Donald Trump’s personal ethics and decision making has been called into question time and time again this election season, and for good reason, but he has also had his share of strange and opaque policy stances. You know like that whole wall at the Mexican border that they are going to pay for? Well the hits keep coming this week as Trump makes his play to appeal to African American voters. Notably, when speaking about “black-on-black” crime, he mentioned that he would like to re-institute the “stop and frisk” policy, which is highly controversial for encouraging racial profiling and was actually deemed by a federal judge in 2013 as violating citizens’ constitutional rights (CNN, Scott, 9/22/16) Trump later clarified that he meant he would like to see it implemented in Chicago (New York Times, Barbaro, Haberman, and Alcindor, 9/221/16) If you are not familiar with the policy that allows officers to “stop a person in a public place located within the geographic area of such officer's employment when he reasonably suspects that such person is committing, has committed, or is about to commit either a felony or a misdemeanor” (findlaw.com). Officers may also demand a name, address and an “explanation of his conduct” (findlaw.com) It was most recently instituted in New York City and resulted in the street stops of around five million New Yorker’s between 2002 and 2012, nine out of ten of which were completely innocent (NYCLU). Not only that but between 2004 and 2012 83% of those street interrogations involved blacks and Hispanics, although those groups only make up slightly more than 50% of the population (New York Times). At the same time, white citizens were only involved in under 11% of stops from 2002 to 2015, despite making up 44% of New York’s population according to the 2010 census (NYCLU, census.gov). So as you can imagine, African American leaders have been less than thrilled about the idea of the problematic and, let’s not forget, unconstitutional practice making it’s way to a city near you. Marc H. Morial, President of the National Urban League likened the policy to “advancing martial law” (New York Times). Now that these figures are setting in, remember that city near you- Chicago?
If you’re not aware Chicago has had over 500 homicides this year, the highest rate of any major United States city and already surpassing last year’s total- with more than three months remaining in the year (CNN, McLaughlin, 9/21/16). There have been multiple prominent incidents of Chicago police shooting black men, such as the famous Laquan McDonald case and just last month's shooting and killing of unarmed Paul O’Neal (Chicago Tribune). The gratuitously high crime numbers has resulted in the Chicago Police looking to hire 1000 more officers, including new 500 patrol officers (CNN, McLaughlin, 9/21/16).
But will the addition of officers stem the violence? It’s hard to say if adding more police to the equation would alleviate the negative rapport that has been the recent trend between police and African American communities.
Back to point, would the stop and frisk help this situation? Certainly not. Would it help lower the crime rate? During his plea to African American voters Donald Trump keeps asking, "What the hell do you have to lose?". What would be the cost? Well, according to a federal judge- your constitutional rights.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/politics/bill-de-bla...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/us/politics/dona...
http://codes.findlaw.com/ny/criminal-procedure-law...
http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-data
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/3...
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