New York, NY – Bloomberg: Public Pressure, Not NYPD Will Enforce New Smoking Ban

New York, NY – Smokers don’t need to worry about the city’s new law banning smoking at beaches and parks – because Mayor Bloomberg said Friday the NYPD won’t police it.

“The police will not be enforcing this. That’s not going to be their job,” Bloomberg told a caller to his WOR-AM radio show. “This is going to be enforced by public pressure.”

The mayor said cops already don’t enforce the law against smoking in playgrounds, and they’re too busy fighting crooks and terrorists to start cracking down on park smokers, too.

“On the beaches there’s some Parks Department people” to make New Yorkers comply with the new law, Bloomberg said. “But mainly it’s just everybody’s going to turn to you and say, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t be smoking.’ And you know, most people listen to that.”

The City Council voted 36-12 for the park smoking ban last week, and Bloomberg incorrectly told his radio audience the idea came from the Council in the first place.

In fact, the ban was first proposed by his health commissioner, Thomas Farley, in September 2009 — and while Bloomberg balked at first, he eventually supported it.

“I probably wouldn’t have thought about it if it wasn’t for the public going to the City Council and the City Council coming to us,” Bloomberg claimed on the radio.

“The City Council came to the mayor, but the City Council heard from the public, and it was the public that said, ‘I don’t like the cigarette butts in the sand and people smoking upwind. I have to breathe it.’ ”