Mayor touts city's police record at Brooklyn church
Bloomberg pulpit Credit: Mayor Michael Bloomberg talks about the NYPD's policies in Brooklyn (Mayor's Office)
Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the pulpit in Brooklyn yesterday to defend an embattled NYPD crime-fighting tactic.
Methods such as "stop and frisk," have made New York safer than most of the nation's other cities, the mayor told the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Brownsville.
"Boston and Chicago are nice towns, but you are about twice as likely to be murdered there as you are in New York City," Bloomberg said.
The 1,800-member congregation gave the mayor a respectful but muted reception.
Civil rights groups have criticized Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's "stop and frisk" policy because they say it unnecessarily targets minority groups and rarely leads to arrests. The mayor acknowledged that it needs some fine-tuning, but he told the congregants that Kelly was already working on ways to reduce racial profiling.
"To borrow a phrase from President Clinton, I believe the practice needs to be mended, not ended," Bloomberg said.
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