Mike Bloomberg on Crime Mayor of New York City (Independent)

Makeup of police department should reflect city population

BLOOMBERG: I made sure that our police department is a majority minority as is the city.

Q: You wanted the police department to reflect the demographics of the city?

BLOOMBERG: That's exactly right, reflect is the exact right word; because you want people to think that the cops understand them, their culture, and whatever. That doesn't mean you're going to find somebody that you have a lot in common with every time you meet a police officer. But if 1/10 of 1% of the citizens of New York come from Egypt, 1/10 of 1% of our police department would come from Egypt. The only place we don't mirror the population exactly is men and women because the city is 50/50 roughly and only about 35% of the police department are female.

First priority in crime is to cut murder rate; we cut by 50%

BLOOMBERG: Looking at my time in office, the one thing that I'm really embarrassed about was how it turned out with stop-and-frisk. When I got into office, there were 650 murders a year in New York City. And I thought that my first responsibility was to give people the right to live. And we adopted a policy, which had been the policy that all big police departments use, of stop-and-frisk. It got out of control. And when I discovered that we were doing many, many, too many stop-and-frisks, we cut 95% of it out. I was trying to understand how we change our policy so we can keep the city safe, because the crime rate did go from 650, 50% down to 300. But we cannot go out and stop people indiscriminately.

End cash bail; $2.5 billion for public defenders

Mike will launch a Department of Justice reform hub to evaluate and fund state-level criminal justice reform efforts, set a goal to reduce incarceration by 50% by 2030 and spread the use of alternatives to prison pioneered in New York. He will launch a national initiative to address unsanitary and inhumane prison conditions and will launch new education and job training programming. He will focus probation on re-integration, with a goal of cutting probation revocation by one-third nationally.

Restore voting rights to felons after they're out

Stop and frisk: I was wrong and I am sorry

It is almost unheard-of for a former chief executive to renounce and apologize for a signature policy that helped define a political legacy. Bloomberg had steadfastly--and his critics say stubbornly--defended stop-and-frisk.

I was wrong to rely on stop-and-frisk policing

The stunning reversal comes as Bloomberg is expected to jump into the 2020 presidential race. "I got something important wrong. I got something really important wrong--stops on the black and Latino community," a contrite Bloomberg said as he addressed congregants at the Christian Cultural Center in East New York, one of the city's largest black churches. "I want you to know I realize back then I was wrong," he added. "And I am sorry."

Stop-and-frisk is one of the most controversial legacies of Bloomberg's twelve years in City Hall--struck down by a federal judge for its disproportionate effect on minority communities, but one Bloomberg continued to cling tightly to for years as he claimed credit of the city's sinking crime rates.

Supported 1996 crime bill and stop-and-frisk policing

Crime dropped 32%; murders halved; 36% fewer behind bars

Reduce crime but with a more racially sensitive police force

Apologizing for police racial errors kept city calm

Bloomberg called what had happened tragic and "a terrible episode," and spoke with apology and candor at her funeral. A public accustomed to Rudy Giuliani routinely giving the police the benefit of every doubt greeted Bloomberg's apologetic tone with surprise and gratitude.

The city stayed calm after Alberta Spruill's death. And it stayed calm over the new few months despite two more police encounters with innocent African American, each of which provoked similarly soothing and rapid reactions from Bloomberg.

OpEd: never a conspicuous civil libertarian

As he sees it, those who were arrested put themselves at risk and in effect got what they deserved because the police were reacting to threats. 5 years after the convention, the city had spent $6.6 million to defend the lawsuits, an additional $1.7 million to settle 90 claims and still faced lawsuits filed by hundreds of plaintiffs. About 90% of the people arrested had their charges dismissed outright or dropped after 6 months.

Educate prisoners: build more classrooms at Rikers Island

Fewer homicides in NYC than any year on record

Reduced murder rate by focusing on domestic violence

Very few victims of homicides were strangers to their perpetrators or were killed in random attacks. There was an impressive decline in domestic violence homicides. Specially trained detectives have engaged in proactive domestic violence prevention, doubling their visits to households where domestic violence had occurred.

The visits run counter to the academic belief that little could be done to reduce domestic-related murders. The NYPD has assigned domestic violence officers to every precinct in the City. These specially trained officers made 76,000 domestic violence follow-up visits last year; compared to 38,000 in 2002. In that time, domestic violence-related murders have fallen by nearly half.

Mandatory minimum sentencing for gun crimes

Lock them up and throw away key, but no death penalty

Too much news radio is "all crime, all the time"

We started day one by ignoring the fundamentals of conventional radio: no murder and mayhem, no prima donnas. Gone were the breathless on-the-scene reporters stumbling over the usual banalities, the self-important producers, and the separate on-air anchor talents whose only talent was reading others' copy and whose egos never got quite enough massaging.