Hey, Donald Trump, Should Chicago Cops Stop and Frisk White Gun Owners, Too?

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has changed his mind when it comes to advocating "stop-and-frisk" practices be used by police departments across the country as an effective crime-fighting technique.

Don't worry: He still supports the policy that allows officers to stop individuals without probable cause — just reasonable suspicion — and question and pat them down. He just thinks it only needs to be implemented in Chicago right now, not nationwide, because of the city's rampant gun violence.

Trump began the current stop-and-frisk discussion Wednesday, Sept. 21, during a town hall interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. In that interview, the candidate praised New York City's use of stop and frisk — a policy it has since discontinued — when asked how to combat violence in black communities.

In a Thursday morning phone interview on Fox and Friends, however, Trump clarified his answer about the practice:

"Now, Chicago is out of control. … Obviously, you can't let the system go the way it's going. … I think Chicago needs stop and frisk. Now, people can criticize me for that, … but they asked me about Chicago."

And this is how Trump described how stop-and-frisk would be instituted in Chicago after co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked him to explain it for "my folks down in South Carolina that don't really deal with stop and frisk" and apparently receive no news about the world outside the state's borders:

"If (police) see a person possibly with a gun or they think may have a gun, they will see the person, and they'll look, and they'll take the gun away, and they won't have anything to shoot with. … How it's not being used in Chicago, to be honest, it's quite unbelievable. And the local police, they know who has a gun and who shouldn't be having a gun. They understand that."

(Except when they don't understand that, such as in the case of Paul O'Neal.)

During Monday's first presidential debate, Trump reiterated his support of stop and frisk for Chicago, bringing up the practice when asked about creating better race relations in the country.

What's striking about Trump's "stop and frisk, Chicago style" definition is that it flies in the face of his apparent NRA-friendly, pro-gun campaign stance. Does this response mean he supports police freely stopping and harassing questioning anyone carrying a firearm at the expense of trampling over the Second Amendment rights of legal concealed carry gun owners?

Probably not. Behind all of this talk of Chicago shootings and stop-and-frisk is a bit of politics that might be called dog-whistle messaging if it wasn't almost as deafening as a foghorn.

Remember: This entire stop-and-frisk discussion centered on a question about what to do about violence in "the black community" — that monolithic group that thinks and acts as one in the minds of politicians trying to secure demographic voting blocks. However, one of the main criticisms of stop-and-frisk in New York was "that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics," according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which collected data on the practice from 2002 to 2015. (On an interesting side note: The NYCLU also found that "[n]early nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent.")

Really, this isn't a discussion about using stop-and-frisk to wipe out shootings in Chicago. It's a discussion about using a controversial method on a select, racially profiled group of people. And in this discussion, any black person carrying a gun rises to the level of "reasonable suspicion," and that person deserves to be delayed any time of day to allow a stranger to legally grope their body and interrogate them on a public street.

Yes, Trump says local police have a handle on the group of people in their communities who shouldn't be strapped. But again, the two-word rebuttal to that is Paul O'Neal. The unarmed 18-year-old was shot and killed by police, but no weapon was found during the investigation of the shooting despite officers saying they thought he had one.

This does raise the question, though, Donald Trump: What should be done about violence in the white community? Shouldn't police perform stop-and-frisk on a white man having a minor disagreement with his girlfriend in front of their apartment? Wouldn't the public feel safer if officers patted down every white guy in a trench coat who has that Keanu Reeves-in-"The Matrix" look? And shouldn't all middle-age white men within 20 feet of teens playing hip-hop be stopped and questioned to avoid any mishaps?

If stop-and-frisk is Trump's answer to deter violence in the black community, then it should apply to the white community, too. Saving one white person's life is certainly worth briefly inconveniencing and humiliating someone else. Don't all lives matter to you, Mr. Trump?

This is an opinion article. The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Patch Media

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