Mayor Ray Kelly’s Assistant Mikey Agrees on Spying

684,330 NYPD stop and frisks by NYPD in 2011… now spying. Reporters covering City Hall should be asking: Who is this guy Bloomberg in front of the podium? read here Where is the Mayor? Why is anyone surprised Assistant Mayor Mike Bloomberg told radio listeners this morning that spying on Muslim students was “constitutional” and “legal” and “appropriate.” read here Of course it is: Mayor Kelly said so.  Why is anyone talking to someone’s assistant when the policies of the defacto Mayor, Ray Kelly (he sometimes doubles as police commissioner…) are what New Yorkers live under? Assistant Mayor Mike Bloomberg is simply doing what his boss says in forwarding his policies.

Surely everyone understands by now the policy of the New York City Police Department is racial profiling.  All that matters is reality:  The NYPD stopped 684,330 people in 2011, 14% higher than in 2010 — 80% Black and Latino.  Is it surprising that they were spying on Americans of the Muslim faith? The reason is obvious: They’re Muslim.  Who needs probable cause? Who can stop or adjust these policies: No one.  If al Qaeda takes up residence in Bensonhurst or Williamsburg they will never be found.  All policy is based on how you look not how you act or what you do.  The NYPD stopped and frisked more people than then entire populations of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming. That’s Mayor Kelly’s policy — no deputy Mayor can change that. Was anyone caught? Did it work? Was it worth police time and taxpayer money?

Sen. Robert Menendez wants a DoJ investigation of NYPD.  There were over 2,200 people murdered in New York on 911.  We have to keep that from ever happening again.  The streets of Gotham must be kept safe.  These liberal policies are preventing us from getting the bad guys.  As we lead the world in incarceration with 2.3 million in jail, no one is stopping incarceration.  From a PR and political standpoint, who can argue against invasive police tactics?  If we are attacked again Rep. Peter King,

Do-nothing AG?

Mayor Ray Kelly and Deputy Mayor Bloomberg will say, “see, we needed to spy.”  If we’re not attacked again they will say “see, the spying worked.”  They are in a complete win-win position no matter what happens.  Constitution? Who cares. Everyone brags they have a copy in their pocket.  Everyone brags they read it.  Almost no one cares about practical application.

Aren’t the arguments for the surveillance of Muslims in American similar to those made during Japanese internment in 1942?  The government corralled over 110,000 Japanese people after Pearl Harbor.  Everyone was scared.  They were the enemy. We had to do “something.”

A Los Angeles Times editorial from the 1940s: “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched…. So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere… notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American…. Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion… that such treatment… should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race.”