(CNN) Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered a full-throated defense of the New York Police Department's use of "stop and frisk" policing Tuesday evening, attributing the city's declining murder rate during his tenure as mayor to the controversial policy.

Taking questions from the audience during the United States Naval Academy's 2019 Leadership Conference, Bloomberg was told by a Naval Academy midshipman that "there have been a lot of controversies surrounding your support of the policy of stop and frisk that was being used by law enforcement to target African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans."

"What would you say to those in the two communities that have been negatively affected by the policy that you supported in the past?" the midshipman asked Bloomberg.

"We focused on keeping kids from going through the correctional system ... kids who walked around looking like they might have a gun, remove the gun from their pockets and stop it," Bloomberg said. He added that "the result of that was, over the years, the murder rate in New York City went from 650 a year to 300 a year when I left."

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