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Trump touts contentious policing tool to quell violence

By AFP
22 September 2016   |   5:00 pm
Donald Trump on Thursday tried to clarify his call to broadly employ the controversial "stop and frisk" policing tactic, a tool whose legality has been questioned for disproportionately targeting minorities.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at the Shale Insight conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 22, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at the Shale Insight conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 22, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN

Donald Trump on Thursday tried to clarify his call to broadly employ the controversial “stop and frisk” policing tactic, a tool whose legality has been questioned for disproportionately targeting minorities.

The aggressive crime-fighting strategy allows police to question people and physically search them for weapons and contraband without suspicion that a crime had been committed.

A New York federal judge struck the tactic down as unconstitutional in 2013 for discriminating against black and Hispanic individuals.

The Republican presidential candidate touted the polarizing tactic’s past deployment in his home city of New York — where its use was discontinued in 2014 — Wednesday on Fox News.

The next day he clarified his position on the policing tool, stating that he had intended to propose expanding the program to Chicago, which has the highest homicide rate of any major US city.

“I was talking about stop and frisk for Chicago,” Trump said. “Some people probably don’t like it. But when you have 3,000 people shot and so many people dying, I mean, it’s worse than some of the places we’re hearing about, like Afghanistan.”

“You have to do something. It can’t continue the way it’s going.”

The notion of reinstating stop and frisk is at odds with Trump’s visible outreach to black voters, and curiously timed considering the recent spate of police-involved killings of black men that have fueled outrage.

Bill de Blasio oversaw New York’s dismantling of the program as the city’s newly minted mayor in 2014, rejecting a cornerstone of his predecessor Michael Bloomberg’s crime-fighting strategy as a “broken policy.”

“NYC politicians better stop pandering,” real estate mogul Trump tweeted at the time. “Ending stop & frisk would be a disaster.”

Democrat de Blasio — a Hillary Clinton supporter — spoke out against Trump’s recent proposal, saying it would only increase tension between police and their communities.

“Donald Trump talks about stop and frisk like he knows the facts,” de Blasio told CNN Thursday. “He has had no experience with policing, no experience with public safety.”

“He should really be more careful because if we reinstituted stop and frisk all over this country, you’d see a lot more tension between police and communities.”

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