WSJ’s Kissel Battles Baltimore Mayor on Stop & Frisk: ‘Do You Care About Black Lives?’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

GEIST: “You know well the ‘Wall Street journal’ gun advocate say this is not a question of having laws. This is a societal problems, not the guns that are the problem.”
KISSEL: “Let’s be real about the problem is. It’s black on black violence and that’s something the mayor isn’t speaking about and that’s what we should be speaking about. We should also be speaking about the real problem which is politicians running against the police forces. What worked here in New York City was stop, question, and frisk which kept guns off the streets and protected the largely minority communities in our urban areas here in New York City. That worked. But now you have a federal candidate, candidate for president running against the police, stoking racial tensions instead of stepping back and saying how do we solve the problem based on what’s worked in the past.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Would you like to respond?” 
RAWLINGS-BLAKE: “I can. I don’t even know where to start. The facts are very clear. I talk about blackon black crime all the time. We have a call to action for African-American men to step up and into the community. But what we heard from her is the same stuff we’re always hearing, a bunch of gibberish and no solutions. You can point the finger all you want, that doesn’t make us safer.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Well, and I’m — with all due respect, Mary, I have lesser issues with stop and frisk as long as they go to every community and stop and frisk.”
KISSEL: “Well, you have to target the communities where the crime is occurring. The crime isn’t occurring on the upper east side of New York.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Do you know how many people are getting hauled in for mare — marijuana in their pockets and lines around the corner with citations that get thrown out, that throw people off course who are already struggling to get on course. Are you kidding me? Stop and frisk, fine, but bring it to your community and mine as well. And have the white kids with the pot in their pockets brought into jail as well.”
KISSEL: “I think criminal justice reform is a separate issue and I think there’s bipartisan —“
BRZEZINSKI: “No, it’s not! It’s not a separate issue, if you’re stopping and frisking you’re screwing with the criminal justice system and throwing a ton of minorities in there.”
KISSEL: “There is a bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill for criminal justice reform. I agree with you on that, but you have to protect these communities now because it isn’t is 1 percent elites on the upper east side who are at risk today, it is the largely black and Hispanic communities in places like Baltimore, Chicago, new York. By the way, cities that are ruled by liberals and have been ruled by liberals for decades. These are the people that have to be protected and I’m sorry, I have proposed a solution, stop question and frisk works.”
BRZEZINSKI: “And creates massive racial tension, Gene, can you help?
ROBINSON: “Well, look, there was a federal lawsuit, a successful federal lawsuit against stop and showed was that in the few instances when police did stop and frisk whites in white neighbor hootds they found illegal weapons and contraband at a higher rate than they were finding in minority ç neighborhoods. So the issue with that policy was always would it kill you to stop and frisk some white guys? Would it kill you to stop and frisk — yes, in the upper east side and lower Manhattan and in places where, guess what, we don’t find crime because we don’t look for it there. So clearly the policy was applied in a discriminatory fashion, they had to revise it because that was the finding of a federal lawsuit.”
KISSEL: “Do you care about appearances or do you really care about black lives? That’s where the murders are actually happening is in those communities, black on black crime. That is why the police went to those communities.”
ROBINSON: “Mary fairness is not a matter of appearance, fairness is fairness, equality is equality. You can’t apply a policy in a discriminatory fashion and that is what was found in a federal lawsuit that us cad the policy to be changed.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Stephanie.”
RAWLINGS-BLAKE: “What she’s suggesting is the way that we solve America’s problems is to continue to make minorities second class citizens. Again, not real solutions. My hope is that Maria and the rest of the people who are so unwilling to take on the NRA, look at themselves in the mirror and get real. We know that we have crime in minority communities, in poor communities, regardless of race, but what she is saying doesn’t help. We’ve seen where the divide between the community and the police has caused. Look at Baltimore. Caused huge problems in our community. We don’t want to see that again and the solution is not going to be just stop more people. We know it’s wrong.”
BRZEZINSKI: “This is a conversation we need to continue obviously. My daughter by the way loving Baltimore and is working in the community —“
RAWLINGS-BLAKE: “I love to hear that.”
BRZEZINSKI: “— volunteering and tutoring. It’s got a lot of great things going on, especially in the arts community. Thank you Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Eugene Robinson and Mary Kissel as always.”