“I was referring to Chicago with stop and frisk”, Trump said. “I don’t think that Donald Trump gets it”.
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The policy, once used by many police departments, gained traction in NY under two former mayors, Rudolph W. Giuliani, now a top Trump surrogate, and Michael R. Bloomberg, now a fierce Trump critic.
The policy has since been abandoned in NY due to its disproportionately racist effect and lackluster results, which is exactly why Trump wants to bring it back, if his recent remarks are any indication. “And you have to be proactive, and you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically”. At a town hall Wednesday taped for the Fox show Hannity, someone in the audience asked Donald Trump how he will address “black-on-black” crime if he became president. Adopted by NY in the 1990s, “stop and frisk” allows police to keep watch on what they deem as suspicious characters without the inconvenience of a warrant or having to show probable cause.
“I think Chicago needs stop-and-frisk”, Trump continued. Exhibit 4,582: on Wednesday, in the wake of protests in Charlotte, North Carolina after the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, Trump said he would use stop-and-frisk on a national level to keep “our cities” safe. It’s unclear how many people were shot overall because a single shooting incident can involve multiple victims. So, it’s clear to see how Trump’s baneful proposal couldn’t come at a worse time, as the country continues to reel from the recent police shootings of Black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Charlotte, North Carolina. Proponents of stop-and-frisk argue that it would be especially effective in getting illegal guns off the streets. Americans are anxious about rising crime, Trump’s the authority figure who’s promising to bring down the hammer on criminals, so naturally he’s going to favor stop-and-frisk.
In typical Trump style, the presidential candidate walked back his controversial statement the next day, saying he only wants to implement stop-and-frisk in Chicago.
He responded to a question about how he would stem “violence in the black community”.
Most notably, the increase in frisks and arrests in NY (a major case study used to justify the policy) didn’t predate the drop in crime.
“Stop and frisk” was declared unconstitutional by a NY federal judge three years ago, who said it violated the rights of minorities. Since 2013, under de Blasio, the number of police stops fell precipitously.
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Floyd v. City of NY was a long-running class action case charging that the NYPD’s practice of stopping, questioning and frisking thousands of New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion ― the vast majority of them black or Latino ― violated the Constitution. “The bottom line is it (stop-and-frisk) created a huge line of division between police and communities”. The same year a federal court ruled it was unconstitutional. The city appealed the ruling at the time, but has since dropped that effort and is participating in an ongoing reform and oversight process.
