DJ Envy Is Catching Hell for Defending Unconstitutional Stop and Frisk Policing

On The Breakfast Club this morning, DJ Envy defended stop and frisk and got wrecked for it on Twitter.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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This morning on The Breakfast Club, DJ Envy dropped a painfully hot take about stop and frisk, and Twitter isn't having it.

The radio show was discussing last night's presidential debate, during which Donald Trump lied that stop and frisk A) wasn't ruled unconstitutional and that B) it worked "very well." 

After playing a clip from the debate, Charlamagne Tha God explains, "The truth to the matter is, man, there's twelve years of data that show in New York City stop and frisk just wasn't that effective."

DJ Envy countered that point, saying "No, it showed it took a lot of guns off the street"—Charlamagne chimes in that "No, it doesn't though"—"Now you can say it was only .1 percent." Switching to respond to Charlamagne's point, Envy asks, "What's 'not a lot of guns'? Nine-hundred guns off the street is 'not a lot of guns'?" Charlamagne fires back, "Where'd you get that number from?"

"In 2011, the last year that they did stop and frisk, they actually took, excuse me, 890 guns off the street," Envy says. 

Angela Yee responded by saying that stop and frisk didn't really reduce any crime or keep anyone safer, as the Brennan Center also concluded.

While acknowledging that "one gun taken off the street is a great thing," Charlamagne says, "Overall, it was just an excuse for police officers to harass African-American and Hispanic people." (When it was ruled unconstitutional, the judge described stop and frisk as a "policy of indirect racial profiling.")

"In certain cases, yes, [but] in certain cases it was done to pull guns off the street," Envy fired back. He said that last year New York confiscated around 200 guns, compared to the almost 900 during stop and frisk. 

Charlamagne then pointed out that the policy had been ruled unconstitutional—prompting Envy to jack one of Trump's lies and say that it actually wasn't (it was). 

After some crosstalk, Angela Yee laid down the law: "The facts are that it really just wasn't that effective, period." When Envy tried to make his point about guns again, she clapped back, "Guns are found in less than .2 percent of stops," a stat confirmed by the ACLU.

Using logic similar to Trump Jr.'s Skittles analogy, Envy suggested that the small percentage is irrelevant: "You can say .2 [percent], but I'll take .2 of a billion dollars. Yes, 900 guns off the street, you can say it's only .2 percent, but 900 guns off the street is a lot of guns off New York City." 

Angela Yee tries again to set Envy straight: "But for that .2 percent of stops they said that actually it [stop and frisk] was very intrusive to a lot of innocent people that were harassed by the police."

Envy defends the policy, saying that if it was applied more fairly across the board then it'd be all good. Angela Yee notes that in neighborhoods like Park Slope in Brooklyn, where blacks make up 24 percent of the population, 70 percent of the people stopped were African-Americans. Charlamagne added, "All stop and frisk did was give police officers who already wanna harass blacks and Hispanics a reason, lawfully, to harass blacks and Hispanics."

At that point, Angela Yee shifts the conversation to how widely-watched the debate was, and they ask for listeners to share their thoughts—and many did on Twitter. 

Many thought Envy's arguments destroyed any credibility he had by being so out of touch with the community:

Some people in the black community told him to GTFO:

But DJ Envy has doubled down:

And people are still pushing for Envy to be named the Donkey of the Day:

But it looks like Charlamagne is gonna laugh it off:

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