During his weekly WOR-AM radio appearance, New York King Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated his support for stop-and-frisk when he said this:
There is this business, there’s one newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group,’… That may be, but it’s 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.
The comments came just one day after New York City lawmakers voted to create an NYPD inspector general and other legal infrastructure to address racial profiling. Looks like the South really doesn’t have the corner on old-fashioned racism.
In Part Two of a special two part #TWiBRadio, #TeamBlackness continues with a discussion about New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s problematic stance regarding Stop and Frisk practices (16:45) and engage in the age old discussion of who would win in Open Battle: Dude Bros or Hipsters.
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And this morning on #amTWiB, L.Joy, Imani, and the rest of the #TheMorningCrew unpacked last week’s news when ALL THE THINGS happened.
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Scott S.
I can’t say I’m real surprised, other than that he’d say that shit out loud.
If I say that Bloomberg should be placed in a rocketship and launched into the sun, am I going to be shot?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
I’m not sure if this was posted in another topic or not, but…apparently, thanks to the recent developments in the Zimmerman trial, CNN actually had a discussion that produced this screencap: http://i.imgur.com/3Gn3oHy.jpg
I mean…the chyron really just says it all, doesn’t it?
Also, fuck Mayor Bloomberg. Seriously, that’s your fucking defense of stop-and-frisk? To assert that minorities are even more super-mega-hyper-violent to require being singled out even more? Jesus fuck, you bastard.
Crop Dusted
“There is this business, there’s one newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group,’…”
Mike, are you talking about this news service:
Cassidy
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I love that. If you have to substitute another word for it to say it publicly, I think that automatically means it’s worse. Lol
Tosh has a funny bit about that actually.
Shakezula
I don’t know about the rest of you all, but since this policy has been put in place, I have seen no reason to include NYC in my travel plans.
Don’t go to places authorities publicly declare I should be treated like a criminal based on my appearance, is one of my mottoes.
Fuck Mayor Bloomerberg with a rusty spork, is another.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Cassidy:
Unfortunately run into too many folk who apparently think cracker is just as bad or worse, and somehow proves that Trayvon and friends were the real super-mega-ultra racists, and how it proves he must’ve been the thuggy thug McThugerton that started the fight.
Mark S.
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
I think the fact that CNN won’t type out one of the words fucking answers that question.
aimai
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: It is “apparently believe” since half of those people have never heard the word cracker before it came up in this trial for the obvious reason that its a niche ethnic term that 1) doesn’t have any real national connotation, 2) refers generically to people as a mild slur like “hick,” 3) has never historically been associated with mass state and non state violence.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a lot of media liberals think Obama should be more like Bloomberg
ruemara
Yeah, I saw that shit when it was first printed. Fucking bigot, is all I can say. He needs to get out of the leadership chair for my city.
Mark S.
Well, to be fair, if they put “N-word vs. C-word”, no one would think they were talking about “cracker.”
Which, once again, answers their fucking question.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Mark S.:
The chyron should be end of story. The fact that it isn’t, and that this is somehow an actual debate on national television shows just how far away we are.
Mark S.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
A lot of them think Bloomberg should be our next president.
Ted & Hellen
So, is it your view, that in cases where suspects who have been identified as black, the cops should stop more white people simply to bring the percentages into line with the overall population, as a sort of police theater that would accomplish nothing in the way of solving a crime, waste time and resources, but make everyone feel warm and fuzzy?
Ted & Hellen
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Except of course, as you know, that’s not what he said at all.
Enjoy your faux outrage.
dslak
Too early for pie? It’s four o’clock somewhere!
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
It’s always their defense. “We’re not racist! In fact, we’re too lenient, kind-hearted, and forgiving!”
When we’re at the point that wingnuts are remembering slavery fondly as an arrangement in which the ungrateful black guy was given “food and shelter,” safe to say there’s no such thing as going too far.
Ripley
The Cosmic Irony thread was a few days ago.
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Yeah, that last part is the most fascinating leap – that somehow, Trayvon Martin was a racist and that means he deserves to be shot. If he’d been a white guy, Zimmerman a black guy, and he’d used the N word to describe him, would that suddenly entitle Zimmerman to shoot him? They’d be the first ones to argue otherwise.
El Caganer
They’re recovering guns in less than 1% of the stops, and he thinks this is effective crime-fighting? Wonder if he would have become rich getting a 1% return on his investments.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@El Caganer: Be careful with that kind of talk. People might notice that crime in most of the United States is not the life-threatening problem it’s made out to be.
Ridnik Chrome
November 5 can’t come too soon…
MattW
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Which might lead to a similar realization about terrorism! Honestly, you’re much more likely to be shot (intentionally or not) by some cracker with a gun than blown up by the scary Mooslim hordes.
