<p>Racial split in stop-and-frisk poll</p><p>By SALLY GOLDENBERG</p><p>Last Updated: 6:04 AM, August 17, 2012 Posted: 12:47 AM, August 17, 2012</p><p>New Yorkers are split along racial lines over the NYPD’s high-profile stop- and-frisk practice, a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday found.</p><p>Blacks opposed it by a 69-25 margin, while whites favored it, 57-37, and Hispanics backed it, 53-45.</p><p>Overall, New Yorkers disapproved of it, 50-45, according to the survey of 1,298 registered city voters last week.</p><p>Critics of the measure released a statement yesterday saying the poll showed stop-and- frisk will be a hot-button issue in the 2013 mayoral race.</p><p>But Mayor Bloomberg yesterday defended the practice as a life saver.</p><p>“We have crime problems in certain neighborhoods. That’s where we focus our police deployment and that’s where you would expect stop-and-frisks to be much higher, in neighborhoods where there is high crime,” he said during a Brooklyn press conference. “It’s not racist.”</p><p>Meanwhile, voters gave strong support to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the NYPD.</p><p>Nearly two-thirds of respondents gave Kelly a thumbs-up and 57 percent said the police were doing a good job. </p>