Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated his call for expanded use of the controversial stop-and-frisk practice from law enforcement, adding that police should also take people’s guns away in the process.
“Basically, they will, if they see — you know, they are proactive and if they see a person possibly with a gun or they think may have a gun, they will see the person, and they will look, and they will take the gun away,” Trump said in an interview with "Fox and Friends."
“They will stop, they will frisk, and they will take the gun away, and they don’t have anything to shoot with.”
Critics say the controversial practice eliminates the standard of probable cause, allowing police to search civilians more or less at will. A federal judge ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional in 2013.
Trump’s comments come following a proposed expansion of the former New York City program Wednesday during a town hall aimed at black voters on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
Trump answered a question from an audience member on how he would address violence in black communities.
“Well, one of the things I’d do, Ricardo, is I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to,” the GOP nominee said.
Trump clarified on "Fox and Friends" Thursday morning that he “was really referring to Chicago with stop-and-frisk.”
He said that it was a policy that worked "incredibly well" in New York.
"I suggested stop-and-frisk, and some people think it's a great idea, and some people probably don't like it, but when you have 3,000 people shot and so many people dying, it's worse than some of the places we're hearing about like Afghanistan," Trump said. "I think Chicago needs stop-and-frisk."
Trump's town hall with Sean Hannity was initially scheduled to air on Wednesday night but was postponed to Thursday night.
