NYPD fact-checks Donald Trump’s debate claims on crime

The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton drew a plethora of fact checkers, poised and ready to scrutinize every statement uttered by either candidate Monday night.

The New York Police Department, somewhat unexpectedly, joined the fact-checking fray.

While on the topic of race relations, Trump reiterated his recent campaign trail declaration that black and Latino Americans “are living in hell” and that the solution is to expand New York’s “stop-and-frisk” policy, which has been curtailed in recent years. The controversial police tactic, ruled unconstitutional by a judge, was primarily used against black and Latino New Yorkers.

But the NYPD rejected Trump’s argument.

J. Peter Donald, the department’s assistant commissioner for communication and public information, attempted to counter Trump’s claims on Twitter. Donald posted stats showing a marked decrease in citywide crime, which corresponded with the reduction of stop-and-frisk since 2011.

Stop-and-frisk has long been the subject of intense scrutiny, particularly from civil rights organizations, for unfairly targeting minorities.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, for example, has been tracking the NYPD’s use of the practice since the New York City Council ordered the department produce quarterly stop-and-frisk statistics in 2002. According to an analysis of this data by the NYCLU in 2015, the overwhelming majority of people stopped and frisked by the police were not found guilty of a crime.

“No, you’re wrong,” Trump interjected, arguing that the judge in that case was very “against-police.” He also noted that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio could have appealed to preserve the stop-and-frisk policy but “refused to go forward with the case.”

Hillary Clinton seized the opportunity to point out that since de Blasio, a Democrat and vocal Clinton supporter, took office in 2014, the homicide rate in the city has continued to drop.

“You’re wrong,” Trump repeated, this time interrupting Clinton to insist that “murders are up.”

Once again, the NYPD’s J. Peter Donald took to Twitter to prove that it was Trump who was “wrong.”

The Republican presidential nominee had likely been referring to an FBI report released ahead of the debate Monday, which showed a marked increase in violent crime across the U.S. in 2015.

Though the FBI highlighted a jump in nationwide murders between 2014 and 2015, the report also noted that the violent crime rate in 2015 was well below that of 2012 and years prior.

According to more recent NYPD data, there have been significantly fewer murders in New York City so far than there were at this time in 2015.