Defending Stop and Frisk Returns to Haunt Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg: ‘We Put All the Cops in Minority Neighborhoods…’ You Have to ‘Throw Them Up Against the Walls and Frisk Them’

Remarks fully supporting the stop and frisk program in 2013 and 2015 have returned to haunt billionaire Michael Bloomberg on the campaign trail. Newly uncovered audio surfaced as the former New York City mayor spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to win over black support for the Democratic nomination.

An audio clip from a 2015 speech the billionaire gave to the Aspen Institute, reveals Bloomberg offering a full-throated defend of stop and frisk. He conceded he “put all the cops in minority neighborhoods” because “that’s where all the crime is” and “the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”

The Aspen Times reported at the time that Bloomberg representatives asked the Aspen Institute not to distribute footage of his appearance.

95% of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one MO. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities, sixteen to twenty-five.

That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city [inaudible]. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed.

You want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So, one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arrested kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’

Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is, and the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.

And then they start [inaudible—may ‘saying’] ‘Oh, I don’t want to get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun but they leave it at home.

Michael Bloomberg in speech to the Aspen Institute in 2015

The audio drop comes as voters head to the polls in the first in the nation primary in New Hampshire. While Bloomberg skipped early states including the Granite State, the audio blunts his surprising win in Dixville Notch.

He received two write-ins votes in the small rural town that holds their election and counts the results at midnight before Election Day. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg peached received one vote on the Democratic side, while one Michael Bloomberg received 1 write-in vote on the Republican side.

Nevertheless, Bloomberg’s entire strategy hinges on the total collapse of Joe Biden and the rise of Senator Sanders, both of which is happening. It also hangs on earning the support of the black community that was previously with the former vice president.

Bloomberg, who is self-funding his campaign with his vast fortune, was elected mayor after America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsed him. Without his support, Bloomberg would have been defeated.

He continued Mayor Giuliani’s tough on crime approach and implemented stop and frisk. Critics have called the program racist and Bloomberg now claims he does not support it.

However, Bloomberg’s comments on stop and frisk at the Aspen Institute are not the only remarks he has made in defense of the controversial program.

“I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little,” he said in 2013 interview on 710 WOR – The Voice Of New York.