An analysis by New York City’s public advocate may indicate that racial profiling does not contribute to effective stops.

The report looked at public NYPD data on stop-and-frisk from 2012, and found that weapons and guns were more often found on white New Yorkers than African-Americans or Latinos.

The NYPD discovered a weapon in one of every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. They only found weapons on one of every 71 Latinos stopped and one in every 93 African-Americans stopped, the public advocate’s office said.

Contraband, including marijuana, was also found more frequently on white New Yorkers than minorities. One out of every 43 white people stopped had illegal substances on them, while illegal items were found on one out of every 57 Latinos and every 61 African-Americans.

The director of policy at Bronx Defenders, a holistic public defense organization, said the data align with “what we see representing clients every day in the Bronx.”

“Despite promised reforms a year ago, black and Latino New Yorkers — especially young people — are still stopped every day based on nothing more than the color of their skin or the neighborhood they hang out in,” said director Kate Rubin.

The report acknowledges an overall reduction in stops but found that the skewed proportion of stops of minorities is still the same. Minorities constitute 84 percent of all stops, but make up only 54 percent of all New Yorkers.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said there is “an ugly truth in these numbers” and said the inefficacy of the system puts communities and police officers in danger.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights slammed the NYPD today over the leak of an internal report from the mayor’s office apparently finding Judge Shira Scheindlin biased against law enforcement.

Scheindlin has a long history of covering stop-and-frisk related cases, and is presiding over a major one currently. The Center of Constitutional Rights is on one side of that case; the NYPD and the City are on the other.

The report was apparently leaked to the New York Daily News. According to the News, the report found that Scheindlin decided against law enforcement in 60 percent of her written opinions on “search-and-seizure” over the course of her nearly two decades on the bench. The study allegedly also says that rate is the highest among 16 current and former Manhattan federal judges that the report included since 1990.

The mayor’s office reportedly declined to comment to the News, but Scheindlin told the News that the study is “completely misleading” as it doesn’t include any rulings from the bench.

While the majority of her written opinions may involve dismissing evidence, she told the News that in “nearly all” of her bench rulings on seized evidence, she has denied motions to suppress.

Early this year, the judge ruled on a case involving stops in some Clean Halls buildings. She ordered that the stops cease, but a short time later rescinded that ruling.

CCR released a statement calling the report “nothing short of outrageous.”

“Having already attacked the Center for Constitutional Rights, communities mobilizing to end violent and discriminatory policing, and the press, the attack on a respected judge scrapes the bottom of the litigation barrel,” the statement read.

CCR recommended that the city instead focus on “studies to remedy the persistent constitutional violations in its police department.”

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to whether the NYPD was responsible for the leak, as CCR’s statement implied.

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Stop-and-frisk incidents are down 51 percent, while New York City’s murder rate also decreased by 27 percent, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the decrease in crime comes from fear of police stopping and questioning suspicious persons, according to the Daily News.

However, New York Civil Liberties Union representative Donna Lieberman told CBS News that the data were not necessarily related.

NYPD officers have been testifying about stop and frisk at a trial this spring.

Critics of the program note that cops mostly stop minorities, and they say this reflects racially biased stops.

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In his public safety address to NYPD top brass, Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out at the New York Times and critics of stop-and-frisk for not paying attention to the shooting death of 17-year-old Alphonza Bryant in the Bronx.

DNAinfo reached out to Bryant’s mother, who reportedly was grateful for the attention the mayor brought to her son, though surprised, as she had never heard from the mayor or his aides following her son’s death three and a half weeks ago.

“We just thank him for putting it out there,” Bryant’s mother, Jenaii van Doten, told DNAinfo. “That he was a good kid.”

Bloomberg had also discussed stop-and-frisk in his speech, touting its vital importance in protected the city’s children and condemning its critics.

Van Doten partially agreed that stop-and-frisk is needed “to save our children,” but also felt “they need to modify it.”

She said that Bryant had been stopped himself on several occasions, though he avoided guns and gangs, and recounted one instance where he was in a bodega talking to her on the phone while buying a sandwich and said, “Ma, I got to get off the phone,” as she could hear cops cursing at him in the background.

