Michael Bloomberg Supports Racial Profiling And Stop-And-Frisk In Resurfaced 2015 Audio Clip

A newly leaked clip features Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg encouraging racial profiling and stop and frisk in minority neighborhoods.

It’s a new day, and another racist has been revealed in Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and current presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. On Monday, writer Benjamin Dixon posted an audio recording from 2015 in which Bloomberg defends racist police policy, stop-and-frisk, and claims that minorities are the major cause of crime in the city of New York.

“You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed,” Bloomberg can be heard saying in the clip. “You want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets, put the cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods.” He continues, “So, one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that is true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that is true. Why did we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kid’s hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”

Bloomberg claims that “ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims” are male minorities between the ages 16 and 25. However, according to FBI data, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Bloomberg is a lie. Actually, in 2015, Black men committed 36 percent of murders and were 52 percent of murder victims. White men were 30 percent of killers and 43 percent of murder victims. The FBI data also found that from 2015, less than 16 percent of male murder victims were Latino or Hispanic, and less than 10 percent of offenders were Latino or Hispanic.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg responded to the audio saying the policy does “not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity.” “I inherited the police practice of stop-and-frisk, and as part of our effort to stop gun violence, it was overused. By the time I left office, I cut it back by 95%, but I should’ve done it faster and sooner. I regret that, and I have apologized — and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities,” he said.

But the gag is, he only started pulling back on the policy after receiving public backlash and negative media attention. Just before announcing that he would be joining the presidential race, he stopped at a Black megachurch in Brooklyn to apologize for supporting stop-and-frisk. “I was wrong, and I am sorry,” he told the crowd at the time. “The fact is, far too many people were being stopped while we tried to [reduce crime], and the overwhelming majority of them were Black and Latino. That may have included, I’m sorry to say, some of you here today.”