How Donald Trump Gets Stop-and-Frisk Wrong
As with many topics, Donald Trump doesn't know much about the policing policy widely known as "stop and frisk," but that doesn't deter him one bit from Trump-splaining it to us with unbridled self-confidence.
The policy, which involves warrantless stops of people who are suspected of criminal activity to search them for weapons, became a highlight in Republican Trump's first debate with his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
As his lack of preparation quickly became apparent, the reality-TV star tried to make up for it with a flurry of exciting half-truths and overgeneralizations. He called for Chicago in particular to begin using "stop-and-frisk" tactics to put the brakes on what he has been calling a "crime wave."
He apparently didn't know that Chicago, like his native New York, has not abandoned stop-and-frisk. The city only has tried to make it less racially and ethnically discriminatory, a policy with which Trump has not shown himself to be very impressed.
Trump spoke admiringly of stop-and-frisk in New York, which began under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and intensified in its aggressiveness and controversy under later Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Trump credited the policy for New York's dramatic decline in murders since the early 1990s and called for its nationwide expansion.
But the city also began to wind down the practice, even before it was condemned as unconstitutional by a federal district judge in a decision later criticized by a federal Court of Appeals panel.
Debate moderator Lester Holt of NBC News fact-checked Trump by citing the New York judicial ruling that found "stop-and-frisk" to be unconstitutional in that state, because it largely singled out young black and Hispanic men.
Trump argued back. "No, you're wrong. It went before a judge who was a very against-police judge," he said. "It was taken away from her, and our mayor -- our new mayor -- refused to go forward with the case. They would have won on appeal...."
"The argument is that it's a form of racial profiling," said Holt.
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