Right-wing Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly defended racial profiling in New York City during his Tuesday appearance on Fox News’ morning show, “Fox & Friends,” saying it is a useful too to fight crime.
O’Reilly said that city police use the stop-and-frisk policy — which is highly controversial because it predominantly targets people of color and because the vast majority of people stopped have committed no crime) as a way of arresting individuals for smaller offenses when they are really after them for larger crimes.
“The cops know who the wiseguys are, who the dealers are, who the punks are, and they know who the muggers are, and they try to get these guys on anything,” O’Reilly said. He said the left hated the stop-and-frisk policy “because it is racial profiling,” but argued that “it’s really criminal profiling.”
O’Reilly also bitterly criticizes Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move to try to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana possession, which he says had more to do with the outcries of racial profiling than drugs.
Cuomo called New York state’s current marijuana laws “inconsistent” since it’s considered a violation to possess marijuana in private and a crime to show it in public. According to the governor’s office, an overwhelming majority of arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana occur in New York City, where the police department uses the extremely contentious “stop and frisk” policy.
“This is about racism,” O’Reilly said. “This is a racial story, not a drug story.”
O’Reilly later predicted that if street crime will rise if Cuomo’s bill passes. “Mark my words,” he said. “Street crime in New York will go up.”
