Trump touts police union endorsement, alerts he would encourage 'cease and frisk'

Former President Trump on Friday accepted the endorsement of the nation’s largest police union and indicated he would pursue insurance policies in a second time period to bolster police immunity and encourage the usage of controversial practices akin to cease and frisk.

Trump addressed a gathering of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Nationwide Board of Trustees, which is holding its fall assembly in Charlotte, N.C. The cease allowed Trump to go to a key battleground state and tout the backing of the nation’s largest police union.

“Together with your assist, we are going to restore public security to our streets, we are going to carry again legislation and order to our nation, and we are going to give the heroes in blue the ability to legally defend us and the respect that you simply deserve, greater than every other group of individuals,” he stated.

Trump stated if he wins in November, he would signal laws to “strengthen protections for cops” and would “crack down on Marxist prosecutors,” citing district attorneys in Philadelphia and Los Angeles particularly.

He additionally known as for a return to “confirmed crime combating strategies, together with cease and frisk and damaged home windows policing.” Trump has beforehand praised the use of cease and frisk policing and its use in New York Metropolis underneath former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R).

The way in which during which the town was finishing up the apply, during which police cease, query and frisk an individual on the grounds of cheap suspicion that both the particular person is harmful or a criminal offense has been dedicated, was dominated to have violated the Constitution by a federal decide in 2013.

Trump on Friday additionally stated he would push for a 10-year obligatory minimal sentence for human smuggling, life sentences for youngster trafficking and the loss of life penalty for killing a police officer. And he reiterated his plan to hold out a large deportation operation that may depend on native legislation enforcement.

Trump attacked Vice President Harris, his opponent in November’s debate, as a far-left radical prosecutor relationship again to her time working as San Francisco’s district legal professional. 

He cited her previous help for a bail fund for demonstrators throughout the protests in the summertime of 2020 to argue she was gentle on crime, and he asserted her place on border safety has allowed crime to fester, citing a collection of crimes allegedly dedicated by migrants.

FOP, which boasts greater than 375,000 members, stated it thought-about the data of each candidates, in addition to Trump’s solutions to a questionnaire and a letter from the Harris marketing campaign outlining its positions on legal justice and policing points.

“Throughout his first time period, President Trump made it clear he supported legislation enforcement and border safety,” FOP President Patrick Yoes stated in an announcement. “In the summertime of 2020, he stood with us when only a few would. Along with his assist, we defeated the ‘defund the police’ motion and, lastly, we’re seeing crime charges lower. If we need to keep these decrease crime charges, we should re-elect Donald Trump.” 

Whereas Trump has routinely positioned himself because the “legislation and order” candidate, the Harris marketing campaign and Democrats have countered by pointing to federal statistics that present violent crime is dropping underneath President Biden

FBI statistics confirmed violent crime fell considerably within the first months of 2024 in comparison with the identical time final yr.

The Biden administration has additionally highlighted federal funding for native police departments to counter claims from Trump and different Republicans that Democrats need to defund the police, a motion that started following the homicide of George Floyd in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer.

The Harris marketing campaign and its allies have additionally sought to undercut Trump on the difficulty of crime by attacking the previous president over his response to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and his personal authorized issues.

Trump has repeatedly indicated he would look to pardon a minimum of a few of these convicted for his or her actions on Jan. 6, when rioters who supported him violently clashed with legislation enforcement and stormed the Capitol to attempt to cease the certification of the 2020 election outcomes.

“Donald Trump will make up lies, as a result of the reality is, he would not care that he put my life and the lives of my fellow Capitol cops at risk on January sixth,” Harry Dunn, a former Capitol officer who has endorsed Harris, stated on a marketing campaign name. “He would not care that it was as a result of he inspired a mob of violent insurrectionists to march on the Capitol that 5 officers died due to that day. And now he is operating to pardon these exact same insurrectionists.”