In defense of the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” procedure, a policy that has been criticized as racist by The New York Times and left-wing civil liberty groups like the NYCLU, New York Mayor Bloomberg threw the Race Card right back in their faces Tuesday in a blistering statement accusing both of racial bias:
“Last week, a Bronx resident named Alphonza Bryant was shot and killed while standing with friends near his home. He was 17. Like most murder victims in our city, he was a minority,” a frustrated Bloomberg told NYPD brass during an address at 1 Police Plaza.
“He was just a victim of too many guns on our streets. But after his murder … there was not even a mention of his murder in our paper of record, the New York Times. All the news that’s fit to print did not include the murder of a 17-year-old Alphonza Bryant.”
Bryant was gunned down near his home in Foxhurst April 22, weeks before his senior prom and graduation from Urban Assembly Bronx Studio for Writers and Artists in exactly the kind of violent crime stop and frisk aims to prevent by taking guns off the street.
“Four days after Alphonza Bryant’s murder went unreported by the Times, the paper published another editorial attacking stop, question, and frisk. They called it a wildly loathed practice, even though a growing number of mothers and fathers who have had their children murdered with guns have been speaking out in support of stop, question, and frisk,” the mayor said.
“Let me tell you now what I loathe. I loathe that 17-year-old minority children can be senselessly murdered in the Bronx and some of the media doesn’t even consider it news.”
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