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Bloomberg to Speak at Prominent Black Church Sunday Michael Bloomberg Apologizes for Stop-and-Frisk: ‘I Was Wrong’
(about 4 hours later)
Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will deliver remarks on Sunday at a predominantly black megachurch in East New York, choosing a crucial Democratic constituency — African-American voters — as the audience for his first speech since he re-emerged as a potential 2020 presidential candidate. Ahead of a potential Democratic presidential run, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York reversed his longstanding support of the aggressive “stop-and-frisk” policing strategy that he pursued for a decade and that led to the disproportionate stopping of black and Latino people across the city.
Mr. Bloomberg is set to speak at the Christian Cultural Center in the late morning, according to a Bloomberg aide. The content of his remarks was not disclosed, though the aide said the event was not an official presidential campaign announcement. “I was wrong,” Mr. Bloomberg declared. “And I am sorry.”
The speech is the latest in a series of steps that Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire and former three-term mayor of New York, has taken in the last 10 days to lay the groundwork for entering the Democratic presidential primary, which appears increasingly imminent. The speech was Mr. Bloomberg’s first since he re-emerged as a possible presidential candidate. The topic and the location, the Christian Cultural Center, a black megachurch in Brooklyn, was a nod to the fact that African-American voters are a crucial Democratic constituency and that Mr. Bloomberg’s policing record is seen as one of his biggest vulnerabilities, should he decide to run.
He has already filed to be on the primary ballot in two states, Arkansas and Alabama. His advisers have outlined a strategy that would circumvent the early four states that vote first in the 2020 nomination contest in favor of the broader map on Super Tuesday where he could leverage his personal fortune. Until Sunday, Mr. Bloomberg had steadfastly — and his critics say stubbornly — defended stop-and-frisk, which gave New York police officers sweeping authority to stop and search anyone they suspected of a crime. Mr. Bloomberg stood behind the program even after a federal judge ruled in 2013 that it violated the constitutional rights of minorities and despite the fact that crime continued to drop even after the program was phased out in recent years.
At the program’s peak, the racial disparities in its enforcement were jarring. Of 575,000 “stop and frisks” conducted in 2009, black and Latino people were nine times as likely as white people to be targeted by the police (even though, once stopped, they were no more likely to actually be arrested). In 2011, police stopped and questioned 684,330 New Yorkers; 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino.
Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who would self-finance his presidential run, acknowledged on Sunday that the program had led to an “erosion of trust” and he hoped to “earn it back.”
“Over time, I’ve come to understand something that I long struggled to admit to myself: I got something important wrong,” he said. “I got something important really wrong. I didn’t understand back then the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities. I was totally focused on saving lives — but as we know: good intentions aren’t good enough.”
After Mr. Bloomberg stepped down from the pulpit and returned to his seat in the front row, the church’s pastor, the Rev. A. R. Bernard, a longtime ally and former adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, shook the former mayor’s hand.
“Come on C.C.C., show some love and appreciation,” Rev. Bernard said, amid tepid applause.
For 2020, the critical question is whether Mr. Bloomberg’s reversal will be received in the black community as one of pure political expediency or genuine remorse.
“After years of running the Apartheid-like policy of stopping and frisking millions of people of color throughout New York City, and then defending it every day in office, then every day he was out of office up until this week, @MikeBloomberg now admits he was wrong,” Shaun King, the prominent civil rights activist and a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential race, said on Twitter.
“You defended it for a whole generation,” he said. “Now you know you need Black votes and you have a change of heart.”
Mr. Bloomberg did not shy away from the fact that he was reconsidering his record in his last job as he eyed a potential new one. “In recent months, as I’ve thought about my future, I’ve been thinking more about my past — and coming to terms with where I came up short,” he said.
Mr. Bloomberg, 77, had consistently defended the program until now. “I think people, the voters, want low crime,” Mr. Bloomberg told The New York Times last year. “They don’t want kids to kill each other.”
In fact, Mr. Bloomberg had gone to this very same church, located in East New York, in 2012 to defend the stop-and-frisk program and answer mounting criticism around it.
“There is no doubt those stops have saved lives,” Mr. Bloomberg declared then. He tried to link the stops to a 34 percent crime rate drop at the time. “When you consider that 90 percent of all murder victims are black and Hispanic, there is no doubt most of those victims would have come from communities like this one,” he said then.
But on Sunday, he acknowledged that the community around the church had experienced the program very differently. The church is situated at the edge of the 75th Precinct in New York, which the New York Civil Liberties Union said led the city with 265,393 stops between 2003 and 2013.
“Our focus was on saving lives,” Mr. Bloomberg said Sunday. “But the fact is: Far too many innocent people were being stopped while we tried to do that. And the overwhelming majority of them were black and Latino. That may have included, I’m sorry to say, some of you here today, perhaps yourself, or your children, or your grandchildren, or your neighbors or your relatives.”
The reversal on stop-and-frisk was the starkest in a series of steps that Mr. Bloomberg has taken in the last 10 days to lay the groundwork for entering the Democratic presidential primary, a step that appears increasingly imminent.
He has already filed to be on the primary ballot in two states, Arkansas and Alabama. His advisers have outlined a strategy that would circumvent the four states that vote first in the 2020 nomination contest in favor of the broader map on Super Tuesday, when he could leverage his personal fortune.
And he announced plans to spend $100 million on digital ads against President Trump in key general election battleground states, blunting criticism that he could spend his money better elsewhere. Those ads would not feature him, advisers said, and the spending would be in addition to what he might spend on his own candidacy.And he announced plans to spend $100 million on digital ads against President Trump in key general election battleground states, blunting criticism that he could spend his money better elsewhere. Those ads would not feature him, advisers said, and the spending would be in addition to what he might spend on his own candidacy.
Mr. Bloomberg’s record on race — and in particular his steady defense of the deeply controversial policing strategy known as “stop-and-frisk” — is widely seen as one of his biggest vulnerabilities if he runs in the Democratic primary, where black voters have helped determine the winner in the last nomination contests, elevating President Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Mr. Bloomberg played coy about his plans from the pulpit. “I don’t know what the future holds for me,” he said.
The stop-and-frisk program, forcefully defended by Mr. Bloomberg for years, gave New York police officers sweeping authority that resulted in hundreds of thousands of street stops, which disproportionately targeted black and Latino men. Mr. Bloomberg regularly argued it was necessary to curb crime.
But the program — which a federal judge ruled violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city — has been almost entirely phased out in the last seven years, beginning in Mr. Bloomberg’s final year and then aggressively by his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio. Crime rates have mostly continued to drop.
Still, Mr. Bloomberg, 77, has consistently defended the program. “I think people, the voters, want low crime,” Mr. Bloomberg told The New York Times last year. “They don’t want kids to kill each other.”
The pastor of the Christian Cultural Center, the Rev. A. R. Bernard, is a longtime ally and former adviser to Mr. Bloomberg.