Former New York Police Department commissioner Bill Bratton on Friday rejected the idea that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional, even though it’s a retired practice.
“The term ‘stop-question-and-frisk’ is a relatively recent phenomenon,” Bratton said after a speech at New York Law School. “The appropriate term is ‘reasonable suspicion stops.’ When presidential candidates or moderators and news reporters and activists say that it’s unconstitutional, it’s a misrepresentation.”
During the first presidential debate last month, Trump said the policy worked well in New York, but both Clinton and moderator Lester Holt insisted that it was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2013. Trump defended his claim by saying the case against it was never appealed.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also put the practice by the wayside, despite a push from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Statistics show most crimes have decreased under de Blasio.
Bratton argued that the practice was not ruled unconstitutional, but rather called it “racially disproportionate.”
“Again, it’s the idea of it makes the police officer’s life much more difficult when we’re either misinforming the public about the law, or misinterpreting the law. And I think [with] ‘stop-question-and-frisk,’ ‘reasonable suspicion stops,’ that’s a profound problem,” Bratton explained. “It’s great that it’s being talked about but talk about it in an appropriate way: what’s legal, what’s not legal, what’s appropriate, what’s not appropriate.”
