Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting personal with Michael Bloomberg.
The progressive Queens-Bronx congresswoman bemoaned Wednesday that members of her family fell victim to stop-and-frisk under Bloomberg’s mayoral tenure and dismissed his recent apologies for the controversial policing tactic.
“We all know stop and frisk,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Capitol Hill in between congressional hearings. “That was my family, and that was my community, and that was my neighborhood.”
Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, declined to say which members of her family were allegedly stopped and frisked by NYPDofficers.
“I’ll let her statements speak for themselves,” Trent told the Daily News.
Since launching his presidential bid, Bloomberg has repeatedly apologized for stop-and-frisk, admitting African-American and Hispanic New Yorkers were unfairly targeted by it.
But the billionaire ex-Hizzoner had to go on the defensive again after a video from 2015 resurfaced this week that captures him saying he deployed cops with stop-and-frisk marching orders to “minority neighborhoods” because “that’s where all the crime is.”
In light of the video, Ocasio-Cortez slammed Bloomberg’s apologies as “insufficient.”
“Stop and frisk was a uniquely and largely Bloomberg administration policy,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who’s a prominent surrogate for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in addition to her day job in Congress.
A Bloomberg spokeswoman declined a request for a response, instead referring to remarks the ex-mayor made during a campaign stop in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Wednesday.
“Those words don’t reflect the way that I’ve governed or the way that I run my company or the way that I live,” Bloomberg told supporters of the 2015 video. “I’ve led the most diverse city in the country, and the public there re-elected me and reelected me two other times so I think they’re pretty happy.”
Bloomberg is running an unconventional Democratic campaign for president, bypassing the first four caucuses and primaries in favor of spending all his time — and money — on elections on Super Tuesday and beyond.
Ocasio-Cortez — who, like Sanders, self-identifies as a democratic socialist — didn’t explicitly say she would support Bloomberg should he beat the expectations and win the Democratic nomination to take on President Trump in November.
But she assured reporters that the party will at one point have to coalesce.
“No matter what, we’re going to have to unify under the nominee,” she said.
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