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With 245 days left in office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s public safety address to top NYPD brass today called into question the qualifications of an unnamed “some” of his potential successors.

Citing statistics, the mayor rued that the police force is “under attack,” saying it’s “hard to believe” given an “incredible record” in public safety: for example, Houston, a city a quarter of the size of New York, had twice as many fatal shootings by police officers in 2011.

Bloomberg speculated that criticism of the NYPD is politically motivated, “probably because this is an election year.”

“The attacks most often come from those who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall,” he said.

While Bloomberg abstained from naming these attackers, he noted that “some have… sued the NYPD and demanded a Federal monitor over NYPD operations.”

Bill de Blasio, one of the Democratic candidates for mayor, has been outspoken against stop-and-frisk and in favor of a more wide-reaching amendment to the existing racial profiling bill. A spokesperson for de Blasio’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment, but de Blasio’s office as Public Advocate promptly released a statement accusing the mayor of “fear-mongering.”

“Mayor Bloomberg offers a false choice between public safety and our basic constitutional rights,” de Blasio said in the statement, repeating his support for an Inspector General and a law banning racial profiling. “We can have both, but only with the common-sense accountability and protections Mayor Bloomberg so strenuously opposes.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is in favor of an Inspector General but against the bias amendment, released a statement via her campaign spokesperson, pointing out that, unlike whoever the mayor referenced when he mentioned a lack of public safety experience among the candidates, she is “the only candidate for mayor who actually has a record on adding police officers.”

She agreed with the mayor on the need to avoid lawsuits that the bias amendment would invite, but reiterated her support for an Inspector General.

The mayor said an Inspector General would call into question whose orders officers should follow, and could create deadly confusion.

“Whose policies should an officer on the street follow — and how would he or she know that their partner would be following the same procedures when the bullets start flying?” the mayor asked. “With confusion comes deadly consequences to our police officers and to the public they are sworn to protect.”

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A man is stopped and frisked by NYPD in Brooklyn. (Credit: Jeremy Sparig.)

According to one NYPD sergeant, an NYPD inspector general is simply unnecessary. 

Ed Mullins, a sergeant with the 67th precinct in Brooklyn, accused politicians who are pushing for an Inspector General of “political pandering.”

“The NYPD is overloaded with people watching what we do,” he said. “The standards that we’re held to are already in place.”

The argument echoes Christine Quinn’s recent explanation of her choice not to institute an official ban on racial profiling: we already expect law enforcement, and public officials generally, not to engage in racial profiling.

“We do an enormous job on our own as far as discipline goes,” Mullins said. “The penalties in the police department are harsh, people get terminated.”

Mullins thinks the Inspector General proposal is simply a pivot off of the stop and frisk controversy, and he “sympathizes with people on the issue.”

But he insists an Inspector General isn’t the answer—and that the issue of stop and frisk is “not really a racial issue.”

“I don’t believe the police department is targeting male blacks [because of race],” Mullins asserted. “We don’t determine who the perps are, they’re described by the victims of crimes, then we go into specific neighborhoods where the crimes are committed.”

The pressures of CompStat

CompStat was originally a managerial tool brought in by Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, Mullins explain, meant to create accountability for the precinct commanders to do something about the crimes in their commands.

And it has enabled the police to do their jobs with maximum efficiency, Mullins said. By pinpointing specific areas where crimes are taking place, CompStat can help make the city safer block-by-block.

He gave the example of 42nd Street between 7th and 8th avenues where, in the early 1990s, there would be about 100 robberies a month on that one street alone.

“I’m in favor of CompStat, I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” Mullins said.

But, he added,  ”what it wasn’t designed for was to keep creating demands for more and more and more.”

Mullins explained it’s especially difficult for a brand new commander in a precinct. If crime plummeted the year before, there’s pressure felt to prove oneself with an even greater decrease.

But Mullins pointed out there’s always going to be crime: “The question is, how much crime? Can we try to keep it to where it is?”

Mullins said that while he doesn’t believe there is a quota specifically for stop-and-frisks, “there’s no doubt there’s a quota” system generally.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne rejected Mullins’ take on the situation, noting that there has been a 25 percent decrease in the number of stops citywide.

