Appearing before an African American audience in Harlem today, Anthony D. Weiner criticized the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy as excessive and promised that, if he became mayor, he would not use the program “as a racial tool." Mr. Weiner described the number of stops – some 533,000 last year — as excessive and said the policy should not be used “against particular communities." a reference to the fact that the vast majority of those stopped are young black and Hispanic men. Mr. Weiner also suggested that there were circumstances were stops were justified. “If there is a drug dealer in the yard of a public housing project, and he’s acting suspicious, and we’re getting calls to the police, and he’s showing signs that there’s reason to believe he’s doing something wrong, I want a police officer to tap that fellow on the shoulder, and if he’s a drug dealer I want him arrested and thrown out of the community — I want that to happen,” he said. But “I believe you can fight crime without saying to police officers go out and get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stops,” he said. “And make no mistake:When you have a situation where 97, 98, 99% of the stops are resulting in no crime, no gun, no — no police report being submitted beyond just the 250 saying, ‘I stopped the guy,’ you’re a bad cop,” Mr. Weiner said, to applause from the audience. “You’re not doing your job.”
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:46:15 +0000
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