Bloomberg Keeps Insisting He Slashed Stop-and-Frisk by 95 Percent. Not so Fast.

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Early on Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, the notorious policing policy known as stop-and-frisk once again came back to bite former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And, once again, the billionaire candidate took responsibility for cutting the policing program by 95 percent.

But it’s not true. As my colleague Nathalie Baptiste reported of Bloomberg’s comments during the last debate:

“What happened, however, was it got out of control,” he continued. “When I discovered that we were doing many, many, too many stop-and-frisks, we cut 95 percent of it out.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden reminded him that it was then-President Barack Obama who sent a federal monitor to the city in response to stop-and-frisk abuses; the policy was eventually ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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