President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, September 20, 2018 Mike Segar | Reuters

President Donald Trump on Monday touted so-called stop and frisk policing tactics, telling attendees at a chiefs of police convention that he has instructed the Justice Department to work toward reinstating the practice in Chicago. The city's police department voluntarily agreed to rein in its use of "stop and frisk" in 2015. "'Stop and frisk' works and it was meant for problems like Chicago," Trump said during his speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Convention in Orlando, Florida. As evidence of how successful random police searches of suspicious-looking individuals have been in the past, Trump noted the record of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City. "Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, had a very strong program of stop and frisk, and it went from an unacceptably dangerous city to one of the safest cities in the country and I think the safest big city in the country, so it works," Trump told the police chiefs. "Got to be properly applied, but stop and frisk works."

The 2015 agreement reached between the ACLU and the Chicago Police Department, he said, "ties law enforcement's hands." While it's difficult to isolate the effect of one policing tactic, the crime rate in New York City continued to drop even after stop and frisk was abandoned, suggesting it may not have played a significant role.

Tough on crime

Ever since launching his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has portrayed himself as a law and order candidate, making support for law enforcement officers a pillar of his stump speeches. As president, Trump has drawn criticism for encouraging law enforcement officers to treat suspects harshly, up to and including what sounded to many like support for violating constitutional rights. In April 2017, Trump told a group of law enforcement officers on Long Island, New York, "Please don't be too nice," when detaining suspects. "Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?" he said. "You can take the hand away, OK?" The comment received applause and laughter from his audience, but swift pushback from law enforcement associations. Trump's support for tough policing tactics has also been reflected in policy decisions by his administration, such as the Justice Department's relaunch of the war on drugs in 2017. On Monday, Trump announced an additional $42 million for what he said were innovative programs to combat the nation's drug epidemic. More recently, Trump used his administration's detention of families caught illegally crossing the U.S. border as an example of how tough he is on crime. The policy resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents and held in detention starting in the spring of this year. Several federal judges have since ordered that the Trump administration must reunite these children with their parents. During his speech Monday, Trump attacked Democrats, saying the party's members had vilified law enforcement officers, especially those with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A double standard?