Mayor de Blasio exaggerated the effectiveness of his reforms of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program in an address to a predominantly black audience.
Speaking in prepared remarks to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Wednesday, de Blasio compared his application of the controversial crime-fighting tactic to the way it was done under ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Under Bloomberg, he said, “There were over 700,000 stops and frisks of people in this city, the vast majority of whom were young men of color, the vast majority of whom were innocent in every way shape and form.”
He then touted what he said was his record on use of the tactic.
“That number is 40,000 and the people being stopped are people who have done something wrong,” de Blasio said. “You can look at that as an example of progress.”
In 2014 - his first year as mayor - the NYPD made 46,235 stops, according to NYPD records. Only 18% of those resulted in arrests.
In 2011 - the year that saw the highest amount of recorded stops under Bloomberg — 12% of the 685,724 stops recorded led to arrests.
Under de Blasio, 55% of those stopped were African-American and 29% were Latinos — virtually the same as every year since 2003, when the police started tracking the race of people stopped.
A spokesman for the mayor said he “misspoke.”
But police reform advocates were steamed.
Monifa Bandele of Communities United for Police Reform called the mayor’s comment’s “disturbing.”
“Our city's top public official is falsely criminalizing tens of thousands of New Yorkers - the majority of whom are Black or Latino - who were stopped by police last year and found to be doing nothing wrong,” she said.