As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump faced off for the first time Monday night, Chicago’s extraordinary gun violence became a hot topic of the debate, however, the presidential candidates clashed on how to solve the crisis.
Comparing Chicago to a “war-torn country,” Republican candidate Donald Trump repeated his refrain for a return of “law and order,” pushing the stop-and-frisk tactic that New York City police officers used until it was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.
When debate moderator and NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt countered Trump’s call by saying, “the argument is that it’s a form of racial profiling,” Trump replied, “No, the argument is that we have to take the guns away from these people that have them and they are bad people that shouldn't have them."
"These are felons," Trump continued. "These are people that are bad people that shouldn't be... When you have 3,000 shootings in Chicago from Jan. 1, when you have 4,000 people killed in Chicago by guns, from the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama, his hometown, you have to have stop-and-frisk.”
Democratic candidate Clinton later said, “Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional, in part, because it was ineffective. It did not do what it needed to do.”
Clinton continued, “We cannot just say law and order. We have to say... We have to come forward with a plan that is going to divert people from the criminal justice system, deal with mandatory minimum sentences, which have put too many people away for too long for doing too little.”
Both candidates did agree that community policing is essential, as is rebuilding trust between police and the public they serve.
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As far as their strategies to fight crime, while Trump called for stop-and-frisk, Clinton called for federal money to retrain police officers and more second chance programs.
