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.
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.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly noted separately Friday that more than 90 percent of people killed or shot in the city are black or Hispanic.
The police tactic known as stop and frisk has become a high-profile political issue in the city, where stops have soared during Bloomberg's three terms. He and Kelly say the stops are an invaluable policing aid and have helped cut crime rates dramatically, while critics say the street stops humiliate many innocent people and are unfairly focused on minorities.
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The racial breakdown of those stopped is "not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murder. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little," he said Friday on "The John Gambling Show."
More than 90 percent of suspects in killings in the last two years were described as black or Hispanic, according to city officials.
"The cops' job is to stop (people in) the groups fitting the description. It's society's job to make sure that no one group is disproportionately represented as potential perpetrators," Bloomberg said earlier in the show.
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