De Blasio Slams Former NYPD Comm. Kelly After Remarks On Shooting Totals
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly was taking heat from Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday, following Kelly's comments that the NYPD is cooking the books when it comes to reporting shootings.
As WCBS 880's Marla Diamond reported, Mayor de Blasio disagrees with Kelly's comments that the NYPD under Commissioner Bill Bratton is fudging the number of shootings, and that people do not feel safe in the city.
Kelly spoke on a taping of the AM 970 "Reaching Out with Gregory Floyd, President, Teamsters Local 237," which was taped Monday and will air on Jan. 2, the New York Daily News reported.
The Daily News quoted Kelly as claiming there was "some redefinition going on as to what amounts to a shooting."
The mayor said in response: "I don't know why he's saying it. I just don't."
Mayor de Blasio said there have been fewer shootings than last year, and gun arrests are up.
"I would think the response to that would be, 'Thank you, Commissioner Bratton,'" de Blasio said. "We're using the exact same metric system that Commissioner Kelly used. The fact is the shootings are down. That's something to celebrate."
The city will end the year with less than 30,000 police stops according to the mayor. The same percentage of blacks and Hispanics were stopped as in the last year of the Bloomberg administration.
The mayor insisted that the stops are unbiased.
"Both the quantity of stops going down, and the quality of stops improving prove we're on the right track," the mayor said.
Even with fewer stops, the mayor pointed out that overall crime is down. One crime on the rise was graffiti with 200 complaints in 2015 and only 30 in 2014.
"Now, because violent crime keeps going down, that frees up substantial time and energy for officers to go after quality of life offenses, because they're not doing 700,000 stops, the vast majority of them unnecessary," the mayor said.
