Progressive advocacy group MoveOn blasted former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s account of his role in the city’s stop-and-frisk program, which was discontinued after he left office amid rulings that it was racially discriminatory.
In a tweet Wednesday, the group criticized Bloomberg for saying he “inherited” the policy and that while it was “overused,” he reduced it 95 percent.
“False. Stop-and-frisk rollbacks were despite your admin, not because of it. Your admin defended stop-and-frisk in court but lost & you vetoed City Council reforms but lost,” the group tweeted. “Misleading on this critical racial justice issue is unacceptable. Voters deserve an accurate accounting.”
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in 2013, Bloomberg’s last year in office, that the policy as practiced by the New York Police Department was racially discriminatory and violated the 14th Amendment.
The city initially appealed but dropped the appeal in January 2014 after Bloomberg’s successor, Bill de Blasio, took office.
Bloomberg, who has risen in polling among the Democratic field amid a blitz of self-funded television advertising, has recently come under fire for his administration’s use of the policy after progressive podcast host Benjamin Dixon this week surfaced audio of Bloomberg defending the policy in 2015.
“Ninety-five 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, 16 to 25,” Bloomberg says in the clip. “That’s true in New York, it’s true in virtually every city.”
Critics of Bloomberg on both the left and the right have seized on the clip, with President Trump, who has previously expressed support for stop and frisk, calling Bloomberg a “TOTAL RACIST” Tuesday in a since-deleted tweet.
Bloomberg had continued to defend the program after leaving office but apologized for it last year shortly before announcing his White House bid.
The Hill has reached out to Bloomberg’s campaign for comment.