Trump tells Ohio audience he would implement NYC's disastrous 'stop-and-frisk' policy nationwide
New York City finally ended its racist “stop-and-frisk” policy, which allowed police to stop, question, and search citizens with little to no cause. The policy overwhelmingly targeted black and Latino residents. The program all but ended in 2014 after the New York Police Department’s own reports showed the staggering majority of citizens were completely innocent:
An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 5 million times since 2002, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own reports.
Today Donald Trump held a town hall-style event on “African-American concerns” in Cleveland Heights. Based on firsthand reports and photos, the event appeared to have only a few black attendees in the audience. Trump fielded a question from an audience member about crime in black communities and the following jaw-dropping exchange occurred (via Alexandra Jaffe):
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I had a question about, there’s been a lot of violence in the black community—I want to know, what would you do to help stop that violence, you know, black-on-black crime…..
TRUMP: Right, well, one of the things I’d do, Ricardo, is I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically, you understand, you have to have, in my opinion, I see what’s going on here, I see what’s going on in Chicago, I think stop-and-frisk. In New York City it was so incredible, the way it worked. Now, we have had a very good mayor, but New York City was incredible, the way that worked, so I think that could be one step you could do.
The disastrous policy was eventually ruled unconstitutional.