Bill de Blasio Quotes

The most divisive issue facing New Yorkers in 2013 is stop and frisk, a tactic used by law enforcement to stop, question, and frisk people suspected of a crime.

There is no doubt that Stop-and-Frisk does not yield the desired results, and it is apparent that it disproportionately targets minority communities.

Unfortunately, in places like Ferguson, in New York City and in some communities across this nation, there is a disconnect between police agencies and the citizens they serve, predominately in communities of color.

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

I think police brutality has been going on since - I don't know - ever since I can remember and, you know, hearing about it in my childhood.

How can we bridge the gap between... African-American males and white cops?

I know there are those in the community who, rather than have us invest more in policing, even for community policing, instead want us to disinvest in the police department. We need a police department. We are going to have a police department.

I want to live in a city where the police don't shoot you.

When you have police officers who abuse citizens, you erode public confidence in law enforcement. That makes the job of good police officers unsafe.

When a young non-white male is stopped and searched at the whim of a police officer, his idea of personal space, privacy and self esteem are shattered, to say nothing of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. The damage goes deep quickly and stays. Stop & frisk, as well as a tactic, is also an incitement.

Michael Brown's tragic death has revealed a deep distrust between some in the Ferguson community and its police force. It also developed a need to develop and widely disseminate law enforcement best practices for responding to public demonstrations.

I probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in the history of this city. And I did it by having to use police officers in black areas where there was an astounding amount of crime. If that crime was in white areas, police officers would be in white areas.

Enforcement priorities and arrest patterns must not lead to disparate treatment under the law, even if such treatment is unintended. And police forces should reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

Communities of color don't understand what it means to be a police officer, the fear that police officers have in just being on the streets.

Clearly, a large number of African-Americans don't have faith that the laws are being executed fairly in Ferguson, and that's a problem... We need to ensure Africans-Americans feel confident in the rule of law.

We have to have a national conversation about how police forces should interact with the African-American community, who happens to be paying their salary, who want to be served and protected, who these officers are take an oath to do so.

I have spent years representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color - and attempting to help people who have been released from prison attempting to 're-enter' into a society that never seemed to have much use to them in the first place.

I think that the dialogue between police officers and the black community has to get better, but not better in a way where, 'Oh, let's talk about it when something horrible happens.' The dialogue has to be going on consistently, every day.

We were raised in the black community not to trust the police, and I believe, in the white community, they were raised to actually be a policeman.

There's no book to figure out how not to become a victim of police brutality.

When parents tell their children not to congregate on corners, especially in groups, out of fear for them encountering the police, what does that say? We have a trust problem.

Stop-and-frisk is not something that you can stop. It is an absolutely basic tool of American policing. It would be like asking a doctor to give an examination to you without using his stethoscope.

An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department.

With so much racial tension and issues between the police and black and minority ethnic groups, there needs to be more in-depth conversations if we're going to fix anything.

When law enforcement fails to fulfill its most basic duty to protect and serve its citizens, particularly members of a minority community, it not only tarnishes the badge we all wear, but erodes the trust that we in law enforcement have worked so hard to build.