Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly discussing the recent hate crimes. (Photo: nyc.gov)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke out Tuesday following a wave of alleged anti-gay hate crimes that have stirred outrage in neighborhoods across the city.

“New York City has zero tolerance for intolerance," he told reporters at a press conference with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at police headquarters.

Mr. Kelly said that, over the past 24 hours, police have received reports of two additional bias attacks: At approximately 10:45 p.m. Monday, he said an assailant allegedly "just snapped, became enraged" and began shouting anti-gay expletives and beating a man he's been drinking with near the Bowery Mission. Approximately seven hours later, a couple walking north near Prince Street was also attacked, he said.

The incidents are just the latest in a string of recent attacks--including the shooting death last Friday of a young named Mark Carson in the West Village.

“It was a cold-blooded hate crime that cut short a life full of promise, and brought back awful memories for people who were once afraid to walk down the street with the person that they loved," the mayor said of the killing. “Thankfully, we have come a long way from those days--but the murder of Mark Carson is a tragic reminder of how far we still have to go."

He said the city is "a place that celebrates diversity--a place where people from around the world come to live free of prejudice and persecution. Hate crimes like these are an offense against all we stand for as a city--and we will do everything possible to stop them," he said, urging parents and teachers to "spread tolerance" and asking members of the LGBT community to report any crimes--as the city beefs up patrols.

Mr. Kelly noted that, while hate crimes are down almost 30 percent this year overall, anti-gay crimes have spiked significantly, with 29 attacks so far this year, versus 14 last year.

Mr. Bloomberg vowed to do everything necessary to try to stave off more attacks and warned would-be assailants to be on alert:

“You’re going to wind up in jail for a very long time. Period. We're gonna find you," he said, noting: "Jail’s not a nice place."

He added: “It’s not a good day for New York."

Mayor Bloomberg delivering his speech last week. (Photo: NYC.gov)

In a room filled with the grieving families of fallen cops, Mayor Michael Bloomberg once again lashed out against his wannabe successors who’ve been critical of the department--albeit less dramatically than his fire-and-brimstone speech last week.

During a memorial ceremony for six officers at One Police Plaza, Mr. Bloomberg said the NYPD should be celebrated--not attacked--and repeated his threat that future administrations may leave both officers and the public less safe.

“We can't thank the NYPD enough for all they do for our city or ever repay the debt we owe these six fallen officers and their families," Mr. Bloomberg said. "But we can begin by fulfilling our responsibility to keep our police officers safe from harm as well. And that means doing everything in our power to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” he said.

Specifically, the mayor cited his push for stricter federal gun regulations and “proactive policing" that he said discourages criminals from carrying guns--almost surely a reference to the department's stop-and-frisk tactic.

Mr. Bloomberg has spent recent weeks railing against a proposal—supported by the majority of the Democratic mayoral candidates—that would create an inspector general to monitor the NYPD. Another bill that would expand the definition of racial profiling and allow those who feel targeted to sue the NYPD in state court is also expected to pass the City Council—even though City Council Speaker and leading mayoral candidate Christine Quinn is opposed.

“Unfortunately, as you all know, right now there are a number efforts, both through legislation and litigation that would hurt police officers’ ability to protect New York and hurt their ability to protect themselves," he said. "We’re fighting these efforts forcefully and letting the public know how dangerous and wrong-headed they are. After this era of incredible crime-fighting gains, our officers should be celebrated, not punished," he added, vowing "as long as our administration is in City Hall, you can bet we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers' finest, just as you stand up for all New Yorkers everyday.”

To bolster his description of the strides the city has made, Mr. Bloomberg also added a new statistic to his roster. Two decades ago, he said, the violent crime rate in his tony Upper East Side neighborhood was equivalent to the crime rate in today's Brownsville or the South Bronx.

“Back then, Manhattan’s Upper East Side was considered one of the safest parts of our city. Today, nearly every single precinct in the city has fewer violent crimes than the Upper East Side did back then,” said Mr. Bloomberg, who bought his townhouse in the hood in 1986.

