Mike Bloomberg’s fast rise in the polls of Democratic presidential candidates has led to some quick vetting of the former New York City mayor and the results are so disturbing they’ve led to #BloombergIsRacist trending on social media.
A video from 2013 has resurfaced showing the then-mayor speaking on his weekly radio show about the NYPD’s highly-controversial “Stop and Frisk” program that targeted Black and Brown youth and teens.
“I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” Bloomberg said on-air.
His remarks were covered by local news media at the time as well.
Stop and Frisk, as practiced in NYC was ruled unconstitutional, but Bloomberg challenged that ruling.
That same year Donald Trump endorsed the program.
In a separate audio clip from 2015 that is also making the rounds on social media Bloomberg can be heard saying:
“Ninety-five percent of murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city…. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed.”
Some reactions:
Image by Mike Bloomberg via Flickr and a CC license