During an town hall event on Fox News set to air Wednesday night, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pledged to introduce the “stop-and-frisk” policy on a national scale in response to violence in American cities.
Trump told host Sean Hannity that the policy did “incredible” things for New York City since it was implemented by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, arguing that the policy will “have” to be put into effect in cities nationwide to crackdown on violence.
“Well one of the things I’d do … is I would do stop-and-frisk,” Trump said. “I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically, you understand, you have to have, in my opinion, I see what’s going on here.”
“I see what’s going on in Chicago. I think stop-and-frisk in New York, it was so incredible, the way it worked,” Trump said. “Now, we had a very good mayor, but New York City was incredible, the way that worked, so I think that could be one step you could do.”
Since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, the number of stops by officers has decreased sharply, especially after new rules were put into effect regarding how to conduct a stop in March, 2015.
Giuliani, one of Trump’s highest-profile surrogates, is a major proponent of stop-and-frisk, having called for it to be brought back into practice the way it was intended. Trump himself has long been an outspoken advocate for the practice.
It is unclear how Trump would implement a policy usually decided by local authorities nationwide.
In a statement released just prior to the scheduled town hall event, the campaign said that Trump favors a “locally tailored verson” of stop-and frisk in Chicago specifically. The town hall was bumped to Thursday night due to the situation in Charlotte, N.C.
“Concerned about the ongoing, tragic violence in Chicago, Mr. Trump, along with many other Americans, believes that ‘stop and frisk,’ used successfully in New York City during the administration of Mayor Giuliani, saved lives and reduced crime,” said Jason Miller, a spokesman for Trump. “Mr. Trump believes that a locally tailored version of ‘stop and frisk’ should be used in Chicago to help reduce the city’s skyrocketing violence and make our Chicago safe again.”
