Trump injects Chicago crime into debate: ‘A war-torn country?’

Chicago’s bloody streets took center stage in the historic presidential debate Monday night, as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump singled out the city, comparing it to a “war-torn country.”

“We have a situation where we have our inner cities — African-Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous,” Trump said during a question about how to heal America’s racial divide. “You walk down the street, you get shot. In Chicago, they’ve had thousands of shootings, thousands since Jan. 1. Thousands of shootings. And I say, where is this? Is this is a war-torn country? What are we doing?”

Trump said it’s essential to bring back “law and order,” including, he said, using the controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy.

“When you have 4,000 people killed in Chicago by guns from the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama — his home town — you have to have stop-and-frisk. You need more police. You need a better community relation,” Trump said.

Chicago has logged about 4,200 homicides since Obama took office, according to city statistics.

Both Trump and Clinton called for better relations between communities and the police.

“We have to restore trust between communities and the police,” Clinton said.

“We have to work to make sure our police are using the best training, the best techniques, that they are well prepared to use force only when necessary. Everyone should be respected by the law and everyone should respect the law.”

Clinton also said the nation needs to do more to address “systemic racism in our criminal justice system.”

The city’s much-publicized bloodshed has been a frequent theme for Trump during the campaign.

Last week, the Republican presidential nominee, speaking on “Fox & Friends,” said he supports using “stop-and-frisk” policing solely in Chicago, a city, he said, that has become more dangerous than some “war-torn” countries.

And in August, in another Fox appearance, Trump claimed that he’d spoken to “a couple of very top police,” who assured him they could solve the city’s crime problem in a week.

Trump brought up the city in July at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, when he blamed the Obama administration for reversing “decades of progress” in bringing down homicide rates nationally. In that speech, he singled out Chicago, saying, “In the President’s home town of Chicago, more than 2,000 have been the victims of shootings this year alone.”