Mike Bloomberg: Nobody Asked Me About ‘Overzealous’ Stop and Frisk Until I Ran for President

By Colby HallDec 6th, 2019, 8:05 am
 

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg sat down with CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King for an interview that aired Friday morning. The new presidential hopeful recently apologized for the controversial “stop and frisk” policy that the NYPD employed during his tenure, a subject that King brought up in the interview.

King noted that Bloomberg had recently apologized for stop and frisk before skeptically adding, “some people are suspicious of the timing of your apology. ”

Bloomberg defended his shifting position: “Well, the mark of an intelligent, competent person is when they make a mistake, they have the guts to stand up and say ‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry.'”

King pushed back saying, “we don’t question your belief that you made a mistake. The question is the timing that you realize you made the mistake,” to which Bloomberg curiously replied that “nobody asked me about it until I started running for president. Come on.” 

A New York Times article from 2018, however, demonstrates the absurdity of Bloomberg’s comment, as stop and frisk came up repeatedly and he defended the policy. He defended the controversial policy, in fact, throughout his mayorship and after he left City Hall.

An undeterred Bloomberg soldiered on: “We were overzealous at the time to do it. Our intent was to do anything we could to stop the carnage, the murder rate. What was surprising is when we stopped doing a little bit, we thought crime would go up. It didn’t, it went. Could have, would have, should have, in looking back, I made a mistake. I’m sorry, I apologize.”

He then added “let’s fight the NRA and find other ways to stop the murders and incarceration. Those are things that I’m committed to do. The more I do that the better off everybody is.”

Watch above via CBS.

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Colby Hall - Founding Editor

Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.