New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Thursday that Donald Trump’s support for allowing police to stop and frisk people they think are suspicious would lead to even more civil unrest.
“You know Donald Trump talks about stop-and-frisk like he knows the facts, he has had no experience with policing, he has no experience with public safety,” de Blasio said during a Thursday interview on CNN. “He should be really careful because if we reinstitute stop-and-frisk all over this country, you would see a lot more tension between police and community.”
Trump said Wednesday night that he supports a wider use of stop-and-frisk, on the same night protests against police turned violent in North Carolina. The Republican presidential nominee argued that it worked “incredibly well” to reduce crime in New York.
The controversial policy was ruled unconstitutional by a Manhattan judge in 2013 after police were accused of unfairly targeting Hispanics and blacks.
“What’s happened in the three years since we made that change? Crime has gone down consistently since we actually stopped using it,” said de Blasio in response to Trump’s claim that the program was successful.
