Michael Bloomberg, when he's not relentlessly coddling the overclass, is obsessed with criminalizing the underclass. After appealing a federal judge's ruling on the unconstitutionality of the stop-and-frisk police tactic, Bloomberg introduced the idea of fingerprinting everyone who lives in public housing, just so they can keep track of who the criminals are.

Using the same, tired argument that poor people of color commit crimes, so poor people of color should be treated like criminals, Bloomberg explained his reasoning on his weekly radio address:

“The people that live there, most of them, want more police protection . . . if you have strangers walking in the halls of your apartment building, don’t you want somebody to stop and say, ‘Who are you? Why are you here?’ Because the locks on these doors [break] with so many people coming and going... What we really should have is fingerprinting to get in.”

Bloomberg's remark comes after years of a similarly restrictive policy called "clean halls" being used to arrest anyone in public housing (or any housing that opts into the program) who doesn't have an ID saying they live there, even if they're just visiting a friend or relative.

Perhaps Bloomberg is just smarting from the dual sting of the stop-and-frisk ruling and that his "worst idea ever" for building luxury housing on the playgrounds of public housing has finally been dropped.

But just to set the record straight, Bloomberg's police chief reminded the nation this morning that not racially profiling young men of color will mean a lot of people will get murdered. So you can understand why Bloomberg would want to make sure everyone's fingerprinted before all that murder starts happening.