New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Criticizes Donald Trump’s Support of Stop-and-Frisk

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio criticized Donald Trump’s idea to use stop-and-frisk policing nationwide on Thursday morning, saying the policy did not benefit the city and would be a bad idea on the national scale.

“Donald Trump talks about stop-and-frisk like he knows the facts. He has had no experience with policing, no experience with public safety,” de Blasio told CNN’s New Day. “He should really be careful because if we reinstituted stop-and-frisk all over this country, you would see a lot more tension between police and communities.”

New York has a contentious history stop-and-frisk, a controversial program that allows a police officer to stop a person on the street based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. The program was expanded in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg until federal judge ruled in 2013 that the policy was unconstitutional and racially discriminatory.

Trump said at a town hall interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday: “I would do stop-and-frisk. 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.” On Fox and Friends Thursday morning, Trump walked those comments back, saying he “was really referring to Chicago with stop-and-frisk.”

“Chicago is out of control,” he said during the phone interview, Politico reports. “They asked me about Chicago and I was talking about stop-and-frisk for Chicago.”

[CNN]