For years, lawyers and advocates have fought against the use of stop-and-frisk, a police tactic that physically and mentally injures the majority of black and brown men and instills a sense of distrust in law enforcement. After a long legal battle, a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional in 2013 and essentially banned it.
Still, former President Donald Trump wants to bring it back.
A key pillar of Trump’s anti-crime platform calls for police departments to restore stop-and-frisk, which allows officers to randomly stop and search people for guns, or risk critical federal dollars entering their coffers.
“I will insist that local jurisdictions return to proven common sense policing measures like stop and frisk,” Trump said. campaign site. “Very simple.”
Not for the many black men who are baffled that Trump would claim to covet their votes, but want policies that have been proven to target and harm blacks. Travis Hunter is a writer. His first visit to New York nearly 20 years ago must have been a joyous occasion. He had just signed a major book deal. But seconds after she left her hotel for a holiday dinner, she said, three white police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and demanded she put her palms on the wall and open her legs.
When Hunter asked why, one officer spat, “Shut up, n —–r.”
“Where did you come from?” another officer demanded. “Where are you going?”
The officer removed Hunter’s wallet from his back pocket and studied his Georgia driver’s license.
“He threw the wallet at me and they got back in the car and drove off,” Hunter recalled.
He was left on the street, stunned, angry and so broken that he couldn’t even bring himself to report the incident to the authorities. “I couldn’t eat after that,” Hunter said. “I felt completely violated. . . I still do.”
Trump’s stop-and-frisk calls come as he tries to appeal to more black voters in 2020, hoping to lose the support of the core constituency that sent President Joe Biden to the White House. Trump’s appeals are sometimes effective – they win. Support black entertainers Like Ye and Sexy Red – and not other times, like saying Black voters relate to him because of his miracle.
Trump appears to be catering to his supporters who want him to be tough on urban crime by standing and fidgeting. low national crime rate — and hopefully the message resonates with black voters who are less enthusiastic about Biden and more likely to support his economic policies.
But with more 2 million black men after the stop-and-frisk experience, even some black conservatives who support Trump — like Atlanta-based New Yorker Shelley Winter — say they’re ambivalent about the policy.
“Stop and frisk is not a bad plan in theory and I’m not against it. It’s problematic to stop and frisk when it’s activated,” Winter said, “Word on the street,” on WSB-FM in Atlanta with MalaniKai Massey. Besides its unconstitutionality, he said, “the other problem is its implementation, because you give the police carte blanche to do whatever they want and you live in a constant police state.”
On the other hand, Wynter said, “There are high crime areas where stop and frisk can work, but there are unintended consequences. And these unintended consequences are that you start pulling and grabbing kids that have nothing to do with anything. They go to school and do their jobs. But if you have quality police training, it can be effective.”
The push for stop-and-frisk policing also calls for better police training “so we don’t target the wrong people.” “So it’s a nuanced thing.”
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly defended the practice before a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional and banned it in 2013. An article published in The Wall Street Journal. He wrote that stop-and-frisk, which he described as active policing, prevented more than 7,000 murders, mostly against men of color.
Despite multiple studies showing that black men are targeted more than any other demographic, Trump has repeatedly stated over the past decade that he has implicitly shut down the vote for the November presidential election. wants federally restore.
In this election cycle in particular, Trump and his allies have preyed on black voters — a critical bloc in a close race — as he simultaneously pushes policies that have proven to over-police and traumatize black people in general and black people in particular.
Trump evaluated this policy as “unbelievable as it works”. Suspension of the 2016 campaign at a Black church in Cleveland. Two years later, in 2018, speaking at the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention, Trump said In Chicago, stop and frisk must be enforced even after the city abandoned the practice in 2015. Under contract with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Trump appeared in a campaign video last year his agenda of reducing crime: “I’m going to insist that local jurisdictions go back to proven common sense policing measures like stop and frisk — it’s very simple — you stop them and you frisk them.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Problematic politics
An abusive experience can affect the people who experience it; request According to the American Public Health Association, men who are suspended and frisked have anxiety and high stress caused by the situation.
According to the ACLU of New York, most stopped were people of color and many of them were Black. Among the 532,911 police stops in New York City in 2012, 89% of people were innocent of crimes. According to the ACLU of New York.