A call for more community engagement

Mullins also suggested that the NYPD may not be doing the most effective job of communicating with the communities they’re operating within.

Mullins suggested that police engagement with the community should start “at the grammar school level.”

“We need to educate children and families so that in the future… they don’t see police as the bad guys,” Mullins said.

“At the end of the day, we all want to go home safe,” Mullins said. “So shouldn’t we be on the same team?”

Browne also dismissed Mullins’ allegation that more community engagement is needed.

The NYPD has an “extensive and mandatory community immersion program that has been part of police training since Commissioner Kelly instituted it after the [Sean] Bell shooting,” Browne said.

Police reportedly participate is the very kind of activities Mullins suggested.

Browne said they also engage in role-playing, including role reversal exercises, with teens and young adults in a separate police-community program, and yet another program engages teens and young adults in actual police training themselves.

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Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she would not support legislation to ban cops from racial profiling, worrying that it could lead to overwhelming lawsuits.

Quinn’s remarks were part of a speech this afternoon outlining public-safety proposals at Hunter College.

During the speech, she said she still supports the controversial idea of an inspector general for the NYPD, someone to independently evaluate the department’s actions.

But she said she would not support another proposal, which would create an enforceable ban on racial profiling. She said legal remedies already exist to combat the practice.

Other Council members were quick to criticize Quinn, arguing that data from police actions like stop-and-frisk show cops overwhelmingly stop minorities.

“There is strong reason to be concerned that the NYPD is engaging in bias-based policing,” Councilmen Jumaane Williams and Brad Landers said in a joint statement.

The NAACP also released a series of criticisms.

“No other city in the United States has implemented racial profiling policies on as wide a scale, or taken it to such destructive levels as Commissioner Kelly’s NYPD,” NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous said.

Among Quinn’s other proposals were hiring 1,600 more cops and bumping up the next police class’s graduation to July, from January 2014.

Sanitation workers and transit workers should be trained in counterterrorism, she said. Together, 40,000 in these positions work underground and on city streets daily.

She also wants to fund 1,000 new security cameras, bringing the total to 7,000 in the five boroughs.

A proposed ‘panic app’

Quinn, who is running for mayor, suggested a panic-button app that New Yorkers could use to summon cops with the touch of a finger.

She envisions a smartphone app that would allow people to request assistance from a nearby cop in situations where it would be impossible to call 911.

Cops could locate the crime victim using GPS, she said, and this could save live.

And cops themselves should have smartphones, she said, to immediately pull up previous arrest info or outstanding warrants.

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A potentially history-making trial is in its fourth week in federal court in lower Manhattan, as Judge Shira Scheindlin hears testimony from both sides of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practice: the officers doing the stopping, and the New Yorkers they’re frisking.

In previous weeks, Scheindlin heard testimony from a suspended police officer, Adhyl Polanco, and listened to secretly-recorded tapes made by a former Brooklyn officer, both apparently indicating a quota system or, at minimum, informal pressure from superiors to increase stops, arrests, and summonses.

The judge heard from Cornelio McDonald today, a New Yorker who had experienced a stop-and-frisk, as well as one of the officers who stopped him, Edward French.

Cornelio McDonald spent most of the day on December 18, 2009 caring for his mother — feeding her, helping her shower, fixing up the house, he said — at her apartment across the street from his own home in Fresh Meadows, Queens. He left around 1 a.m., and as he weaved between cars parked alongside the median dividing the two lanes of Parsons Boulevard, an unmarked red van a little ways away pulled a U-turn and stopped in front of him. When the occupants demanded to know where he was coming from, McDonald, feeling “trapped” between two parked cars and the van in front of him, replied, ”What are you stopping me for?”

When Scheindlin asked if the police ever told him why they got out of the van and patted him down, McDonald said they never mentioned the “suspicious bulge” French later described.

Scheindlin persisted, “They didn’t give you any reason?”

“They said it was to protect themselves,” he said.

Pressed by attorneys as to how the stop made him feel, he replied, “Embarassed. Ashamed.”

