Stewart Grills De Blasio: Why ‘Stop and Frisk’ New Yorkers and Not Florida Gun Sellers?
After talking income (and height) inequality during their on-air interview on last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio saved their discussion about policing and crime for the web.
Noting that shootings in NYC have gone up over the past two years since the “stop and frisk” program was rolled back, Stewart said, “It can’t be that the only way we can stop shootings in New York City is what appears to be an unconstitutional and angering program.”
“You can’t break the law to enforce the law,” De Blasio said, echoing his police commissioner Bill Bratton and insisting that the city must “drive down crime while respecting constitutional rights.”
Later, Stewart challenged De Blasio to explain why the system focuses on “the end of the line of the supply chain” and not the source when it comes to guns. “Why are we not down in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia where these guns are coming from and stopping and frisking gun stores?” he asked. “Why do we have to wait and somehow put it all on communities when the truth is that there’s a gun-running operation that is going on from the South that everybody knows about but nobody will in any way address?”
“This is a fight that we have to undertake in our country,” the mayor admitted, saying it’s a question of “political will.” But, he added, “we’re not going to get to greater unity as a nation on an issue like gun control until we deal with economic reality first.”
Watch video below, via Comedy Central:
[Photo via screengrab]
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