US District Judge Shira A. Sheindlin eventually prevailed They wrote that the practice was unconstitutional, “in an effort to defend a policy they believed to be effective,” knowing that the police officers’ policy of targeting “the right people” was racially discriminatory and therefore violated United States law. Constitution of the States.”
Delores Jones-Brown, professor emeritus at New York City Colleges John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said it’s unclear how Trump would implement the national stop-and-frisk policy, as police are subject to state and local laws. “He can try to do whatever he wants or thinks he can do, but it’s going to be up to the police departments to resist,” Jones-Brown said of Trump. “He cannot issue a mandate. But police departments are attracted to federal funds and are willing to do anything if it results in increased federal funding. So he could say, ‘I’m presenting this pot of money for police departments that will aggressively use stop and frisk.’ Regardless of public objections, there will be those who will match it for funding.”
Rodney Diggs, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney, said he finds it ironic that Trump is actively courting black voters in this election while promoting a tactic that has had a huge negative effect on black voters.
“Stop and frisk only serves to harass and discriminate against people of color,” he said. It’s counterintuitive to say, “Well, I want the black vote, I want the colored vote, but now I’m going to make a law that does nothing but discriminate against you.” Not only is this a recipe for disaster; When stop-and-frisk is clearly targeted at communities of color, you increase distrust between the public and police officers.
Yasser Payne, professor of criminal justice and sociology at the University of Delaware and co-author of the book “Murder City, USA: Crime, Structural Violence, and Activism in Wilmington,” said the practice contributed to a “culture of death” regarding the policing of Black male bodies. “Stop and touch on the worst parts of implicit prejudice in terms of perceptions of what a black man does and does,” he said.
Joe Biden campaign spokeswoman Jasmine Harris cited Biden’s signing of an executive order that would “limit chokeholds and no-holds-barred orders at the federal level, create a national database of officers fired for misconduct, and require federal agencies to update their policies on the use of force.”
“Donald Trump is a racist who came into public life making false accusations Central Park 5 and encouraged police departments to continually become more aggressive and adopt policies such as stop-and-frisk,” Harris said in a written statement.
According to NBC News last year, 37% of black men between the ages of 18 and 49 have a favorable view of Biden and 27% of Trump. While Biden has maintained the Democrats’ long-held lead over Republicans, Trump has gained popularity, especially among young black voters, since the 2020 election.
In recent months, Trump and his proxies addressed influential Black cultural figures and platforms, while also highlighting the economic gains under his leadership. However, Trump’s critics say his growing cachet with some black male voters is inconsistent with his position on more aggressive policing policies.
California Assemblyman Mike Gipson, a Democrat, was a police officer in Maywood, California. He says that random searches of people are “not an effective way for policing — it’s about removing the guardrails and giving officers the freedom to do what they want.”
“Even as a former police officer, when I’m detained by the police as a civilian, it’s traumatizing. I was stopped for no reason other than the color of my skin, the car I drove, or the neighborhood I was in. And having disrespectful officials who make you feel guilty before you even have a chance to open your mouth. and ask the officer, ‘Why did you stop me?’ There is already a sense of guilt and they treat us like that.”
In New York City, blacks were stopped 55% of the time, Latinos 32%, and whites 10%. In addition, the homicide rate record low After stop-and-frisk was banned, Trump and others suppressed rhetoric that the aggressive policy reduced crime.
The The Black Male Voter Project its founder, W. Mondale Robinson, said it focused on increasing black voter turnout and “really trying to expand the electorate by speaking to the brothers that the electoral process has made invisible.” The organization specifically deals with Black men with troubled backgrounds who may be targeted by stop and frisk.
“Stop and frisk has been the policy du jour in America since the end of slavery,” Robinson said. “So it doesn’t surprise me that Trump says he wants it back.”
Samuel T. White, 54, a construction project manager in Philadelphia, said he has voted Democratic in every election but is unenthusiastic about Biden while worried about Trump.
“So you ask: What am I doing? In the end, you’re talking about stop and frisk and the potential for my son and my nephew and my cousin — and me — to be caught up in police drama for no reason,” she said. “As someone who has been harassed by the police, I don’t wish that on anybody. So, yes, Trump I thought about it. But I think that when black men think about this policy — it’s a policy, but it’s important — they’re going to rethink voting for it.”
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