A Cop’s View of Bloomberg’s Gaffe

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is in trouble for favoring stop-and-frisk policing, which reduced crime and saved mostly black and Hispanic lives. As noted earlier, he committed a Kinsley gaffe by telling an unpopular truth. A SoCal police officer who writes under the pseudonym “Jack Dunphy” for PJMedia reports:

In 2018, blacks were 72.6 percent of the shooting suspects in New York City, and Hispanics were 24.1 percent (see page 12 of this NYPD report). Blacks and Hispanics were also 73.3 and 22.4 percent of the city’s shooting victims, respectively, so it should be beyond saying (but sadly isn’t) that curtailing shooting incidents will be a balm to those communities.

All true, but stop-and-frisk also dramatically increased the incarceration rate for minority young men when drugs, weapons, parole violations or stolen property were found as a result of the process. I’d guess there were minority neighborhoods in which few men got through their teens and early twenties without a criminal record.

Is it any wonder minorities felt picked on? Truly, they were exactly that and with good reason, according to Bloomberg before he wanted to be president. Concentrating police where the crime is still makes sense per Dunphy.