Donald Trump claims stop-and-frisk had a 'very, very big impact' on New York City's crime — here's what the data really says

donald trump debate
donald trump debate

(Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the presidential debate at Hofstra University on Monday night in Hempstead, New York.Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Donald Trump recently came out in full support of stop-and-frisk policing. And he used the first presidential debate on Monday night to hammer home his point.

"In New York City, stop-and-frisk, we had 2,200 murders, and stop-and-frisk brought it down to 500 murders," Trump said.

He continued:

"But we went from 2,200 to 500. And it was continued on by Mayor Bloomberg. And it was terminated by current mayor [Bill de Blasio]. But stop-and-frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City. Tremendous beyond belief. So when you say it has no impact, it really did. It had a very, very big impact."

But a look at the statistics casts doubt on most of these claims, especially Trump's praise of stop-and-frisk, a policing tactic in which officers can search anyone on the street that many today consider unconstitutional and ineffective.

Let's start with the back-and-forth between Trump and Clinton on whether crime in New York City has increased or decreased under Mayor Bill de Blasio:

Clinton: "Well, it's also fair to say, if we're going to talk about mayors, that under the current mayor, crime has continued to drop, including murders. So there is ..."

Trump: "No, you're wrong. You're wrong."

Clinton: "No, I'm not."

Trump: "Murders are up. All right. You check it."

There has been a slight increase in year-to-date murders since 2013, when de Blasio was elected. According to the New York City Police Department's crime statistics database, Compstat, the city experienced 243 murders through mid-September in 2013, 228 in 2014, 257 in 2015, and 246 in 2016. The difference of three murders from 2013 to 2016 constitutes a 1.2% increase.

But year-to-date total crime — a compilation of seven major categories: murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto — has fallen significantly since de Blasio took office. Year-to-date crime as of mid-September was at 78,201 in 2013; 75,916 in 2014; 73,985 in 2015; and 72,008 in 2016, according to Compstat. As a whole, crime in those categories fell 7.9% from 2013 to 2016.

And that decrease happened while stops carried out under stop-and-frisk decreased as well.

J. Peter Donald, the assistant commissioner for communication and public information at the NYPD, called the above a "great chart."

Analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union, a civil-rights organization often at odds with the NYPD, confirmed the decline in stops. The NYCLU relies on self-reported data from NYPD officers, however, which can prove problematic — especially because a recent report found that in many cases officers failed to document the suspicion that would have warranted the stop.

Regardless, in 2013, New Yorkers were reportedly stopped by the police 191,558 times. By 2015, that number decreased to 22,939, according to the NYCLU.

Over the past several years, stop-and-frisk policing has gone by the wayside across the US. In 2013, a judge ruled New York City's use of it unconstitutional and racially discriminating. And in 2015, a report from President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing reported that "stop-and-frisk campaigns harass law-abiding black and brown citizens without contributing to public safety."

As for Trump's claims that New York City went from having 2,200 murders to 500 murders, he's most likely referring to 1990, when the number of murders peaked at 2,245, up 17.8% from the previous year. More than two decades passed before that number dropped below 500 in 2012.

NYPD historical murder rate
NYPD historical murder rate

(NYPD Crime Data Warehouse)

Most important, New York City's notable drop in murders correlates to a nationwide drop in murders and crime, especially in large cities. And while it's hard to pinpoint a cause, theories range from a decline in lead poisoning to a decline in alcohol consumption.

Though it's difficult to isolate stop-and-frisk as a variable, simple data shows that crime continued to decrease even coupled with a substantial decline in stops.

In 2002, when Michael Bloomberg — still a firm believer in stop-and-frisk's ability to "keep New York safe" — first took office as mayor, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 97,296 times, according to the NYCLU. Stops peaked in 2011, still under Bloomberg's purview, with 685,724 stops. By 2015, however, stops reached a pre-2002 low of 22,939.

Despite a nearly 97% reduction in stops, the number of crimes barely changed from 2011 to 2015. Crimes totaled 74,566 in 2011, compared with 73,985 in 2015.

While the decline in crime was starting to flatten out, The Washington Post's Max Ehrenfreund pointed to a study from Jeffrey Fagan, a legal scholar and Columbia University professor, and other researchers on Operation Impact, a program under Bloomberg and Ray Kelly, then the police commissioner, that placed newly graduated police rookies on foot patrol in the city's highest-crime neighborhoods, known as impact zones.

stop stop and frisk protest
stop stop and frisk protest

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The program presented an opportunity to study whether investigative stops, or stops conducted with reasonable suspicion that a crime had occurred, was occurring, or was about to occur, contributed to New York's stark decline in crime rate, according to the authors.

The researchers concluded, however, that Operation Impact had a "statistically significant but relatively small association with a reduction in total crimes." That reduction was most pronounced with probable-cause-related stops — which is not how a judge ruled New York was conducting them in 2013.

In fact, the study's authors warned against "the cost of extra intrusion and burdens on local residents that have no crime reduction benefit."

Based on his research, Fagan told The Washington Post that Trump's claims about stop-and-frisk were "not true, simply not accurate."

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