Former President Trump on Friday accepted the endorsement of the nation’s largest police union and indicated he would pursue policies in a second term to bolster police immunity and encourage the use of controversial practices such as stop and frisk.
Trump addressed a gathering of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) national board of trustees, which is holding its fall meeting in Charlotte, N.C. The stop allowed Trump to visit a key battleground state and tout the backing of the nation’s largest police union.
“With your help, we will restore public safety to our streets, we will bring back law and order to our nation, and we will give the heroes in blue the power to legally protect us and the respect that you deserve, more than any other group of people,” he said.
Trump said if he wins in November, he would sign legislation to “strengthen protections for police officers” and would “crack down on Marxist prosecutors,” citing district attorneys in Philadelphia and Los Angeles specifically.
He also called for a return to “proven crime fighting methods, including stop and frisk and broken windows policing.” Trump has previously praised the use of stop and frisk policing and its use in New York City under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R).
The way the city was carrying out the practice — in which police stop, question and frisk a person on the grounds of reasonable suspicion that either the person is dangerous or a crime has been committed — was ruled to have violated the Constitution by a federal judge in 2013.
Trump also said Friday he would push for a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for human smuggling, life sentences for child trafficking and the death penalty for killing a police officer. And he reiterated his plan to carry out a massive deportation operation that would rely on local law enforcement.
Trump attacked Vice President Harris, his opponent in November, as a far-left radical prosecutor dating back to her time working as San Francisco’s district attorney.
He cited her past support for a bail fund for demonstrators during the protests in the summer of 2020 to argue she was soft on crime, and he asserted her position on border security has allowed crime to fester, citing a series of crimes allegedly committed by migrants.
The FOP, which boasts more than 375,000 members, said it considered the records of both candidates, as well as Trump’s answers to a questionnaire and a letter from the Harris campaign outlining its positions on criminal justice and policing issues.
“During his first term, President Trump made it clear he supported law enforcement and border security,” FOP President Patrick Yoes said in a statement. “In the summer of 2020, he stood with us when very few would. With his help, we defeated the ‘defund the police’ movement and, finally, we are seeing crime rates decrease. If we want to maintain these lower crime rates, we must re-elect Donald Trump.”
While Trump has routinely positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, the Harris campaign and Democrats have countered by pointing to federal statistics that show violent crime is dropping under President Biden.
FBI statistics showed violent crime fell considerably in the first months of 2024 compared to the same time last year.
The Biden administration has also highlighted federal funding for local police departments to counter claims from Trump and other Republicans that Democrats want to defund the police, a movement that began following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer.
The Harris campaign and its allies have also sought to undercut Trump on the issue of crime by attacking the former president over his response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his own legal problems.
Trump has repeatedly indicated he would look to pardon at least some of those convicted for their actions on Jan. 6, when rioters who supported him violently clashed with law enforcement and stormed the Capitol to try and stop the certification of the 2020 election results.
“Donald Trump will make up lies, because the truth is, he doesn't care that he put my life and the lives of my fellow Capitol Police officers in danger on Jan. 6,” Harry Dunn, a former officer who has endorsed Harris, said on a campaign call. “He doesn't care that it was because he encouraged a mob of violent insurrectionists to march on the Capitol that five officers died because of that day. And now he's running to pardon those very same insurrectionists.”