By McDonald’s account, he was stopped for no other reason than his race.

According to French, Mc Donald appeared suspicious because he was walking with his hands in his coat pockets, pressed to his body. McDonald asserted that he was trying to keep warm on a 20 or 30 degree December night.

The city pointed to other lawsuits in which McDonald alleged racial bias, including one against the U.S. Postal Service, accusing them of job discrimination after he was fired.

“It’s not the first time you believed a government entity has discriminated against you for your race, correct?” a city attorney asked.

After questioning how McDonald moved his body between his cars, and whether or not his responding to the stopped van with “why are you stopping me” meant he knew the plainclothes occupants were police, the city had one last question.

“Is it true you consider every interaction with a police officer a stop? You consider it a stop every time an officer says hello?” the attorney asked.

“Yes,” he responded without hesitation.
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Police Commissioner Ray Kelly defended the stop-and-frisk tactics of the NYPD this morning amid an ongoing lawsuit over the practice.

Kelly spoke at the convention of the National Action Network, where he highlighted predominantly minority neighborhoods that are more likely to experience crime.

For example, people in Brownsville are 30 times more likely to be murdered than people in Murray Hill, which is overwhelmingly white, Kelly said.

In Bedford Stuyvesant, the murder rate is 23 people per 100,000, compared with 0.8 in Bay Ridge, he added.

He noted that black New Yorkers make up a quarter of the population but 64 percent of murder victims.

“We cannot stand idly by in the face of these facts,” Kelly said.

The commissioner specifically defended the stop-and-frisk program, saying it was important to get illegal weapons like knives and guns off the streets.

“I believe this tactic is life saving,” he said. “It is also lawful and constitutional.”

Officers and people who have been stopped have testified during the weeks-long trial about stop-and-frisk.

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Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota has blasted City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s plan to implement a NYPD inspector general, calling her actions “reckless and dangerous.”

Lhota said an inspector general would “handcuff” the NYPD and called on Quinn to withdraw her support for the bill, The Daily News reports.

He told reporters that the NYPD has enough oversight, and that adding an inspector general would be reckless behavior at a time when there has been a recent uptick in certain crimes.

A spokesman for Quinn said Lhota does not know what he is talking about.

“The bill that the speaker supports will do nothing — not one thing — to limit the Police Department’s ability to do their job,” said spokesman Jamie McShane.

Lhota also said he would not alter the department’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy, but that police officers should have more training when it came to the practice.

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The NYPD attempted to enter a memo into evidence Wednesday that they said was sent to commanding officers this month, requiring that cops who do stop-and-frisks provide a detailed explanation for the stop, according to a report from the Guardian.

Plaintiffs expressed incredulity over the memo, which their attorney said was only made available by city lawyers Tuesday night.

“The memo literally says what we’ve been asking for for 10 years,” said Darius Charney, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Now as we prepare to go to trial this memo magically appears.”

CCR is objecting to the inclusion of the memo as evidence.

The memo was reportedly signed by NYPD Chief of Patrol James P. Hall and addressed to commanding officers in all patrol boroughs, and dated March 5. It states that officers filling out UF250s — the reports for stops — must include a narrative description of the stop.

One of Charney’s co-counsels, Johnathan Moore, said the memo is “an admission that they’ve been doing it wrong all these years.”

Judge Shira Scheindlin, who is presiding over the bench trial, declined the city’s request to enter the memo into evidence, but said she might reverse that decision if provided with a witness involved in the creation of the memo.

Hall is already expected to testify for the city.

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UPDATE: Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne issued a statement in support of McCormack, declaring that McCormack “did what a good commander is supposed to do — direct officers under his command to protect the public.” 

Browne insisted that the Deputy Inspector was not racially profiling, and that his taped comments needed to be looked at in context.

“He was describing suspects in patterns of burglaries and robberies who were victimizing people in a specific part of the precinct,” Browne said.  ”The inspector’s concern was that the officer was not focusing on serious crimes — instead the officer was more concerned with people blocking an entrance to a building elsewhere in the precinct.”

