gun-loving redstate hicks, sure, but he is also more than happy to use it to get his way in a fight over whether or not the police are supposed to be a full-time minority-harassment squad.

I've said this before, I'll say it again:

If anybody thinks Bloomberg is going away on December 31, 2013, they are sorely mistaken.

He has put together a PAC, he has fed that PAC millions of his dollars, and he plans to use that PAC to promote issues dear to his heart.

As Pareene notes, many liberals were happy when the Bloomberg PAC money was used against red state Dems who voted against gun control or gay rights.

But he's using that cash to promote awful policies like stop-and-frisk too.

And as a teacher, I am certain he's going to use that PAC cash against teachers in coming years, whether it's on evaluation issues, mayoral control, contracts or test scores/grad rates.

This loathsome little man - this "asshole" as Pareene calls him - is going to be with us for a long time because he has a lot of money and he plans to use it as a bludgeon to bolster his reputation, his "legacy" as mayor and the policies he wants to see perpetrated in perpetuity.

Here's A Stop-And-Frisk Audio Mike Bloomberg Should Listen To

From The Nation:

Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy is being implemented on the city’s streets.

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and two of the officers questioned and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.

In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers asks, “You want me to smack you?” When Alvin asks why he is being threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back, the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.”

“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, it looked like he we was going to hit me,” Alvin recounts. “I felt like they was trying to make me resist or fight back.”

Alvin’s treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the Department records.  Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much higher.

The audio is at The Nation.

Mike Bloomberg said yesterday that "nobody racially profiles" and the NYPD stop-and-frisk policy isn't racist.

What would he call the stop-and-frisk documented by Alvin?

Bloomberg: NYPD Doesn't Stop Enough Black, Brown And Yellow People

Yeah, he really did say it:

NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that police “disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little” as compared to murder suspects’ descriptions, sparking criticism from activists and some politicians in a city that has been immersed in a debate about law enforcement and discrimination.

Speaking on his weekly WOR-AM radio appearance, Bloomberg echoed an argument he has made before: that the stops’ demographics should be assessed against suspect descriptions, not the population as a whole. But coming a day after city lawmakers voted to create a police inspector general and new legal avenues for racial profiling claims, the mayor’s remarks drew immediate pushback.

The measures’ advocates accused the mayor of using “irresponsible rhetoric,” some mayoral hopefuls chastised him and some City Council members said his remarks only emphasized the need for change.

“Our mayor’s comments prove he just doesn’t get it,” said Councilman Robert Jackson, who co-chairs the council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus.

Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna said the critics were “fabricating outrage over an absolutely accurate comment.”

“What they should be outraged by is the number of minorities who are being killed and that successful police efforts to save minority lives are being hampered,” he added.

...

About 5 million stops have been made during the past decade. Eighty-seven percent of those stopped in the last two years were black or Hispanic. Those groups comprise 54 percent of the city population.

There is no need to fabricate outrage over that Bloomberg comment or the way he is trying to mislead people into thinking this is just police work, with cops looking for suspects who match a particular description, including racial description.

Here was how one community activist group pushed back against Bloomberg:

The group Communities United for Police Reform called Bloomberg’s view misinformation, noting that most stops aren’t spurred by suspect descriptions. Police department records of the stops also list such reasons as “furtive movements” or suspicious bulges in clothing.

“Mayor Bloomberg should cease with the irresponsible rhetoric and seek to work with the council on a constructive path forward,” said Communities United for Police Reform spokeswoman Joo-Hyun Kang.

I've never understood why Bloomberg isn't vilified for being a racist dictator the way Rudy was.

Frankly, the racist police state policies are worse under Bloomberg than Rudy.

Don't Weep For Him, Bloomberg

Two different gun deaths - one bad in Bloomberg's estimation, one that can and should be ignored.

First the one that makes Bloomberg sad:

Alphonza Bryant III could not, in the end, escape his father’s fate. At the age of 17, his life was extinguished by a hail of bullets on April 22 as he hung out with friends on a street corner in the South Bronx, just four blocks from where his father was murdered. Police officials believe that Mr. Bryant was a victim of mistaken identity in an act of retaliation by gang members.

“It wasn’t even curfew time,” his mother, Jenaii van Doten, said in an interview Wednesday at a laundry near their home. “You would think that all the violence happens after midnight, but they fooled me this time.” 

