Pete Buttigieg Calls Mike Bloomberg Racist for Stop and Frisk

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg called former Mayor Mike Bloomberg racist on Tuesday for using “stop and frisk” to stop crime in New York City.

Asked by debate moderator Gayle King whether he believed Bloomberg’s use of the policy was racist, Buttigieg replied, “Yes, in effect it was because it was about profiling people based on their race.”

Buttigieg also referred to Bloomberg’s comments from 2013 defending the idea of targeting minorities with stop-and-frisk.

“The mayor even said that they disproportionally stopped white people too often and minorities too little,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg cautiously approached the issue, noting that he had his own difficulties with racial issues as the former mayor of South Bend Indiana.

“I’m not here to score points, I come at this with a great deal of humility because we’ve had a lot of issues, especially when it comes to racial justice and policing in my own community,” he said.

Buttigieg lectured all of his fellow white presidential candidates on stage, who did not understand what it was like to be black and suffer the consequences of systemic racism.

“I’m conscious of the fact that there’s seven white people on this stage talking about racial justice,” he said. “None of us have the lived experience.”

King also asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar whether Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” policies were racist.

“Yes,” she replied. “And I think that what we need to do instead of reviewing everything from the past is talk about where we’re going to go forward.”