NYC mayor staunchly defends police policies
Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out Tuesday at critics of the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk practice and surveillance programs, in a pugnacious defense of what he called a police force bombarded by politics.
Stop-and-frisk – the practice of stopping, questioning and sometimes patting down people seen as doing something questionable – has become a flashpoint as the stops rose dramatically in the last decade, to nearly 700,000 in 2011. They dropped to 533,000 last year. Critics say the stops treat innocent people like criminals and are tainted with racial profiling. (AP)
