Would it help keep minorities safe in violent neighborhoods? Or subject them to racial profiling by police, and increase tensions between minorities and law enforcement.
It’s “stop and frisk,” a police practice adopted in New York City, credited with helping bring down crime, and then amended after being ruled unconstitutional. And now Donald Trump is citing it as a great way to stop crime.
Speaking in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Wednesday Trump suggested that Chicago police employ stop and frisk as a way to reduce crime in the city’s crime-plagued neighborhoods. Following a furor over his statement, Trump sought to clarify his remarks Thursday, saying on “Fox & Friends” that “I was referring to Chicago with stop and frisk. They asked me about Chicago.”
Trump used New York as proof of the success of stop and frisk. The strategy was widely hailed as a crime deterrent when Rudolph Giuliani - a Trump campaign adviser - was the city’s mayor from 1994 to 2001.
The tactic allowed police officers to question and potentially search pedestrians if there’s reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is in the process of committing, or is about to commit a crime.
Michael Bloomberg, Giuliani’s successor, expanded the strategy and credited it with helping to reduce the city’s crime rate by 32 percent over his three terms in office.
Several cities have implemented stop and frisk, including Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. And in nearly all of them, minorities have complained of being stopped at higher rates by police officers than whites.
In New York, for example, about 83 percent of stops in between 2004 and 2012 involved African Americans and Hispanics, groups that make up about 50 percent of the city’s population.
A 2013 report by the New York Attorney General’s office found that only one in 50 stops led to a conviction for a violent crime; one in 50 led to a conviction on a weapons charge; and one in 16 stops led to a jail or prison sentence of more than 30 days.
In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that New York’s stop and frisk policy was unconstitutional because it of its “indirect racial profiling” of blacks and Latinos.
Concerns about stop and frisk aren’t limited to New York.
On Tuesday, Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court threw out a gun conviction against a Boston man, saying African Americans who flee police may be responding to fear of racial profiling rather than trying to hide committing a crime.
The court, in its ruling, cited a Boston Police Department study that found black men were subjected to stop and frisk at a disproportionate rate between 2007 and 2010.
African American lawmakers and organizations argued that expanding the use of stop and frisk anywhere would only heighten simmering tensions between law enforcement and minority communities.
“It’s outrageous,” said Hilary Shelton, head of the NAACP’s Washington bureau. “What stop and frisk is is nothing more than a racial profiling tool. Why would Trump want to promote this policy?”
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said Trump’s idea “would create more and more conflict between the minority community and police.”
“The more you stop people, the greater the opportunity for something to go wrong,” he said
Jeffery Robinson, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the message sent by Trump’s suggestion is “to save the black community, you have to destroy it.”
“It’s not a remedy to stop crime, it’s not a remedy to improve relations between police and communities of color,” he added. “It sounds like a sound bite to be tough on crime.”
William Douglas: 202-383-6026, @williamgdouglas