Billionaire and then New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed in 2011 that the city had virtually no discrimination and virtually no racial problems. That year, police stops of Black and Latinx people reached their peak under the stop-and-frisk policy he supported.

I cant tell you that everybodys friendly with everybody else. But you see virtually no discrimination based on ethnicity, Bloomberg said in November 2011 at the annual conference of Club de Madrid , a nonprofit group of former heads of state.

You have virtually no racial problems or tensions here, Bloomberg, who is now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, added in a video of the speech posted on YouTube in 2012.

Bloomberg, who served three terms as mayor from 2002 to 2013, was a vocal backer of stop-and-frisk, which allowed police officers to stop, question and search people whom the officers deemed suspicious. Police disproportionately targeted Black and Latinx people with this power.

In 2011, stops by New York City police hit their highest number, with nearly 700,000 people stopped and 87% of those stopped were either Black (53%) or Latinx (34%) , per data from the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Bloombergs team did not immediately respond to HuffPosts request for comment.

Just a month before the mayors November 2011 remarks, The New York Times reported on a protest in Harlem led by professor and activist Cornel West against the police departments stop-and-frisk policy. There was also a march by more than 400 protesters over the Brooklyn Bridge, including then city councilman Jumaane Williams .

After years of defending stop-and-frisk, Bloomberg apologized late last year for the policy. Earlier this month, he claimed that hed inherited stop-and-frisk though police stops increased sevenfold in his time as mayor.

Bloombergs 2020 Democratic presidential rivals went after him fiercely in Wednesdays debate, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) calling stop-and-frisk a racist policy and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) saying it targeted people of color in an outrageous way.