“Think about that. Harlem, the South Bronx, Brownsville, Washington Heights, Corona," he continued. "They are all safer today than the Upper East Side was 20 years ago. That is an incredible turnaround."

Mayor Bloomberg. (Photo: NYC.gov)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has always been critical of media outlets and politicians pushing policies that he argues will weaken the New York City's police department, but he took his case to the next level this afternoon when he blasted both the City Council and the press writ-large for undermining the city's security.

He used the recent murder of a Bronx teenager to make his most forceful plea for proactive safety strategies.

"After his murder, ... there was not even a mention of his murder in our papers--our paper of record, The New York Times," the mayor declared. “'All the News That's Fit to Print' did not include the murder of 17-year-old Alphonza Bryant. Do you think that if a white, 17-year-old prep student from Manhattan had been murdered, The Times would have ignored it? Me neither."

Standing before high-ranking officers at One Police Plaza, Mr. Bloomberg castigated the media--especially The Times--for editorializing against the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk tactic.

"Four days after Alphonza Bryant's murder went unreported by The Times, the paper published another editorial attacking stop-question-and-frisk," he said. "They called it a 'widely loathed' practice. ... Let me tell you what I loathe. I loathe that 17-year-old minority children can be senselessly murdered in the Bronx and some of the media doesn't even consider it news."

In addition to grilling The Gray Lady, Mr. Bloomberg also attacked two specific City Council bills: one that would prohibit NYPD from racial profiling and another that would install an inspector general for the department. The latter, he said, would confuse police officers while the profiling bill would place unnecessary restrictions on their ability to identify suspects.

The speech in many ways seemed addressed to the term-limited mayor's successor. Many Gracie Mansion hopefuls have criticized the department for creating a climate of distrust in minority communities, but Mr. Bloomberg simply said safety "is the most important job of any mayor, period."

"I will never play politics with people's lives. My primary responsibility for mayor--as it will be for my successor--is to keep New York Safe," Mr. Bloomberg said. "Yes, creating jobs is important. Yes, providing social services to those in need is very important. Yes, providing top-quality education to our children is maybe most important of all. But protecting people from street crime and protecting  our city [from] another terrorist attack, is the most important job of any mayor, period."

Mr. Bloomberg didn't name names; he only anonymously attacked "some mayoral candidates" promoting these polices--“probably because this is an election year." Most of the major Democrats in the mayoral race have proposed reforming stop-and-frisk and, to varying degrees, support other NYPD-related legislation Mr. Bloomberg opposes. However, one mayoral contender, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, is allowing the two bills in question to proceed--the profiling legislation without her personal support. Political observers widely consider Ms. Quinn to be Mr. Bloomberg's favored successor.

We asked Mr. Bloomberg's spokesperson, Marc La Vorgna, if today's comments might be taken as a sign that the mayor's endorsement wouldn't go to a candidate advocating the NYPD reforms he thinks will jeopardize lives.

"The Mayor considers many factors when looking at candidates, locally or nationally," Mr. La Vorgna replied. "Public safety is certainly high on the list."

Update (3:03 p.m.): A Times spokeswoman responded to the racial bias allegations.

Additional reporting by Jill Colvin.

An NYPD counterterrorism officer watches cameras after the Boston attack. (Photo: Getty)

During his press conference announcing that Boston Marathon bombers intended to target Times Square, Mayor Michael Bloomberg slamed "special interests" he accused of trying to block the city from installing crime-fighting surveillance cameras.

"The role that surveillance cameras played in identifying the suspects was absolutely essential to saving lives, both in Boston, and now we know here in New York City as well," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall.

"We've made major investments in camera technology--not withstanding the objections of some special interests," he continued. "And the attacks in Boston, I think, demonstrate just how valuable those cameras can be."

Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly butted heads with civil liberties advocates, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, over the city's aggressive policing and counter-terrorism efforts post-9/11.

The group filed an ongoing lawsuit against the city in 2008 for information about the scope of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, the city's network of thousands of cameras spanning the Financial District, which is a cornerstone of Mr. Bloomberg's counter-terrorism investments. The program was expanded to Midtown in 2010.

But NYCLU Executive Director, Donna Lieberman, said after Mr. Bloomberg's remarks that the group's red flags were justified.

“Our thoughts remain with the victims of this great tragedy. And we understand and agree that there are times, locations and circumstances that clearly call for increased security and protections," she said. "But solutions that seriously undermine our freedom and fail to address the security failures of the past may give us a false sense of security while unnecessarily sacrificing individual privacy.

"We must not play into the hands of those that seek to hurt us by abandoning our free society and allowing our liberties to be needlessly eroded," she added.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that, while Times Square is already under heavy surveillance, the NYPD is planning to further extend the surveillance network with cutting-edge technology.

"We want to expand our cameras--the number of cameras that we have. And we'd like to, also, in that universe, expand our smart camera capability," he said. "We've talked about that, now adding algorithms--'video analytics' it's called. So that's sort of an additional aspect--it doesn't come with every camera, believe me. So just the number of cameras, throughout all five boroughs, and to increase the number of cameras capable of video analytics," he said.

Mr. Bloomberg also re-affirmed his commitment.

"We're working wherever there's large groups of people, that would be the logical place to put your cameras. But one of the thing for sure, you're never going to know where all of our cameras are," he said. "And that's one of the ways you deter people; they just don't know whether the person sitting next to you is just somebody sitting there or a detective watching."

He also thanked President Barack Obama and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano "for recognizing that homeland security funding should be based on threat, and threat alone; not poke-barrel politics."

Additional reporting by Colin Campbell.

The Democratic candidates sparred during their first televised debate. (Photo: NY1)

Longshot mayoral candidate Erick Salgado wants to bring Mayor Rudy Giuliani back to City Hall-- this time as the new police commissioner.

Mr. Salgado, a socially conservative reverend, said he’d love to keep current Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on as the city’s top cop, but has at least one back-up choice in mind.

“I would consider Ray Kelly if he’s available. If he’s not interested, maybe I ask Rudy Giuliani to come and serve as police commissioner,” he said during the campaign’s first televised debate, which was held at John Jay College and sponsored by NY1.

The mayoral hopefuls have been asked repeatedly about their thoughts on Mr. Kelly, who remains one of the city’s most popular officials, despite criticism over many controversial policies, including stop-and-frisk.

The idea got a thumbs-down from at least one of the other candidates.

“I oppose Rudy Giuliani as the Police Commissioner for the City of New York,” said Bill Thompson, eliciting the first loud applause of the night and a round of laughs from his fellow candidates.

After the debate, Mr. Salgado explained that he wanted to see the best person in the job to keep the city safe, and had a lot of respect for the former mayor.

“Maybe if he doesn’t want to be a mayor any more, maybe you want to come and do a tremendous job,” he explained..

“It would be Salgado and Rudy Giuliani. That would be a good team.”

(Photo: Getty)

Ray Kelly tends to stay out of politics, much to the dismay of some, but the city's police commissioner fired a rhetorical shot at President Barack Obama while discussing gun violence with the Daily News yesterday.

“Maybe the city most affected (by guns) is Chicago,” Mr. Kelly said. “The President’s hometown. But barely a peep out of him.”

Chicago has been plagued by homicides in recent months, a sharp increase over the previous year. Mr. Obama actually referenced this trend during his second debate with Republican Mitt Romney during the presidential campaign.

“What I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally,” Mr. Obama said said at the time. “Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban re-introduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence. Because frankly in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s. They’re using cheap handguns.”

Mr. Kelly's comments echo Mayor Michael Bloomberg's frequent gun-related criticism of the president, specifically Mr. Obama's alleged refusal to push for legislation like the assault weapons ban he cited during the debate.

