Chris Mangus is the police chief of Tucson, Arizona. He obviously has a problem in arresting certain law breaker, but, I bet if you decided to perform a little bit of petty theft you’d find yourself dealing with officers of the law
Tucson’s Police Chief: Sessions’s Anti-Immigrant Policies Will Make Cities More Dangerous
As the police chief here, I’m deeply troubled by the Trump administration’s campaign against “sanctuary cities,†which refuse to turn over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities. Washington is trying to retaliate against them by withholding funding for things like crime prevention, drug treatment and mental health programs.
Tucson is not technically a sanctuary city. But we are close to the border with Mexico and take pride in being welcoming to immigrants. Yet the government has warned us that our grants are in danger.
Still, while federal judges in Chicago and San Francisco have ruled against President Trump’s executive order to withhold money from sanctuary cities, the administration’s crackdown on immigrants is already having a chilling effect on police-community relations here. Many community members have told me that Latinos are not turning to us for help or working with us as often as they have in the past. Their growing sense of fear and distrust is clearly a consequence of the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Mr. Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Overall, illegal aliens tend to not report crimes in the first place, but, regardless, are we particularly concerned with criminals not reporting crimes against other criminals? If they have a problem, perhaps they should get the hell out of our country, which they are illegally present within. Perhaps Police Chief Mangus should actually uphold the law, not just the ones he likes. He takes an oath to uphold all laws.
The Justice Department could be playing a key role in building on the Obama-era policing reforms that many of my fellow police chiefs strongly support. Instead, the changes it wants to make — to force local police officers to cooperate much more closely with federal immigration authorities — will compromise public safety by reducing community confidence in law enforcement.
Here’s the thing: they aren’t our community. They’re another country’s community. We aren’t responsible for them.
The message from Washington is that cities need to refocus on “law and order.†Yet the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and Mr. Sessions’s reckless policies ignore a basic reality known by most good cops and prosecutors: If people are afraid of the police, if they fear they may become separated from their families or harshly interrogated based on their immigration status, they won’t report crimes or come forward as witnesses.
Yet, Mangus’ police arrest non-illegal aliens all the time who end up being separated from their families when they are sent to jail. Mangus continues going with all the same boilerplate on this subject, forgetting that it is his job to not pick and choose which crimes to enforce. If he’s not willing to enforce all laws, then perhaps he, and the other law enforcement supporters who protect illegals, should resign. Their first job is to protect citizens and those who are lawfully present in the United States.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: Tucson Police Chief: Upholding Federal Law By Cracking Down On Illegal Aliens Is Bad »
Current predictions of climate change may significantly underestimate the speed and severity of global warming, according to a new study.
To the editor: It’s official: The worst fire season in California history has arrived. Your editorial points out that our warming climate may have played an important role. (“
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