Here (unless it is a fake, which I don’t think it is) we have Mr. Bloomberg, during a speech at the 2015 Aspen Institute, explaining how you lower crime in big cities:
“95 percent of your murders—murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description. Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, sixteen to twenty-five. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city. And that’s where the real crime is.
“You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed,” continued Bloomberg. “You want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put the cops where the crime is, which means minority neighborhoods. So one of the unintended consequences is, people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’”
“Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods,” said Bloomberg. “Yes. That’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them. And they start saying ‘Oh I don’t want to get caught.’ So they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.”
Wow.
Did Bloomberg really say that? As noted above, I’m not 100% certain he did, but very close to it. Here is a website with the audio – you be the judge.
Does it make sense?
Well, if you look at nothing but numbers , there is validity to the points being made.
But if you look at humanity – i.e. how this would be administered/how many innocent young minority males would be hassled, and what it would mean to young minority males who do not commit crimes but now have an asterisk next to their names, you have a very different story.
The overriding political point is that, if Bloomberg spoke those words, his prospects for support from minority communities – especially Blacks voters, whom Democrats have to get nearly monolithic support from to win a national election – are significantly diminished.
It might result in votes for Trump, votes for a third party candidate or votes for no one at all. But what it doesn’t result in is votes for Michael Bloomberg.
Another disaster for the Democrat Party. How many more can the party sustain before it completely implodes?
I find it hard to believe that most minorities wouldn’t agree with the sentiments expressed by Bloomberg.
You may well be right. But, sad to say, there probably is a major problem with an older rich White guy making the point.
How I wish people would judge each other as individuals, not components of groups based on, among other things, skin color. But reality is what it is.
“You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed,”
Does he means other criminals???
If so, he may want to find a better way of saying it.
Right now I think Bloomberg will be the Democrat nominee and could very well end up as President. I think Democrats hate Trump so much they will vote for ANYONE else. Bloomberg is saturating the airwaves here in Minnesota, where there is nothing at stake. I hear about a half dozen ads every hour. Just imagine what’s going on in key primary states where he intends to compete and win. Then double or triple that for the general election if he wins the nomination. Now, I haven’t seen him appear in any debates so far so my opinion may change if he falls flat.
I understand and respect your logic. But I think the massive spending can be used against him….which I am surprised his Democrat opponents have not already done (but, I fully expect, will start doing before Super Tuesday).
That said, Bloomberg’s biggest problem, apart from being Jewish (which, though I wish it were not so, will lose him plenty of votes), is his 12 year record of “stop and frisk” and his commentaries on why it was predominantly done in minority neighborhoods.
If Bloomberg is the nominee Trump will say things like “I gave you record low unemployment, and Bloomberg wants to throw your kids up against a wall and frisk them”. Don’t doubt that it will resonate.