Rudy Giuliani knocked Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg for condemning the use of the controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy while he was mayor of New York.
“What is this stuff that he’s condemning stop-and-frisk?” Giuliani asked John Catsimatidis during an interview that aired Sunday on “The Cats Roundtable” on AM 970. “I did it for eight years. He did it for 12. I did 100 [thousand] stops. He did 600 [thousand].”
“Now that [Bloomberg] has turned on the program, and turned on [former NYPD Commissioner Ray] Kelly … He was 100 percent in favor of that program. As enthusiastic about it as I was,” Giuliani, the personal lawyer to President Trump, continued.
Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani as mayor in 2002, has apologized for using the tactic that disproportionately targeted minority communities.
The billionaire media mogul, during a campaign stop in Richmond, Va., on Saturday, said it’s a “practice I deeply regret.”
“I defended it too long cause I didn’t understand the pain it caused to black and brown kids and their families,” Bloomberg said. “For that I apologize. I can’t change history, but I can learn lessons and use that to change.“
Stop-and-frisk ended in January 2014 following numerous court cases challenging it.
Bloomberg’s views on stop-and-frisk came under new scrutiny when comments he made in a 2015 speech to the Aspen Institute surfaced. He said that 95 percent of murderers and murder victims have one common denominator.
“They are male minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city,” Bloomberg said. “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.”
Trump blasted Bloomberg after the clip came to light.
“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” he said in a tweet that was deleted minutes later last Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters later that day in the Oval Office, Trump criticized Bloomberg for apologizing during a speech in November at East New York’s Christian Cultural Center.
“I watched him pander at a church and practically beg for forgiveness,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t have begged for forgiveness, I mean, he was doing his job at the time. When he went up to the church, I thought it was disgraceful, and I put something out, and it was pretty nasty. And I thought, you know, I’m looking to bring the country together not divide the country further.”
Trump in 2016 called for implementing stop and frisk nationwide to combat inner-city crime.
“I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” he said during an interview on Fox News.
