Trump Endorses ‘Stop-And-Frisk’ Tactics For Chicago Police

President Donald Trump urged Monday that police in Chicago implement the policy of “stop and frisk” to curb the gun violence that is plaguing the nation’s third-largest city.

Trump said he had directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ office to immediately visit Chicago to help the city address its wave of deadly shootings.

“We’re going to straighten it out, and we’re going to straighten it out fast,” Trump said. He added later: “Let’s see whether or not Chicago accepts help. They need it.”

The president suggested that Chicago implement the stop-and-frisk tactic, in which police officers stop, question and frisk people they suspect may be dangerous or may have committed a crime.

“It works and it was meant for problems like Chicago: stop and frisk,” he said.

Trump argued that the policy helped reduce violent crime in New York City in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. Giuliani is now Trump’s personal attorney in the Russia investigation.

But the concept of “stop, question and frisk” as a means of proactive policing has come under fire in recent years because statistics show it was imposed disproportionately on racial minorities.

The New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy was criticized as racial profiling, and in 2013, a federal judge ruled that it was discriminatory and unconstitutional. After New York City stopped the policy in 2014, the city’s murder and overall crime rate continued to drop. But Trump still touted it on the campaign trail in 2016.

Trump’s references to the violence in Chicago have been largely unchanged over the years, even as the situation on the ground has shifted. In 2016, Chicago had 762 homicides, more than New York and Los Angeles combined.

Since then, the levels of violence have declined. The Chicago Police Department reported last week that the number of homicides has fallen to 419 in the first nine months of 2018 from 520 during the same period in 2017, a 21 percent decline. The number of shootings is down 17 percent from last year as well, according to the department’s statistics.

 (c) 2018, The Washington Post · Philip Rucker   

{Matzav.com}