If Bloomberg is a racist why are prominent African Americans who know him best endorsing him?

[emmaverybo]

66. The policy was meant to be used as widely and aggressively as possible. It was an expansion and

escalation of the original policy in place. Bloomberg knew how it was being carried out, and its impact immediately, in real time. Five million were stopped and frisked. Five million had their civil liberties suspended. He heard the outcry. He knew most stopped had no weapons. He knew the legal argument because he fought it.

Until he decided to run he was defending it and claiming it brought crime down. Overuse was intentional. The goal was mass stops of black and Latino males to search them and seize weapons.

It is important to know how the policy was implemented, what it was intended to do, and what it was in contrast to stopping for probable cause, reasonable suspicion. Indiscriminate use was built in.

This is from an apolitical article in a journal about criminal justice:

Snip————————————————

Although SQF predated Bloomberg’s election as mayor, the program ratcheted-up under his leadership far beyond its constitutionally sanctioned contours. Stop-and-frisk has a long history as a policing tactic rooted in particularized, reasonable suspicion that a specific individual is involved in criminal activity.

However, in New York and several other U.S. jurisdictions, this tactic morphed into a widespread, aggressive crime-control strategy. With Bloomberg’s unwavering support, NYPD officers routinely stopped, questioned, and often patted-down hundreds of thousands of people each year—roughly 87 percent of whom were African-American or Latinx—to see if they were carrying weapons or drugs.

The NYPD argued that they applied SQF only when officers had reasonable suspicion that someone was breaking the law, but given their low “hit rates,” such claims seem quite implausible. Only 6 percent of all stops resulted in an arrest and less than 1 percent resulted in the seizure of a firearm.

https://thecrimereport.org/2019/11/26/why-bloombergs-apology-perpetuates-misunderstanding-of-stop-and-frisk/