Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016 | 2 a.m.
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View more of the Sun's opinion section
On Wednesday, Donald Trump proposed the implementation of a “stop-and-frisk” policy in America’s urban cities. Trump’s ill-conceived proposal was intended to answer a question about what he would do to stop violence in urban cities. However, Trump’s stop-and-frisk proposal actually answers the obscene question Trump put to black America as part of his feigned outreach efforts: “What do you have to lose?”
During its apartheid era, South Africa’s government brutally enforced a set of “pass laws” that required black males over the age of 16 to carry passbooks on their person at all times. They were required to submit both themselves and their passbooks to public inspection on demand by any police officer or other government agent. They lived in fear of harassment, humiliation under color of law and knowing that their lives were often unjustly disrupted with arrest and oppressive fines simply by living as a black male in a city in South Africa. No South African, black or white, who loves their country would go back in history to a period where pass laws were a possibility.
Likewise, the stop-and-frisk policies proposed by Trump have been widely condemned within black communities as oppressive and unconstitutional. Between January 2004 and June 2012, more than 3.5 million black and Hispanic citizens were subject to stop-and-frisk policing tactics by the New York City Police Department. In 2008 alone, more than 500,000 individuals were stopped and frisked by police officers in New York City. Of those stopped, 88 percent of the time, no criminal activity was discovered, no fines levied and no citations were issued. These policies target black and Hispanic citizens simply because they are nonwhites in urban areas.
The Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution allows a person to be detained by police if the officer has a reasonable suspicion supported by articulable fact of criminal activity. In practice, the implementation of broad stop-and-frisk policies eliminates the core expectation that an officer would only stop an individual and intrude in his or her life when that officer’s articulable facts meet the constitutionally imposed standard.
What do we have to lose? The answer is simple: our constitutional protections. The right to enjoy the day without being stopped and frisked as a result of one’s skin color. The right to send our children and teenage boys into their communities without fear that, even when they are law-abiding in their conduct, they could be forced to engage with law enforcement.
As a businessman and a lawyer, I find this stop-and-frisk proposal unacceptable based on constitutional law and precedent. As a black father, this issue cuts even deeper. I dread being forced to explain to my family why we have been stopped and humiliated for no defensible reason.
The policy represents an aggressive disregard of individual constitutional rights. It dehumanizes the individual who has been stopped and frisked, and classifies their existence as that of a second-class citizen. Moreover, it provides immunity and cover for illegal, oppressive actions under color of law. No one who values democracy and respects the Constitution wants to revive the stigma and violence of the apartheid era.
Trump’s national stop-and-frisk proposal will not “make America great again.” It will take us back to the Jim Crow era, when blacks had no reasonable expectation of walking the streets free of harassment. Not even South Africa would ever want to go back.
Uri Clinton is a Las Vegas gaming attorney and founder of the Joyce Anderson Memorial Foundation, which awards scholarships to at-risk students in the Las Vegas Valley.
