Attorney General Jeff Sessions drew a parallel between a recent increase in Chicago violence and groups like the ACLU, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter.

During remarks at the Valor Survive and Thrive Conference in Waukegan, IL on Wednesday, Sessions quoted a study by University of Utah researchers that showed a link between the decline of stop-and-frisk policing and violent homicides.

“After the consent decree pushed by the ACLU went into effect in 2016, these stops declined by 75 percent,” Sessions said. “Chicago police made 24 percent fewer arrests in 2016 than they made in 2015, and about half as many arrests as they made in 2011.”

The dangers, Sessions noted, were “immediately obvious,” but not “to the politicians, the media, or the activists.”

“As former U.S. Attorney Fardon put it, ‘cops stopped making stops and kids started shooting more,’ Sessions continued. “The professors who studied Chicago call it ‘the ACLU effect.’ Policing went down and crime went up.”

The attorney general then pointed directly to groups he considers responsible for the decline of stop-and-frisk policing.

“There’s a clear lesson here: if you want more shootings and more death, then listen to the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa,” said Sessions. “If you want public safety, then listen to the police professionals who have been studying this for 35 years.”

Sessions had long been a critic of Chicago’s high crime rate and the city’s defiance of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“Respect for the rule of law has broken down [in Chicago],” he said last August.

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