“The message was for the officer to go to where the robberies and burglaries occurred, keep his eyes open and take appropriate action in response to suspicious or criminal behavior,” Browne added.

Metro’s original story is below.

A secretly taped conversation by a cop revealed that his commanding officer ordered him to specifically target young black males for stop-and-frisks.

On the fourth day of the stop-and-frisk trial, Bronx officer Pedro Serrano said his boss, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, told him he should stop black males ages 14 to 21 because they are the ones who commit crimes.

McCormack is heard on the taped conversation telling Serrano to stop “the right people.”

“And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21,” he said, The New York Times reported.

Serrano testified that he was also criticized by McCormack for not stopping enough people last year.

The tape is the latest evidence in a class action lawsuit against the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk tactic brought by a group of individuals who say they were stopped because of their race.

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The City Council may pass legislation requiring the NYPD to have an inspector general, Council Speaker Christine Quinn said today.

Quinn said the Council is negotiating legislation regarding cops’ interaction with New Yorkers, including reaching “broad agreement” on the proposal of an inspector general.

“We’re in ongoing negotiations on several significant proposals that will work to improve police-community relations throughout our city,” she said in a statement this afternoon.

Public Advocate Bill De Blasio held a press conference Tuesday to press the Council on details that he said should be included in the legislation.

The Community Safety Act would require the NYPD to have an independent monitor, someone to review the department’s actions.

The NYPD needs “an inspector general with teeth,” de Blasio said in a letter sent to Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on Tuesday.

In the letter, he noted that advocates reported the NYPD’s five millionth stop-and-frisk last week. The department is facing a trial that began this week about the stop-and-frisk practice.

“These two milestones are closely linked — with the overuse and misuse of its stop-and-frisk policy, the NYPD has risked department policy being set by judicial decree,” he wrote in the letter. “That is no way for a government agency to operate.”

An inspector general would specifically help reform the stop-and-frisk program, he said.

De Blasio said any appointed inspector general needs an independent budget and subpoena powers. Without those, a court ruling could limit his powers, he said.

“We have seen this movie before — assurances that reform is on the way only to see the council substitute a half-measure for true change,” he said at the conference. “This time must be different.”

The NYPD has been criticized for recent practices like stop-and-frisk and its surveillance of Muslims in and around New York City.

The NYPD’s top spokesman told Metro the suggestion of an inspector general was “wasteful and duplicative.”

The post As council mulls NYPD inspector general, de Blasio calls for one ‘with teeth’ (UPDATE) appeared first on Metro.us.

Protests in East Flatbush last week stemming from the shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray by police officers on March 9 grew steadily calmer as the week wore on, after an explosion of violence on Wednesday night resulted in 45 arrests and one police officer injured.

City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who had come under fire for comments made accusing “outsiders” of inciting unprepared teens to violence, was able to direct a fair number of the protesters on Friday night into a nearby church for a community discussion, though a group did split off to march on to the police precinct, where someone eventually threw a bottle at police before the crowd dispersed.

Reports of a successful Youth Empowerment Seminar on Saturday preceded another night of protests. This time, on-scene reports indicated police vastly outnumbered protesters by a factor of nearly three-to-one.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week said he was not going to go out to East Flatbush because he didn’t want to “inflame things” but that he had “reached out to clergy and officials.”

He said he was planning on calling the mother of the deceased boy, but as of Sunday had still not made the call.

The mayor’s office did not respond to inquiries as to when the mayor was planning to call Mrs. Gray.

Conflicting reports of her son’s involvement in gangs have piled up, from Mrs. Gray herself telling WNYC she doesn’t think her son would ever carry a gun, but wasn’t sure, to reports from the NY Post of Facebook photos where Kimani Gray is making gang signs with his hands or videos in which he taunts a “young rival Crip.”

Experts on city gangs dismissed the Facebook and YouTube activity as amateur, and indications that Kimani’s gang involvement would have been extremely low-level; while teachers and neighbors spoke of a young man who “acted tough” but was serious about becoming an accountant and moving his family into a better neighborhood.

The principal at Kimani’s school in Manhattan said they “believed in his potential from the day he entered [the] school.”

