Trump’s praise of ‘stop-and-frisk’ has Boston teens worried
Nathaniel McLean-Nichols knows what it’s like to be stereotyped by the police.
Last summer, the 19-year-old University of Massachusetts Boston sophomore was stopped near his home by a Boston police officer investigating a fire of suspicious origin in Dorchester. McLean-Nichols says the officer grilled him for information and threatened to take him to a police station. He walked away from the encounter feeling like he had done something wrong, even though he knew he hadn’t.
McLean-Nichols, who is black and has shoulder-length dreadlocks, says he has to walk through high-crime neighborhoods to get to his home and he frequently wears hoodies.
“I’m thinking, ‘What did I do?’ Even though I’m innocent I still feel like I did something wrong,” he said. “I was demonizing myself.”
With the election of Donald Trump on Tuesday, McLean-Nichols and other Boston teens said they now fear they could be unfairly targeted by police more often. That fear is based on Trump’s praise for New York City’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2013 because it disproportionately targeted people of color. Nonetheless, during his campaign, Trump said the practice should be adopted nationally.
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