The job of law enforcement is to keep communities safe. When legislators require state and local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration policy, they make it much harder for officers to do their job. Sheriffs and chiefs have long voiced their concerns that asking officers to be immigration agents will scare undocumented community members out of calling on law enforcement for help. The story is even more severe. Police who are required to look for illegal immigrants are going to find fewer drug dealers.
A Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity report has found that 1 in 3 Salt Lake City, Utah residents are unwilling to report drug-related crimes when law enforcement can detain someone based on their immigration status. According to the report, submitted to the House Judiciary Committee in advance of our testimony next week, not only are undocumented immigrants less likely to report crime in the face of officers who can ask for their papers--but both Latino citizens and Whites are more likely to leave drug crimes unreported. These data echo the concerns that law enforcement executives have expressed for the past decade and communicated again to Attorney General Holder earlier this week.
The report also sheds light on Arizona's controversial State Bill 1070, signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010. The law requires that Arizona law enforcement also do a job that, until now, has been reserved for federal immigration agents, namely identifying and detaining individuals whose immigration status may be in question. And doing the job of immigration enforcement makes it harder for law enforcement to keep their communities safe.
It is intuitive that undocumented immigrants would be reluctant to report crimes if they feared deportation. But, according to the CPLE report, a significant segment of Whites would lose so much respect for law enforcement that they would refuse to report drug offenses.
And this is why the Arizona SB 1070, and similar policies like federal 287(g) and Secure Communities initiatives, are so troubling to many in law enforcement. Fighting crime without the help of one's community is like trying to disarm a hidden mine by stomping on the ground. By the time you have found the problem, it is already too late.
This places law enforcement in a precarious--and all too familiar situation. Law enforcement executives agree that officers should enforce and uphold the law regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin. However, law enforcement is formally tasked with enforcing the laws that legislators sign. Consequently, if the law of the land is racist, it becomes the job of law enforcement to enforce racism.
Given law enforcement's history as an effective tool of social oppression, it should not be surprising that many law enforcement officials across the nation are troubled at the proposition of mandatory immigration enforcement practices that appear motivated by prejudice--a point the report also supports--and are likely to result in increased crime. The profession of law enforcement has long struggled to regain the trust it lost when it was directed to detain runaway slaves, patrol Japanese internment camps, and enforce laws that kept water fountains and schools racially segregated.
Yet, despite these historical injustices, individuals become officers out of a desire to assist others and make a difference in society. That is why it is so discouraging for officers to show up to work knowing that the community they serve suspects them of racism. It is even more disheartening to realize that by doing their jobs, they are compromising the civil rights of community members. It is the intention of officers to serve the public with integrity. That is why so many in law enforcement are voicing their objection to a change in their jobs that would once again institutionalize racial profiling and biased policing--while depriving the public of their safety.
Chris Burbank is the Chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department in Salt Lake City, Utah. Phillip Atiba Goff is the co-founder and executive director of research for the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity, and Assistant Professor of Psychology at UCLA. Tracie L. Keesee is the co-founder and executive director of operation for the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity, and Division Chief of Research, Training, and Technology of the Denver Police Department
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That goes for both our federal law enforcemen
Enough weak excuses for not enforcing immigratio
Shall I provide more facts?
http://imm
What's more, there is no evidence linking immigrants (documente
As for the state being "bankrupt,
Thanks to people like Bill O'Reilly, laws like Arizona's SB 1070 are discussed in a media environmen
Heaven forbid it would be difficult for law enforcemen
Common sense is they should check it anyhow without a law, but can't do that because the last thing our government wants is law enforcemen
Crime down during a recession, guess that blows the idea that people are criminals because of their economic situation down the tubes.
You're also in the minority of law enforcemen
If you did do any of your own research, at all, you would see that crime in immigrant heavy areas like boarder cities and states is actually down, and below the national average. So to say that millions of innocents are being harmed by illegals is just plain gullibilit
What makes the law illegal is that law violates every US citizen's CONSTITUTI
States have no power to pass immigratio
The point being. Despite what anyone might say, the population that this law was intended to target is clear. And profiling based on ethnicity is, in fact, racist.
The law is not racist in intent nor will be in practice since many if not most of the cops are Hispanic. I am sure that they cannot WAIT to ask their friends, family and others for their PAPERS PLEASE based on thier ethinc background
Please, please, please....
"[a]s we understand it, the statute DOES NOT REQUIRE a suspect to give the officer a driver's license or ANY OTHER DOCUMENT. Provided that the suspect either states his name or communicat
What would his reasonable suspicion be that the person has already committed or was about to commit a crime that is required to make the stop in the first place, could it be because he's not white? He HAS NONE unless he personally sees him jump the fence. It also states that the suspect does not in fact have to produce documentat
You have absolutely shown YOUR ignorance by simply parroting whatever you've heard on FOX or
So, let's see....I just saw this guy shoot this other guy for his drugs but...wait
Odd.
If anyone needs to reply, do it with facts, and keep the hate, anger and name calling out of it.
Thank you.
The public view them as a necessary evil. We avoid them like a virus or disease. When you get within visual range of a police officer they inevitably find some thing to harrass you about. Making average daily life more hell.
The police officers I see everyday are vacant from high crime areas. They inhabit nooks and crannies surroundin
They are revenue agents for the county and city and less of a law enforcemen
They are never around when you need them and there's too damn many when you dont.
Like I said, we admire the reasons police officers stick it out but even with numerous police officers in my family I have to say they are a necessary evil. We don't think of police officers as Good Summaritan
The reason that legal citizens would be scared by SB 1070 is the constant chant from foriegn nationals that it will violate civil rights. Even Mexico has chimed in about it violating thier rights but they only have rights in THEIR nation, not ours. Same goes for their citizens.
So he will quit if Utah enacts a similar law? Enjoy your retirement
The point I am making is that the one right they are demanding is one that we don't have either. That is the right to ignore the laws that don't suit their purposes. All immigrants and visitors are covered under our Bill of Rights and Constituti
You should not assume things.