Mr. Bryant’s life and death came into the public spotlight on Tuesday when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg singled him out as a casualty of gun violence, using the teenager to illustrate the toll that illegal guns can have on New York, and the value of the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics. Mr. Bloomberg criticized civil rights groups, saying they expressed no outrage about Mr. Bryant’s shooting, and suggested that The New York Times had failed to cover the killing because the teenager was black.

Now the one Bloomberg ignored:

NEW YORK -- A week after police shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old in his grandmother's Bronx apartment, questions continue to swirl around the aggressive police tactics that led to the fatal confrontation.

Ramarley Graham died last Thursday after Richard Haste, 30, a New York police officer, entered his grandmother's apartment and shot Graham in the chest while he attempted to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Graham was unarmed and police did not have a warrant to enter the home.

Graham's death has sparked street protests in Wakefield, a low-income neighborhood with a large African-American and Caribbean immigrant population. "They had no business kicking down the door. They went too far," said Tyrone Harris, 27. "They need to go to jail just like any other citizen."

Jeffrey Emdin, an attorney representing Graham's mother, called the police tactics unlawful. "They illegally entered the home," Emdin said. "They had no right to be inside. They had no right to use force."

Protesters linked the shooting to the NYPD's aggressive street policing program, called "stop-and-frisk," which predominantly targets low-income minority neighborhoods. In 2011, the program stopped and searched more than 500,000 New Yorkers, 85 percent of them black or Latino. The searches contributed to a record number of misdemeanor marijuana arrests last year.

"The public has every reason to question whether this shooting was the product of the NYPD marijuana arrest crusade, or whether it's the product of their hyper-aggressive stop-and-frisk program," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

Gee, where is Bloomberg's press conference to state publicly how stop-and-frisk saved Ramarley Graham's life?

Oh, right - the program actually caused his death.

And where is the mayor's hand-wringing over the senseless gun violence that killed Graham?

Oh right - his "own army" killed Garaham, so everything's cool.

What happened to Alphonza Bryant III is awful, but so is what happened to Ramarley Graham.

How come nobody in the news media points this out?

How come nobody in the news media points out the disconnect between the mayor's reaction in the tragic Bryant case to the mayor's reaction in the tragic Graham case? 

Christine Quinn Claims Credit For Work She Didn't Do

Christine Quinn has a pattern of taking credit for herself and minimizing the work of others:

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.

Stop And Frisk Math Problems For The New Common Core Math Tests

Read the following math conundrum and respond with the correct answer.  Show your work.

First, read the following piece of information text:

The NYPD's former top-ranked uniformed officer admitted Tuesday that the number of stop-and-frisks jumped by an astounding 700% on his watch.

But retired Chief of Department Joseph Esposito also said there was a massive drop in crime during the same time period.

“Yes it is,” said Esposito, when asked if it was true that the number of these controversial stops leaped from 97,000 in 2002 to 685,000 in 2011.

Then Esposito, after a long pause, added: “As is the 40% drop in crime during the same time. And the 80% decline in crime in the last 20 years.”

Here's your problem, both Part A and Part B:

Part A: Stop and frisks are up 700% over the last 11 years. 

Crime is down 40% over the last ten years, down 80% over the last twenty.

Let's assume these stats aren't funky (a precarious assumption, given the Bloomberg administration's history of funkifying the data.)

The first 9 years before the sharp increase in stop and frisks, crime fell, according to the NYPD data by 40%.

Then the NYPD, under P.W. Botha, er, Michael Bloomberg, instituted the city's "Stop and frisk every black and Latino male" policy.

Over the next 11 years, crime, according to the NYPD data, fell another 40%.

That's the same amount it fell before they instituted the policy.

Is it possible that crime could have fallen by the same amount without the stop and frisks going up 700%?

After all, crime "fell" by 40% pre-stop and frisk.

Part B: Only about 2.6% end in arrests, and even then, only about 0.02% of those arrests are because the person searched was found to have a weapon.  The overwhelming majority of those arrests stem from drug possession, usually low level marijuana possession.

Now if that's the kind of "crime" Bloomberg and Kelly are claiming they're stopping with the policy, that might be at least honest.

