In the white-hot debate over stop-and-frisk policing, Anthony D. Weiner, the mayoral candidate and former United States representative, is seeking middle ground. Mr. Weiner’s campaign began running a 30-second television advertisement on Monday that seemed aimed at New Yorkers skeptical of the stop-and-frisk policy. But he also suggested he would keep tough crime-fighting tools in place.
It is true that the police stop a large number of young black and Hispanic men under the stop-and-frisk policy. In total, about 533,000 people were stopped last year, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, and 87 percent of them were black or Hispanic. A vast majority of those stops resulted in no further action; 89 percent of individuals left without arrests or summons.
Mr. Weiner echoes complaints leveled by many residents when he states that the stop-and-frisk policy requires residents to give up “your rights and your dignity.†Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, however, has argued that the tactic is a minor inconvenience with a big reward: hundreds of fewer murders per year. The mayor has called it both legally and ethically sound, and an essential tool to keep crime rates low.
Mr. Weiner compares the stop-and-frisk practice to racial profiling. A federal judge this month said as much, contending the New York Police Department was discriminatory in how it carried out the policy. Mr. Bloomberg, however, has said it would be reckless and inefficient to ignore the fact that 90 percent of people who commit violent crime in the city are black or Hispanic.
Weiner has not gone as far as some of his Democratic rivals in denouncing the stop-and-frisk policy. In this video, he stakes out moderate territory by offering a compelling â€" and accurate â€" statistic to make his case. But he leaves out some of the arguments for keeping the policy in place, and he does not say how he would improve relationships between the police and communities, or reduce what he sees as excessive uses of the policy.
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