In 2013, I ruled in Floyd vs. City of New York that the tactics underlying the city’s stop-and-frisk program violated the constitutional rights of people of color. {snip}

Despite this, Mayor Bloomberg continued to zealously defend stop-and-frisk, including in eyebrow-raising comments at the Aspen Institute in 2015 which recently resurfaced. He apologized for the policy only days before jumping into the presidential race. Many people are wondering — is he a racist? I don’t think so. Not if you look at many other valuable things he has done for minorities. I don’t believe he ever understood the human toll of stopping black and Latino men, 90 percent of which did not result in a summons or arrest. But the stops were frightening, humiliating and unwarranted invasions of black and brown people’s bodies.

At the time of the Floyd trial, and still today, I am convinced that Mayor Bloomberg believed that the stop-and-frisk policy — which began under Rudy Giuliani, his immediate predecessor, but grew dramatically during Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure — was protecting African-Americans, who were disproportionately the victims of crime. {snip} This was misguided because a stop based on racial profiling instead of reasonable suspicion is unconstitutional. But this does not mean he hates black people. The most I can say is he had a pure heart but an empty head; the stop-and-frisk program was very poorly executed.

{snip}