PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
John Lott (CPRC) - Bloombergs false racist claims about who commits crime :: 02/12/2015
At 41:10 into this Q&A session in Aspen, Colorado last week, Michael Bloomberg made this claim about who the criminals are
First thing is . . . 95% of your murderers and murder victims fit one MO. You can just take the description xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They male, minority, 15 to 25. That is true in New York. That is true in virtually ever city. …That is what Stop and Frisk is all about. . . . Put the cops where the crime is.
The problem isn’t just that Bloomberg’s numerical claims are false, but that someone who oversaw law enforcement in New York City may have actually believed that virtually all murderers are young blacks. The fact that Bloomberg ties this in with Stop and Frisk in the same answer creates very unfortunate racist overtones to that enforcement method. The data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports isn’t even close to this. The media focused on Bloomberg’s discussion on marijuana, not who commits crime.
If one looks at the race of those murderers who are identified, 45 percent of murderers are white. Even if one assumes that all murderers whose race isn’t identified are minorities, 31.1 percent of murderers are white. Bloomberg has to explain why he believes: “You can just take the description xerox it and pass it out to all the cops.” If you did that, you are going to be falsely identifying a lot of blacks as criminals.
Bloomberg is no more accurate when it comes to his claims about the race of murderers. It is true that young people are disproportionately likely to be murders by a large amount, but the numbers are no where close to what Bloomberg claims — just over 28 percent of murderers are between 13 and 25 years of age. Bloomberg’s errors are actually compounded since many of these young murderers are not minority. Indeed, at least 35% of 13 to 25 year old murderers are white.
