Donald Trump on Thursday said Chicago needs to employ controversial “stop-and-frisk” police practices to stem violence, continuing his critique of policing here a month after saying the city’s crime problem could be stopped in a week if police were “very much tougher.”
“Chicago is out of control, and I was really referring to Chicago with stop-and-frisk,” the Republican presidential nominee told the television show “Fox & Friends,” responding to criticism for earlier appearing to suggest the tactic should be used nationwide. “They asked me about Chicago, and I was talking about stop-and-frisk for Chicago.”
The night before, in a town hall in Cleveland Heights, Ohio moderated by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, an audience member asked Trump what he would do about “violence in the black community.” He proposed using the practice of officers stopping and questioning people, even searching them if the officers consider them suspicious.
In Chicago, police have used a similar practice for years, stopping people they deem suspicious and questioning them, sometimes patting them down. Then last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois considered suing the Chicago Police Department over the excessive use of the practice, which has been condemned by the ACLU as racial profiling.
The ACLU said it found Chicago police made more than a quarter-million stops from May through August 2014, a far higher rate than New York City cops did at the height of their stop-and-frisk policy. Its analysis showed Chicago police stopped African-Americans at a disproportionately higher rate than Hispanics and whites, especially in predominantly white neighborhoods.
The Chicago Police Department said it prohibited racial profiling, but agreed to changes that required officers to more thoroughly document their street stops. The changes were also incorporated in a new state law.
But officers complained earlier this year that the new, lengthier reports were too time-consuming and confusing, causing street stops to plummet as crime rose. The forms have since been streamlined.
In New York City, a federal judge found that its use was unconstitutional because of its overwhelming impact on minority residents.
Trump alluded to none of those problems in Chicago or New York.
“We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well,” he said in the interview. “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 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.
“I think Chicago needs stop-and-frisk,” Trump continued. “Now, people can criticize me for that or people can say whatever they want. But they asked me about Chicago and I think stop-and-frisk with good strong, you know, good strong law and order. But you have to do something. It can’t continue the way it’s going.
“If (police) see a person possibly with a gun or they think may have a gun, they will see the person and they’ll look and they’ll take the gun away,” he said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio oversaw the dismantling of that city’s stop-and-frisk police policy and said Trump’s suggestion of expanding its use would “simply alienate the very people who we need to be partners in the fight against crime.”
“He does not understand how policing works,” said de Blasio, a Democrat who is supporting Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival for president.
Illinois ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka also said Trump is wrong about the effectiveness of stop-and-frisk in Chicago.
“He’s wrong because stop-and-frisk is not the prescription for what is ailing Chicago in terms of violence,” Yohnka said Thursday. “The problem is that there has been a complete breakdown in trust between the police and the community, and one of the elements of that breakdown was a practice of stop-and-frisk, which in the summer of 2014 stopped 250,000 innocent people.
“And so all that, using sort of that discredited practice, would make that gap between the police and community worse, not better,” he added. “In general, what’s clear is that we need a police strategy in Chicago that connects the police to the neighborhoods with beat cops who know people, who know what’s happening … and the police and the community are working together to solve those problems.”
Chicago’s rising violence has garnered the city negative attention nationwide, with more people killed so far this year than all of last year. On Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that the department will expand its hiring capacity by about 1,000 officers to combat the problem.
Trump has made the city’s crime problem a part of his campaign rhetoric.
In August, Trump suggested that “top police” in Chicago told him the city’s crime problem could be solved in a week by police “being very much tougher” than they are now. Chicago police officials denied, however, that he met with “top” officials, saying that no one in authority at the department had talked with Trump or his team since at least March.
Trump also falsely suggested during the town hall that violence in Chicago is worse than in Afghanistan. More than 3,000 people have been shot and more than 500 people have been killed this year in the city. The United Nations’ assistance mission in Afghanistan documented a total of 11,002 civilian casualties in 2015 — 3,545 people killed and 7,457 injured, exceeding the previous record set in 2014.
Trump’s comments came as both he and Clinton court minority voters with Election Day less than seven weeks away.
Associated Press contributed.
