As the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump continues his campaign and efforts to reach out to Black voters despite issuing contradictory narratives. In an update to his criminal justice campaign platform on his website, the convicted felon called for the return of the controversial practice of “stop-and-frisk” by the New York City Police Department. He also called the police tactic a “common-sense policing measure.”
NBC News reports that despite “stop-and-frisk” being declared unconstitutional in New York City in 2013 by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, primarily due to its exacerbation of racial profiling against Black and Latinx men, Trump’s criminal justice platform aims to bring it back.
The Trump campaign’s call to reinstate
“stop-and-frisk” coincides with Trump’s focus on the decline in Black support for Biden compared to 2018. He appeals to Black voters with the seemingly racist notion that they would relate to him because of his mugshot.Black conservatives question the wisdom of Trump’s renewed push for “stop-and-frisk” due to its impact on Black men. This comes despite Trump’s efforts to target this group by employing Sen. Tim Scott as his de facto Black outreach director.
Shelley Wynter, a conservative Black New Yorker living in Atlanta and co-host of “Word on the Street” on WSB-FM, expressed concern about the “unintended consequences” of the policy.
“Stop-and-frisk, in theory, is not a bad plan, and I’m not opposed to
it. Stop-and-frisk in its activation becomes problematic,” Wynter said before stating that the “other problem is in its implementation because what you do is you give carte blanche to the police to just do whatever they want, and you live in a constant state of police.”Trump has consistently called for the reinstatement of “stop-and-frisk” dating back to the 2016 election cycle when, during a campaign stop at a Black church in Cleveland, he said that the program was “so incredible the way it worked.” In 2018, during a speaking engagement at the International Association of Police Chiefs convention, the ex-president said it should be enforced in Chicago despite the city dropping the policy due to an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union.
As recently as 2023, Trump called for the program’s return in a campaign video, stating, “I will insist that local jurisdictions return to proven commonsense policing measures, such as stop-and-frisk — very simple — you stop them and you frisk them.”
However, Delores Jones-Brown, professor emeritus at the City Colleges of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, warns that although stop-and-frisk has been ruled unconstitutional, Trump can dangle federal funding in front of police departments to get them to do his bidding. “He can try to do whatever he wants, or he thinks he can do, but it will be up to the police departments to resist,” Jones-Brown told NBC News
. “He can’t mandate it. But police departments are notoriously attracted to federal funds and are willing to do things if it will result in increased federal funding. So, he could say, ‘I’m making this pot of money available for police departments that will aggressively use stop and frisk.’ And there will be some who fall in line with that for the funding, regardless of community objections.”RELATED CONTENT: NYPD ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Team Made Unconstitutional Stops Targeting Black and Brown People