New York City’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that Donald Trump’s Monday debate claim stop and frisk was the reason for the murder rate’s decline from 2,200 to 500 homicides was “literally all wrong.”
“Crime comes down because Mayor Dinkins has a lot of police and Bill Bratton puts on a much more strategic system for police. Crime goes down. It was not used during the Bloomberg years, the unconstitutional overuse of stop and frisk. Indiscriminate stopping primarily of young men of color,” de Blasio told MSNBC host Christopher Hayes on Tuesday evening.
Instead, de Blasio – a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton – said Giuliani and Bloomberg’s approach to crime led to frustration within the African-American community since they were overwhelmingly targeted in the stop and frisk program. De Blasio reduced the number of stops from 700,000 in its peak year in 2011 to 20,000 in 2016.
De Blasio said murders have continued to decline, noting 2015 saw only 350 homicides.
“Trump literally has the entire equation backwards,” de Blasio said. He called the stop and frisk program a “backwards” dynamic.
“All communities want safety, want a working relationship between police and community. What no one wants is to have their privacy invaded for no reason. No one wants to be degraded or treated like a suspect when they haven’t done anything,” de Blasio said. “Imagine if it was happening en masse in your community where you were. If it was normal to see your young people treated that way. That’s no way to build a trusting, respectful relationship.”