But it's not.  They claim they're stopping gun violence and gun possession.

Except that they're not. 

0.02% of stop and frisks end with an arrest because of weapons possession.

99.08% do not.

Explain exactly how this policy is effective.

Stop-And-Frisk Deemed Failed Policing Policy, Though It Is A Fantastic Control Policy

From the Daily News:

Stop-and-frisk has removed thousands of guns from the city’s streets — but the NYPD detained millions of innocent New Yorkers to find them
.
A Columbia law professor testified Wednesday that just one gun was recovered for every thousand people stopped from 2004 through June 30, 2012.

“The NYPD hit rate is far less than what you would achieve by chance,” Jeffrey Fagan said in Manhattan Federal Court.

Testifying in the federal class-action lawsuit against the city and the NYPD’s controversial tactic, Fagan said his analysis of paperwork from 4.4 million stops found guns were confiscated at a rate of roughly one-tenth of 1 percent, or 5,940 firearms.

Knives and other contraband were nabbed in about 1.5% of stops, taking 66,000 weapons off the street, the professor said.

And 12% of the 4.4 million stops during that time period — roughly 528,000 — led to an actual arrest or a summons, Fagan said.

And the rest were “just let go?” asked Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin.

“Yes, your honor,” Fagan replied.

You'd find as many guns on the street by chance as they do by Sop-And-Frisk.

And yet the mayor and the commissioner continue to defend the policy as necessary to get illegal guns off the street.

 

It is quite clear from the numbers that there is another agenda at work here.

As State Senator Eric Adams testified to on Monday, Kelly and the Bloomberg want every young black and Latino man in the city in fear.

That's the agenda, that's the rationale behind Stop-And-Frisk.

They use the guns thing as an excuse.

This is about power and control, pure and simple.

Eric Adams: Ray Kelly Wanted To Instill Fear In Every Young Black And Latino Man In NYC

Eric Adams has made this allegation before, but now he has testified to it in court:

The commissioner of the New York City police department views the controversial practice of stop, question and frisk as a means to instil fear in young African American and Latino men, a New York state senator testified in a federal court on Monday.

State senator Eric Adams, who retired from the NYPD after rising to the rank of captain during a 22-year career, said commissioner Ray Kelly described his views on stop and frisk during a July 2010 meeting in the office of then-governor David Patterson.

Adams had traveled to Albany for a meeting on 10 July 2010 with the governor to give his support for a bill that would prohibit the NYPD from maintaining a database that would include the personal information of individuals stopped by the police but released without a charge or summons. In discussing the bill, which ultimately passed, Adams said he raised the issue of police stops disproportionately targeting young African American and Latino men.

"[Kelly] stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instil fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police," Adams testified.

"How else would we get rid of guns," Adams said Kelly asked him.

Adams told the court he was stunned by the commissioner's claim and immediately expressed his concerns. "I was amazed," Adams testified. "I told him that was illegal."

The state senator's testimony marked the latest in a series of explosive allegations leveled against the NYPD in an ongoing trial targeting the department's stop-and-frisk practices.

In earlier hearings, two serving NYPD officers testified that the department maintains a rigid quota system to ensure officers make a certain number of stops, arrests and summons. Both men secretly recorded roll-call meetings and conversations with supervisors which purport to show the existence of such a system.

Under the joint tenure of Kelly and mayor Michael Bloomberg, the NYPD has stopped and, in some cases searched, approximately 4.4 million people, most of them Latino or African American.

By law, police officers are empowered to stop individuals on the street if they have reasonable suspicion that an individual is preparing to, is in the process of, or has just committed a crime.

According to Adams, under these conditions, stop and frisk is a "great tool" for suppressing and responding to crime. He added, however, that "nowhere" in the law is an officer empowered to "use the tool to instil fear. Nowhere".

New York City has quite literally become Pretoria on the Hudson under Bloomberg's Reign of Error.

And Bloomberg and Kelly are two of the most despicable people on the planet.

Why doesn't Bloomberg get the racist rap Giuliani has?

Using the Stop-and-Frisk program to simply instill fear in every young black and Latino male in NYC is clearly unconstitutional, or at least it would be if we had, you know, a Constitution.

But it's been shredded by the powers that be so that Michael Bloomberg can now run NYC like a dictator.