NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s remark that police “disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little,” as compared with suspects’ descriptions, is prompting criticism from police reform advocates and some mayoral candidates.
Bloomberg made the comment Friday on WOR-AM. City lawmakers voted Thursday to make it easier to bring racial profiling claims against police.
Eighty-seven percent of the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers stopped, questioned and sometimes frisked in recent years were black or Hispanic. These groups comprise 54 percent of the city population.
Bloomberg says the appropriate comparison isn’t to the population, but to the suspects’ descriptions. More than 90 percent of killing suspects are described as black or Hispanic.
The group Communities United for Police Reform calls Bloomberg’s view misinformation, noting that most stops aren’t spurred by descriptions.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.