MAYOR BLOOMBERG DISCUSSES HOW THE NYPD HAS KEPT NEW YORKERS SAFE AND CITY COUNCIL BILLS THAT WILL HAMPER THOSE EFFORTS IN WEEKLY RADIO ADDRESS

Whom You Know is grateful for the intelligence and the service of Mayor Bloomberg to the City of New York for the last 12 years and we have been so lucky to have him.  He would get our vote for four more years.

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The following is the text of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s weekly radio address as prepared for delivery on 1010 WINS News Radio for Sunday, August 25, 2013.

“Good Morning. This is Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“Ensuring public safety is government’s most basic responsibility, and it’s one our Administration has focused on from the very start. Last year, we set a new record low for murders – and a record low for shootings. And so far this year, murders are down another 27 percent, and shootings are also down another 28 percent.

“Our City’s incredible public safety accomplishments are a tribute to the heroic work of the men and women of the NYPD, and to the pro-active strategies our police department has used to target crime hotspots, stop potential suspects and take guns and other dangerous weapons off the streets. 

“Last week, we saw just how important – and undoubtedly lifesaving – those strategies have been. On Monday, I joined Commissioner Ray Kelly and a number of our city’s other top law enforcement officials to announce the largest gun bust in the city’s history – the result of an undercover investigation of two major gun-running operations that funneled illegal weapons to our city from North and South Carolina. More than 250 weapons were seized by the NYPD – including high-capacity assault weapons, a fully automatic machine gun, and handguns that are commonly used in violent crimes in our city. Breaking up this gun-trafficking operation would not have been possible without the smart, pro-active police strategies we’ve implemented to keep New Yorkers safe – and as wiretapped conversations from the investigation showed, one of the gun traffickers’ biggest concerns was stop-question-frisk.

“Yet just days after our police department took hundreds of deadly weapons off our streets and out of the hands of criminals, the City Council adopted two pieces of legislation that will make it harder for our police officers to protect New Yorkers and continue to drive down crime. The first creates a new bureaucracy – headed by an Inspector General – to oversee the policies and strategies adopted by the Police Commissioner, making it harder for the next Administration to maintain unity of command and harder to enforce accountability. 

“The second bill is being sold as a law banning racial profiling – but racial profiling is already against the law. In fact, I signed that bill into law back in 2004, and we have zero tolerance for racial profiling. This bill will only make it easier for people to sue the Police Department – and harder for police officers to do their jobs. It is not aimed at stopping racial profiling; it is aimed at winning votes. It is election year politics at its worst, and the tragic irony is that the very communities the City Council seeks to help – black and Latino communities – will be the ones that suffer the consequences. It is a dangerous piece of legislation and we will ask the courts to step in before innocent people are harmed.

“This is Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Thanks for listening.”