O'Reilly: 'Racial profiling' ban would increase 'street crime'

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday warned that halting New York City's controversial "stop-and-frisk" policy, which he called "racial profiling," will lead to an increase in the city's crime rate.

On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) proposed decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana as a way to cut down on the low-level arrests that when occur each year New York City police force tens of thousands of black and Latino residents to empty their pockets as a part of the "stop-and-frisk" practice.

"This is about racism," O'Reilly admitted on Tuesday. "This is a racial story, not a drug story. Here in the city we have 'stop-and-frisk' policy which has brought crime way down in New York. Way down. What that is, is the cops know who the wise guys are, they know who the dealers are, they know who the punks are and they know who the muggers are. And they try to get these guys on anything. It's like getting Al Capone on tax evasion instead of murder."

"They left hates that!" the culture warrior continued. "Because it is racial profiling, but it's really criminal profiling. However, there are a number of people who are stopped and frisked who don't have anything and they get angry and I understand that."

"But it's a crime-fighting technique that they are now going to take away from the NYPD. And mark my words, street crime in New York will go up."

According to recent analysis of crime data, the NYPD stopped and frisked a record 685,724 last year, up from 97,296 during New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's first year in office. During that same period, the number of gunfire victims were virtually unchanged, 1,821 last year compared with 1,892 ten years ago.

An analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union showed that during 2011, 88 percent of the nearly 700,000 people stopped were innocent and and 87 percent were black or Latino. And 2012 could be a record year for stop-and-frisks: Over 200,000 people were stopped in the first three months alone.

Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends via Mediaite, broadcast June 5, 2012.