Bloomberg Angered By Overturned Conviction In Stop-And-Frisk Case
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The weapons possession conviction of a 14-year-old boy who was found with a loaded gun after a stop-and-frisk in the Bronx was overturned in an appeals court Thursday.
Darryl Craig had been sentenced to 18 months probation, but the appeals court ruled that the stop-and-frisk that resulted in his arrest in 2010 had been illegal, reported WCBS 880's Rich Lamb.
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke out against the decision on his Friday morning radio show saying, "I cannot imagine what was going through the minds of these justices.
"The police officer followed every single rule and regulation and practice to the letter," he added.
Three months after his arrest, Craig allegedly used another gun to shoot a gang rival in Queens.
"He got himself another gun. He shot somebody twice and he was about to blow the guy away with a fatal bullet when somebody screamed and he ran away" Bloomberg said.
While critics of stop-and-frisk claim the practice promotes racial profiling and unwarranted searches of minorities, both Bloomberg and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly say they help keep New Yorkers safe.
"The decision by the Appellate Division to dismiss the case against a teenager in possession of a loaded semiautomatic gun may be as dangerous as the weapon itself," Kelly wrote in an op-ed for the New York Post.
"Through necessary enforcement — of which stops are one element — we are doing everything we can to ensure that more citizens don't face the barrel of a gun, as the officers shot this year have had to do," he added.
Despite this assertion, Gothamist reported that NYPD data shows that only 1.9 percent of 685,724 stops resulted in the recovery of a weapon in 2011.
While the majority of those stopped were black or Latino, whites who were frisked were almost twice as likely to be carrying a weapon.
Tell us how you feel about stop-and-frisk. Do you think Bloomberg's anger is warranted?