Mnemosyne
Isn’t the “stop and frisk” policy something separate from when the police have a description of a suspect in a specific crime and they’re stopping people who meet that description? Bloomberg seems to be conflating two different things here so he can justify “stop and frisk,” which is stopping people on the street because they look like maybe they were thinking about doing something illegal.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The Bronx was one of the places covered under the VRA.
max
The comments came just one day after New York City lawmakers voted to create an NYPD inspector general and other legal infrastructure to address racial profiling. Looks like the South really doesn’t have the corner on old-fashioned racism.
Well, they’ve been runnin’ fascist Disneyland up there, so it should not be a surprise that a nutty right-wing billionaire acts like a nutty right-wing billionaire. Making the main reason to root for Weiner (besides the fact that it would give the middle finger to the kind of people who freak out about junk pics but not thieving bankers) is that he isn’t the heir apparent. So maybe there’s some chance he would turn this crap off.
max
[‘Before the disease spreads any further.’]
kc
I’be only seen this reported on blogs. Guess the media would rather talk about Paula Deen.
El Cid
Just because no one has suggested you have a connection with any crime actually committed doesn’t mean you may not be a suspect. It’s clearly better to frisk anyone who looks like the sorts of people who frequently commit crimes than it is to wait until you have any logical cause to connect a search profile with an actual crime. Black people, after all, are really likely to have done something wrong. It might even be the best idea to round them all up for arrest and temporary detention so that they can be investigated until proven innocent.
Mark S.
@Mnemosyne:
I guess you don’t remember those Law & Order episodes where they’re investigating a homicide and stop and frisk dozens of New Yorkers walking down the street.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
You mean all those pasty white boys walking in and out of J.P. Morgan and Company?
Roger Moore
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Obviously. Cracker is used to say bad things about them and theirs, while the other one is a word they use themselves. They’re never going to accept that they’re the real racists.
Keith
@El Caganer: I literally do better than 1% on *actual* fishing expeditions.
kc
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
“Cracker” is far worse. It has hurtful connotations of the days when my white ancestors were routinely lynched by mobs of black people for being disrespectful to black women.
MomSense
@kc:
And by talk about Paula Deen what they really want to do is pretend this is about some words she said 30 years ago. I’ve already been seeing the wingnuts talk about how Deen can’t be a racist because she supported President Obama. There is little conversation about the things alleged in the complaints–which are serious and appalling.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Roger Moore:
It’s god awful sad how often I see and hear this said, in earnest, and without the bitter mocking tone that comes from your post.
El Cid
Cracker is insulting to Paul Deen because crackers themselves need not (though may) contain significant amounts of butter, bacon, sugar, fried chicken, chocolate, or nasal cackling laughs.
Shakezula
And look what just plopped into my work inbox!
It goes on and on and on.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, he is. He’s justifying massive racial profiling based on claims about the race of murderers.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Shakezula:
I feel dirtier for having read that.
Cacti
Bloomy’s statement illustrates the biggest reason why I predicted George Zimmerman will walk away a free man.
Being black in the United States makes you a suspect by default. On the all-white jury in Florida, if each juror saw an unknown black teenager passing through their neighborhood, how many would reflexively think he was “up to something”? How many would think the same about an unfamiliar white teenager?
Villago Delenda Est
@Shakezula:
Say what? If there actually WERE such things going on, the “if it bleeds, it leads” local media would be all over it. Because it bleeds.
But I forget, the “liberal media” deliberately covers up the very things that would get them more eyeballs, and therefore higher ratings, and therefore more money. How silly of me.
Villago Delenda Est
@kc:
Truefax. Absolutely.
I want reparations for the oppression by the black authorities of my white ancestors.
Jay C
@Ted & Hellen:
As opposed, one supposes, to their current policy, which is of course, just this sort of wasteful “police theater” – with added racism?
Clown.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I really hate it when liberals say shit like that. I haye it when conservatives say it, but I expect it from then. Somehow, I think that maybe we should try to hold ourselves to higher standards.
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
That screen shot is truly appalling. Fuck any asshole who tries to blather on about how “racism is dead” in America. The fact that any news outlet that more than 27% of this country thinks of as “reputable” would even ask something like that pretty much proves that racism is still stubbornly hanging on among us.
Cassidy
Oh T&H, where ever their is a rape to be mansplained, a child molester to be enabled, or bigotry to defend, you show up in your
hoodcape as predictable as your very own narcissism.El Cid
Crazy racist Colin Flaherty and his racist mental violence, he of the ‘black mobs’ shutting down the 4th of July nonsense above.
Here Flaherty himself sees confirmations for his delusions in this flat-out denial of his claims from Bedford, Ohio’s City Manager:
Citizen journalist and former 53 year old dude hitch-hiker memoir self-publisher Colin Flaherty, now plying his arts at the impressive Whirled Nut Daily.
Rex Everything
How about detaining the whites down on Wall Street who stole from all of us and wrecked the entire fucking economy, Bloomberg, you fascist son of a bitch?
His laws apply to the poor only.
Steve M.
