Is Stop-And-Frisk Unconstitutional? DJ Envy Supports Donald Trump's Claims That Police Tactic Is Effective

Stop-and frisk policing tactics "had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City," Donald Trump told Hillary Clinton Monday during the first presidential debate before he suggested that other cities follow the strategy to help reduce crime. The practice was not unconstitutional, the Republican nominee added.

Stop-and-frisk was deemed unconstitutional in 2013 by U.S. District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, but Trump isn't the only person who had kind words for the policing method that was found to disproportionately target, arrest and incarcerate young black and Latino men. New York City radio personality DJ Envy apparently supports it, too.

While discussing race relations Tuesday morning on the 105.1 "The Breakfast Club" radio show, Envy told his co-host Charlamagne Tha God that stop-and-frisk “got a lot of guns off the streets” before he went on to explain the only reason the program failed was because of the “NYPD was doing it unconstitutional.”

“[NYPD] were stop and frisking anybody and didn’t do areas where there was a lot of crime in those areas. They said that if was done the right way, it probably would be a lot higher. But they did get a lot of guns off the streets regardless, even if you could say it’s one percent or .1 percent, they got tons of guns off the street, which is the most important thing,” Envy said.

Envy's statement put him in the hot seat on Twitter, where many of his followers voiced their disapproval for his comments and called the Queens native out of touch.

A report by the New York Civil Liberties Union said that more than 5 million innocent people have been involved in stop-and-frisk measures since 2002. In 2013, when stop-and-frisk was first ruled unconstitutional, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 191,558 times. 54 percent of Stop and Frisk instances involved black people while Hispanics accounted for 29 percent. Only 11 percent of stop-and-frisk incidents in New York in 2013 involved white people. While the data does not break down how many of people from specific races were innocent, the report said that 88 percent of people overall searched during Stop and Frisk procedures in 2013 were innocent.

When Scheindlin ruled the controversial procedure unconstitutional, the administration of then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg filed an appeal. However, the appeal was suspended by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the matter was returned to be approved by a different judge, but the request to cancel Scheindlin’s decision was denied. The administration of current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio eventually dropped the appeal completely and Schedindlin’s unconstitutional ruling remained.