“He traveled over an hour each day from East Flatbush… The year and a half we had with Kimani allowed us to get to know his best self,” Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction principal Matt Willoughby said.

Hit hard by loss of brother

Gray’s mother also talked about the effect her eldest son’s death two years ago had on Kimani: the older boy had apparently been a father figure to his younger sibling, and instrumental in keeping him in school and off the streets.

After his death, Kimani started staying out late because, he told her, he had nothing to come home to.

At the same time, the Grays had been displaced from their home and were reportedly living five-to-one-room in her brother’s apartment. They had finally moved into a new home a few days before Gray was shot by police. His mother said when she showed him the keys to the new house, he was so excited he “jumped as high as to the ceiling and said, ‘yes, we’re finally out of here!’”

The officers involved

The cops who shot Gray were identified last week as Sergeant Mourad Mourad and Officer Jovaniel Cordova.

According to NY1, one officer was involved in two prior lawsuits for alleged civil rights violations, and the other faced three similar lawsuits.

Some of those cases reportedly involved stop-and-frisk incidents, and city officials reportedly opted to pay settlements in all five cases.

City officials insisted that settlements do not indicate an acknowledgement of any wrong-doing, and that involvement in lawsuits do not necessarily indicate guilt.

A major stop-and-frisk lawsuit against the city commences Monday morning.

Community calls for experience and cultural sensitivity from police

Last week, members of the community suggested that a problem with the police force in the area is that they are often young and inexperienced: NYPD policy frequently places rookie cops in the worst areas of the city.

NYPD officials have previously said that the purpose of the Impact Program is to allow rookies to get important experience quickly.

In the case of the Kimani Gray shooting, Mourad was an 8-year veteran on the force, and Cordova had five years.

But community organizers maintained the point that more training is needed, and specific training, as repeated calls were made for cultural sensitivity by police officers when operating within the community.

 Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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New York City has unfinished business, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said today.

In his last State of the City address, he vowed to finish many projects undertaken during his 12 years as mayor, like the High Line, and launching some new ones, like curbside car chargers.

He spoke at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which opened in September and has hosted Jay-Z concerts as well as the Brooklyn Nets season.

Bloomberg said he would pack his remaining 320 days, including today, which was not only Valentine’s Day but also his birthday.

“We have unfinished business,” he said. “Our goal is not to spend the year cutting ribbons.”

He promised to finalize construction on the 7 train extension, which will go all the way to 34th Street and 11th Avenue in the planned Hudson Yards development.

Another of his projects, the High Line, will also be finished as the third part is finalized.

Also on the list? The Ferris wheel planned for the Staten Island shore, which he announced last year, and bringing Major League Soccer back to the city.

And he said he wants to ban Styrofoam packaging from stores and restaurants, like the kind found in many to-go boxes.

In another new proposal, Bloomberg suggested a pilot program for curbside vehicle charges that could fill up vehicles in 30 minutes.

He tackled a few crime topics, including marijuana arrests. The mayor said that starting next month, anyone arrested for having a small amount of marijuana will no longer be held overnight.

Alfredo Carrasquillo of VOCAL-NY said the announcement was a “step in the right direction.”

“Mayor Bloomberg stopped defending the indefensible and now recognizes that we cannot afford to criminalize youth of color for carrying small amounts of marijuana,” he said.

But Carrasquillo, who told Metro about spending two days in jail after a police stop and arrest for marijuana, said stop-and-frisk is a part of the problem, as many are found with marijuana during such stops.

During his address, Bloomberg defended the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk program.

“I understand that innocent people don’t like to be stopped,” he said. “But innocent people don’t like to be shot and killed, either.”

Uptown Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito expressed disappointment at the mayor’s vigorous stop-and-frisk defense, but she said the marijuana statements were “step in the right direction.”

“This policy shift is greatly encouraging,” she said in a statement.

And Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams applauded the decline in the incarceration rates that Bloomberg pointed out, but otherwise blasted his leadership.

“The use of spin and selective statistics cannot distract us from the reality that this mayor, for whatever personal reason, has time and again refused to chart a new course for New York City,” he said.

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