Not that Bloomie’s cops were ever paragons of racial enlightenment, but for a while he helped lower the temperature in NYC just by not making inflammatory statements. That was a relief after eight years of Giuliani (preceded by four years of anti-Dinkins racial backlash and twelve years of race-baiter Ed Koch). But in his last year, Bloomie seems to want to be Giuliani. It’s ironic — Rudy went out on sort of a high note, as kind of a uniter, and Bloomberg is going out as precisely what Giuliani was from the beginning of his first term through 9/10/01.
El Cid
@Rex Everything: Bloomberg is part of a small and oppressed minority who have to defend their interests every day from those who would seek to limit them: billionaires.
Roger Moore
@Rex Everything:
He can start by cuffing himself.
Suffern ACE
@Steve M.: Maybe it’ll come out that Bloomberg has been having an affair and taking his pending divorce out on his children. Then we’d be in Guiliani territory.
Shakezula
@Villago Delenda Est: Further down he claims that because the town no longer has its own daily paper, it had no way of publishing the news about the violence, which required the city to call in three outside police agencies (only no one saw fit to tell the mayor about this and he had to be informed by alarmed citizens after the fact).
@El Cid: Awesome. I was wondering where the hell he got that quote, because it was awkward even for a citizen reporter.
Ted & Hellen
When everything is racist nothing is racist.
Forum Transmitted Disease
When everything is pedophilia, there’s our friend Tim, defending it and sharing his fantasies about how awesome child rape is.
rikyrah
Stop and Frisk is a racist policy.
Period.
And, it’s a failing policy.
when you only succeed 2% of the time in getting what YOU SAY is the point of the policy…
yet, you are violating the civil rights of multitudes of American Citizens…
fuck that.
and fuck Bloomberg trying to twist his racist ass into knots explaining why the policy should be kept.
Citizen_X
@Shakezula: Holy crap: Flaherty, what a moron. Great smackdown by Angelo, too; apparently went over Flaherty’s head.
The white robes don’t hide the clown shoes.
rikyrah
THIS is what every Black Male who has someone who loves them is taught.
Actor LeVar Burton and author Tim Wise explain the differences in their interactions with police.
http://youtu.be/M-ckDJ3xTaE
So, stop with this bullshyt that Stop and Frisk isn’t racist.
Ted & Hellen
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
You bet, buddy! Love it!
quannlace
Okay, White guys. All those who’ve been stop and frisked raise your hand.
Any one? Any one?
Cacti
@quannlace:
Have been stopped before for no apparent reason, but never frisked, and never asked if they could search my vehicle.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@quannlace:
One time a cop told me to stay inside the crosswalk lines while crossing the street. And he said it in a mean tone of voice. That really hurt. I was barely outside the lines, and I was embarrassed in front of a lot of people. So, yeah, I know the pain and suffering of my minority brothers.
/hoekstroika
quannlace
The one nugget of truth in that crapola- Yes, some places are canceling fireworks.
The real reason: The Sequestration
LanceThruster
Mebbe mayor B. could have those in need of more intensive stop and frisk attention have some sort of symbol stitched to their clothing? That would make it much more convenient for police and the public would be able to readily identify just who to be wary of, no?
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
What’s sad is you think you’re being sarcastic.
Ted & Hellen
@A Humble Lurker:
No, I don’t. I’m serious. Completely!
Shakezula
@quannlace: Ha! I bet you believe it when authorities say code red wild fire risk alerts and thunderstorms are the cause of cancelled fire works displays.
grendelkhan
White people stopped-and-frisked are half again as likely as black people to be carrying contraband, and twice as likely to be carrying weapons. (Latinos are in the middle.)
It’s not just mean-spirited and racist, it’s obviously factually wrong to say that New York is stopping too many black people and not enough white people.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@A Humble Lurker: He really isn’t.
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
There’s that one note you can play again.
ruemara
@quannlace: My friend’s son was. In NYC. He was giving a lift to a female friend in a van. In typical white guy fashion, he was outraged and spoke his mind. He suffered no consequences for it and his mom got his lawyer dad to dash off an outraged letter. A black man in the same situation does not argue with the cops. Not if he values his life more than his dignity.
Ted & Hellen
@A Humble Lurker:
What?!
Rex Everything
T&H, I don’t usually have a problem with you, and often appreciate your posts, but don’t be a dick. Bloomberg is completely ignoring the reality of the situation here, and his rant about chasing a “murderer” is plain stupid in a context where violent crime has been plummeting for 20 years. Minorities, especially in poor neighborhoods, are chronically harassed and it gets worse all the time.
Bloomberg, like Giuliani, argues that police methods that flirt with brutality are what brought crime down, but this is contradicted by the facts that (1) crime dropped in every city in America at the same rate, over the same period, regardless of police tactics, and (2) the NYPD’s adoption and increased use of these tactics have not changed the rate of the decline in crime.
Bloomberg is trying to deflect legit criticism against a growing public menace by saying hey, cops are usually just chasing black people anyway, cause it’s their job! It’s racist bullshit and the closer you look at it the more racist and bullshitty it is.