Daymond John, the CEO of FUBU, is no stranger to being stopped and frisked by police.
“I was stop-and-frisked maybe twenty times in my life as a young man,” John, who is now 47, told CNNMoney. “Going back to the theory that some people think that this is the thing to do, I wasn’t just stop-and-frisked. I would be stopped, frisked, beat up, thrown in cars, and things of that nature.”
The issue of stop-and-frisk was raised during the presidential debate on Monday.
Republican candidate Donald Trump hailed stop-and-frisk as an effective way to reduce crime, but the program has often been criticized for unfairly targeting people of color. The program in New York City was reigned in by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in 2014.
The concept of stop-and-frisk and racial profiling is timely in the wake of several fatal police shootings of black men.
Earlier in September, two black men were shot and killed in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Being an African-American male, I’ve lost a lot of my friends to gun violence in this world — due to police and others,” John said.
But he noted the recent protests about racial issues in the U.S. and said he thinks it’s “beautiful” that we’re able to discuss serious issues in lots of different ways.
And he emphasized that stop-and-frisk is an issue that concerns everyone.
“Many things that have been healed in this country were not healed by one person or one color,” he said. “It was all people who cared about the right things to do.”