(Photo: NY1)

"I'm talking about political leadership, they're not out there talking about the problem," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said on Inside City Hall last night, defending his department's use of the controversial stop-and-frisk policy. "They're not out there talking about, 'Hey, we have a lot of young men of color shooting each other.' You don't hear that spoken about openly. You do hear unhappiness with the tactics and strategies that we use."

The host, Errol Louis, interjected to argue that elected officials do indeed talk about violence, and not just problems with the NYPD, causing Mr. Kelly to retort, "Well, you're not reporting it. They do report it when they criticize the police though, certainly on New York 1."

And it turns out that one of the chief critics of the NYPD's current tactics, Councilman Jumaane Williams, agrees, sort of.

"Obviously I think there is some things the media should do better and must do better to get this message across," he said on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning. "But the commissioner knows about these events. As I said, that 'Not in My Hood' march actually had to get special permission from his office because we needed a special permit."

Mr. Williams proceeded to argue that Mr. Kelly himself should be attending events highlighting violence in his neighborhood and others.

"He doesn't come out to these events even when invited," he said. "Now you have funerals for people like Zurana Horton, who died a hero, meaning shot protecting children. That was the perfect event for the commissioner to show up."

"There is a nugget of truth in the commissioner's comments," he added later. "I do believe some more leaders need to do more to step up and speak out. The problem is that the commissioner has an audacity to say that because he is not even listening to those of us who are speaking out."

NYPD Officers manning a barricade to keep people back during the raid. (Photo: Hunter Walker)

The Queens Chronicle published an interview with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and his top spokesman Paul Browne in which Mr. Browne described the notion many reporters were arrested at the police raid on the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park as "a total myth." In his story about the interview, Chronicle Editor in Chief Peter C. Mastrosimone wrote that Mr. Browne claimed "only one journalist was arrested during the operation," but the NYPD told us there were actually two arrests of credentialed reporters during the raid.

"The information that I have here--there were two individuals that were arrested in Zuccotti Park, which was Julie Walker and Patrick Hedlund, they were credentialed individuals," said Sergeant Ryan with the NYPD's office of the deputy commissioner for public information.

We asked Sgt. Ryan if he had any idea why the Queens Chronicle reported Mr. Browne as saying only one reported was arrested.

"I can't answer that. I just have the information of the arrests," he said. "Those are the arrests that occurred there at Zuccotti."

The arrests of reporters covering the Occupy Wall Street protests last fall drew widespread criticism from the media and elected officials.

Ray Kelly

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and his top spokesman, Paul Browne, gave a lengthy, exclusive interview to the Queens Chronicle in which they discussed one of the biggest controversies surrounding the Department in recent months--the arrests of journalists during last November's raid on the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. Mr. Browne apparently denied reports of journalists arrested at Zuccotti Park and attributed them to protesters using fake press credentials.

"Paul Browne, the deputy commissioner for public information, who accompanied Kelly to the interview, added that only one journalist was arrested during the operation, despite stories to the contrary, which he called 'a total myth,'" wrote Chronicle Editor in Chief Peter C. Mastrosimone. "Occupy Wall Street protesters were forging press credentials in an effort to get through the police lines, he added, but that doesn’t mean actual reporters were arrested."

The Department received widespread criticism for its treatment of journalists during the raid. At the time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's spokesman, Stu Loeser, disputed reports of widespread arrests, but he admitted five credentialed reporters were arrested--three from the Associated Press and two from DNAInfo (for those keeping track, that's a four hundred percent increase over the number cited by Mr. Browne).

Update (6/8/12 4:36 P.M.): We asked Mr. Loeser and Mr. Browne to explain the difference between their numbers and Mr. Loeser responded and explained to us why he thinks "there's no discrepancy." 

Update II (6/8/12 6:58 P.M.): The NYPD now says there were actually two reporters arrested during the raid.