Bloomberg Defends Stop And Frisk — Again

By JERMECIA EDWARDS & JULIA JOHN-SCHEDER

Mayor Bloomberg on Tuesday grew feisty as he again defended his Administration’s stop and frisk tactics as the long-running federal trial on the policy seemed to be winding down.

“There is no magic number,” Bloomberg insisted answering critics who say police precincts have a quota for the stops. “Stop and frisk is focused on criminal activity

and not political formulas or anything else.”

He also addressed studies that showed that the practice has resulted in few arrests.

“The number of suspects are going down because crime is going down so you would expect that the number of stop and frisk to go down,” he said in response to a reporter’s question at a Manhattan news conference.

“You don’t want an officer not questioning someone on the street based on some politically driven maximum. That’s craziness- people get killed that way,” he continued.

He also argued that the stops resulted in few guns being discovered because of the aggressive police work.

“Criminals know it’s too hot to carry guns on the street,” said the mayor.

The Federal lawsuit targeting the policy has been going for Air Jordan Femme two months and seasoned observers are predicting that Judge Shira Scheindlin was leaning against the city on this controversial police procedure spearheaded by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

“Who do you wanna trust in terms of setting our policy when it comes to policing strategies?” Bloomberg asked. Him or some bunch of armchair critics and ideologues?”