Kelly To Playboy: Mayoral Candidates Were Full Of S--t
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and the other Democratic candidates were "pandering to get votes'' when they criticized the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy.
In an interview with Playboy magazine, Kelly said the candidates all claimed to be friends with him until they began campaigning.
"I know all these people. They all claimed to be friends of mine until their mayoral campaigns," he said. "They'd call me on the phone and ask for information or come over here and sit in this chair to get briefed."
Asked by the interviewer if the candidates were "just full of s--t," Kelly said "absolutely.''
"It just goes to show you what some politicians will do," Kelly said. "They'll say or do anything to get elected."
De Blasio has said he would not retain Kelly. He and the other Democratic candidates frequently criticized police stop-and-frisk tactics during the campaign.
The longest-serving commissioner in the city's history, Kelly not only defended stop-and-frisk, but wanted to know how the candidates would keep campaign promises of reforming the policy while still getting guns off the street.
"Notice what they never talked about, the lives being saved," Kelly said. "You haven't heard one candidate talk about that or what they would do to keep this record going forward."
When asked how he felt about being used as a "political football'' in mayoral debates, Kelly said he resented it.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended his top cop and stop-and-frisk on his weekly radio show Friday.
"Ray Kelly's legacy is the following: 7,500 fewer people shot dead than there would have been if we just had the murder rate when we came in and 7,500, history shows, would almost all be male minorities," Bloomberg said. "So if Ray's legacy is saving 7,500 lives, I'd have a smile on my face if I were him."
An NYPD spokesman said that Kelly stood by everything he said in the interview. De Blasio turned down two CBS 2 requests for an interview, Marcia Kramer reported.
Maybe he didn't want to respond to the police commissioner's charges that the attacks were made because "... the Democratic primary is controlled by extreme elements of the party. The candidates know that so they have to go to extremes themselves," Kelly said.
Kelly bluntly cut off the interviewer when he was asked if he would want to stay on the job under any of the Democratic candidates.
"I don't want to discuss it," he said.
However, Kelly had kind words for Mayor Bloomberg, calling him kind, intelligent, funny and compassionate.
And of Hillary Clinton, Kelly said she would "make a good anything."
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