Donald Trump’s crime policies might hit minorities harder, experts say

By Alexander Burns and Farah Stockman, New York Times News Service

Friday, Sept. 23, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Branding himself the “law-and-order candidate,” Donald Trump has vowed to carry out a crackdown on crime and terrorism that would benefit white Americans and racial minorities alike.

But an examination of Trump’s recommendations for policing, terrorism and immigration enforcement reveals a series of policies that civil rights activists and national security veterans fear could have the effect of treating minorities with suspicion and singling them out for heavier government scrutiny.

Over the past few days, Trump has intensified the racial and ethnic cast to his policies. On Wednesday, he suggested stop-and-frisk policing, a tactic that has been discontinued in New York City, as a model for other cities. More than 4 in 5 people stopped by New York police under stop-and-frisk were black or Hispanic, and a federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional as it was put into effect.

Earlier in the week, Trump answered the bombings in New York and New Jersey by calling for aggressive profiling of terrorism suspects, and criticized the authorities for showing restraint toward people from “that part of the world.”

Many of the details of Trump’s proposals are sketchy and thus difficult to analyze. He has not said precisely what elements of New York’s stop-and-frisk policy he would aim to export, or which versions of profiling he would favor, offering remarks in casual television interviews unaccompanied by more extensive proposals. A spokesman said Thursday that Trump did not intend to endorse racial or ethnic profiling.

But Trump has insistently described law enforcement and security services as hemmed in by concerns about “political correctness,” and has vowed to do away with them. He claimed on Monday that the police are so skittish about being accused of inappropriate profiling that they would balk at stopping someone who “looks like he’s got a massive bomb on his back,” if the suspect appeared to be of a certain background.

Trump’s policy prescriptions have stirred concern among some experts in national security and law enforcement, including prominent Republicans who warn that Trump’s agenda could undermine public safety by generating a backlash in communities that the police and intelligence officials rely upon for cooperation.

Michael Chertoff, who served as secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, said Trump’s characterization of law enforcement as hemmed in by political correctness was entirely unfounded.

“I’ve never heard of a cop or an intelligence person saying, ‘We’re not going to look at something because we’re afraid of offending people,'” he said. “It’s a disservice to our police and to our people in the security services to argue that they’ve been inhibited in pursuing genuine leads.”

Chertoff, a former federal judge and prosecutor, said profiling techniques not relating to ethnicity were available to the authorities, and ethnic profiling was counterproductive.

“Not only is it a waste of time, but you’re offending people who in many ways you want to be your allies,” he said, adding: “When you ethnically profile, you play into the hands of the enemy.”

If elected, Trump would have little direct power over local law enforcement, but presidents do set the tone at the Justice Department, which can sue municipalities that violate civil rights. Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department has sought to address racial unrest by scrutinizing police departments in cities like Baltimore and Cleveland. Trump has been critical of the Obama administration’s oversight of the police, raising the prospect that he would take a very different approach.

Presidents have far broader discretion in areas related to national security and immigration. In some instances, Trump has advocated for unprecedented measures that would be unlikely to survive legal scrutiny, such as a proposal to ban all Muslim immigration that he offered during the Republican primaries.

Trump has also proposed enlisting local law enforcement agencies to fulfill his promise to deport millions of people who entered the country illegally, largely from Latin America and Asia. He has pledged to “expand and revitalize” a federal program known as 287(g) which empowers local police departments to help enforce federal immigration law.

But like New York’s stop-and-frisk policy, this program has come under fire for its racial impact. In 2012, the Obama administration discontinued its most hotly criticized element, which allowed the police to question people about their immigration status on the street, following concerns that it violated the rights of American citizens of Hispanic descent.

“In some places, local law enforcement wound up picking up people who were citizens or who had legal status in the country,” said David Martin, who served as principal deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security from January 2009 to December 2010. “There has been no close attention at all on the part of the Trump campaign policy people to see what’s being done right now, what is effective and what are the trade-offs that the Obama administration is making.”

Although another element of the program, which deports people who have been charged with crimes, has been kept in place, Trump contends that Obama “recklessly gutted” the 287(g) program, and has promised to revive it.

Boris Epshteyn, a campaign spokesman, said Thursday that Trump favored only policies “within the bounds of the Constitution.” He said there were versions of a stop-and-frisk policy that would pass legal muster, and Trump favored profiling people based on their activities and nations of origin, rather than using racial and ethnic criteria.

“Donald Trump favors stop-and-frisk to be one of the many tools that are utilized by law enforcement in this country,” Epshteyn said. “He wants it to be applied by police departments where it is necessary.”

He said the 287(g) program could be re-iapplied in a way that would be effective and avoid discrimination. “It does not make sense to scrap a viable and successful program just because folks complained about it,” he said.

Support for aggressive policing has long been part of Trump’s political persona, and he has been rewarded in the presidential race with support from a number of law enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police, a national union that endorsed his campaign last week.

Its executive director, Jim Pasco, cautioned that the organization did not necessarily subscribe to all of Trump’s views. The endorsement, he said, was “based on a sense that Mr. Trump is willing to listen to police officers.”

The union has long been against racial profiling, Pasco noted, adding that he had reservations about the possible use of local police departments to bring “the hammer down on the illegal immigrants who are otherwise not breaking laws.”

“You have to balance that need for cooperation and confidence from the community, particularly in terms of witnesses and early warnings to potential problems, against what might conceivably be a lesser problem,” Pasco said. “And that would be somebody staying over their visa, for example.”

Some of Trump’s ideas have been tried: He said Thursday morning that his suggestion of stop-and-frisk policing was aimed mainly at Chicago, which is experiencing a spike in violent crime.

But Chicago has tried to curb crime by using stop-and-frisk methods, pursuing the strategy aggressively under a new police chief in 2011. By 2013, its use of the tactic was considered even more pervasive than New York City’s, according to Wesley G. Skogan, a political science professor at Northwestern University.

In summer 2014, the Chicago police made 250,000 stops that did not result in arrests; 72 percent were of African-Americans, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The Chicago police dramatically reduced the number of stops after the ACLU threatened to sue and the Illinois Legislature passed a law requiring more oversight of stops.

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which challenged New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy in court, said the tactic effectively treated “race as a proxy for criminality.”

“The price of stopping every black person is intolerable to communities of color,” Warren said. “Furthermore, when those policies don’t work, they feel more like social control or collective punishment.”