Stop and frisk should start at the home. That, at least, was the message Mayor Bloomberg brought to the East Ward Missionary Baptist Church yesterday. And despite the sky-high stop-and-frisk numbers in the city, the Church's minister was all for the idea of starting the practice in the home. In fact, he brought it up first.
"Mr. Mayor, what I’d like to do is, if we could, I’d like to start a stop-question-and-frisk policy in the home." Rev. Sean Gardner said while introducing the mayor. "Every parent—mother and father—would be responsible for looking at the things their children bring into the house." Because parents aren't already responsible for what their children bring home?
Still, Bloomberg took the idea and ran with it. "It is the parents' job to start a stop-and-frisk in the home, to the extent that they can," he told the Sunday audience. But it all has to start at home, first. "We in the city are doing everything we can to work with our young kids, for those who've fallen off the right path, to get them back on track."
So, wait, what? In a city that in 2011 stopped and frisked more young black men than there are young black men in the city, what we really need to do is not figure out a better way to treat our citizens, but train our children to accept regular pat-downs as a fact of life? Just add a quick frisk to the weekday morning school routine?
