Arizona Illegal Immigrant Law Bad Policing

In the furor that has followed the signing of the Arizona illegal immigrant law by Governor Jan Brewer and supported by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (creator of the famed tent city jail and the self-proclaimed "Toughest Sheriff in America"), few have stopped to look at the effect it has on policing. In a word it is bad.

I come at this perspective after having served as a deputy sheriff in a border state - New Mexico (I am in the picture above as a patrol deputy sheriff in rural New Mexico).

First I was in Dona Ana County (a 4,000 square mile county with 50 miles along the Mexican border) and then as a Patrol Division deputy sheriff II. with the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office (a 2,500 square mile state capital county). I also served as a police chief in North Carolina and as an educator of law enforcers. I have worked for many years providing police services for legal and illegal immigrant populations.


Above: With fellow deputy sheriff in New Mexico.

And that's the key here, folks. The police provide police services. And we provide it to all. And we do it in a challenging economic, fiscally austerity-laden governmental structure. The Arizona law sets policing back many years.

BAD COMMUNITY RELATIONS

First off, the police rely on information. If you mandate that they investigate and arrest a very vulnerable population, those folks won't come forward with information. I would have thought that in policing a democratic society, we moved beyond intimidating the victim. We want to encourage victims to come forward with information.

As a police chief in North Carolina, I had a program where I spoke in uniform at churches all around the city in an effort to reach out to the community. I stopped my unmarked Ford Crown Victoria one day at a church that served Hispanics. They scattered afraid that I would try to deport them (under the Arizona law, deportation would happen only after a possible jail sentence and fine). I convinced the pastor that I wanted to reach out to their community and that they were deserving of the police's protective service also.



I spoke that Friday night (speaking some Spanish and some translated) and started to get more and more information from the good folks in that church. First it was little nuggets of information to test if I was trustworthy. Little by little the information got bigger. It crossed into items that effected the immigrants' legal neighbors. So the issues touched all and their information helped the entire community.

If nothing else, it is important to understand that easy victims are the first step for predators. They then become emboldened to prey on the legal residents of our nation. Crime and quality of life concerns do not know borders within our communities.

RACIAL PROFILING

I respectfully disagree with Sheriff Arpaio's interpretation of the mandate to investigate and detain upon a finding of reasonable suspicion concerning legal resident status. Sheriff Arpaio says that it is not racial profiling. I disagree. Having had to compile reasonable suspicion while investigating crimes, I can see how police officers and deputy sheriffs would have no choice. Any person who appears to be of darker color with an accent would have to have those facts as part of the reasonable suspicion building blocks.

Given the current scenario, people who have some of the "building blocks" (dark skin, accent) will be stopped repeatedly and questioned. That is more akin to a police state. We should not sacrifice what has made our country great to have an appearance of action.

The reasonable suspicion part of this will be legally challenged and officers will be confused as to how they can investigate without running afoul of legal issues. This is not as simple as the public thinks and officers cannot just move from the police-person consensual encounter to reasonable suspicion on flimsy information.

BURDEN TO SYSTEM

Sheriff Arpaio and others have contended that they run white people as well through the system. I disagree with that position from several angles. We need to have discretion as to who you run through the system to check for warrants and other information.

I know some agencies and officers have departmental or personal policies that call for running every person they come in contact with. That is not always advisable or feasible. Once the arrest warrant comes through, or the officer decides to make a lower priority arrest, he or she is tied up and is unable to handle higher level calls and assist other officers. The officer has no choice and has to follow the court ordered arrest warrant or, as in this case, the mandated detention of the illegal alien. Some agencies are too busy handling 911 calls for police service to be tied up handling smaller warrants or illegal alien investigations.

VICTIMIZING THE VICTIM

Worse yet, making arrests will have a chilling effect on victims. They will be afraid to come forward. This is something that we are already battling against and the law sets us way back.

The most vulnerable of victims, women and children, will suffer the most under this law. Domestic violence investigations is one area that has truly been dealt a blow now. Few victims will have the courage or trust that they need to overcome often brutal psychological, emotional, and physical abuse.

As a uniformed patrol officer in New Mexico, I had to repeatedly assure people that I was not Immigration or the Border Patrol. That I was not interested in their status, but rather in their safety. It was hard to gain their trust. This law shatters that trust for officers with boots in the dirt trying to gain information.

In my own experience as a uniformed peace officer, I often chose not to run someone who came to me as a victim as I knew arresting them would not be in the interest of justice. If I knew of the existence of an arrest warrant, that was different. But I certainly did not go out of my way to traumatize someone who already had come forward to me as a law enforcement officer. Sometimes at great personal peril.

UNFUNDED MANDATE

This is an unfunded mandate to already fiscally strapped counties and municipalities. Arresting, charging, and jailing a person is not cheap. Law enforcement can barely keep up with what they need to do for public safety, let alone this requirement that does not give the needed dollars to make it a realistic financial picture. This law does not just call for the turning over of illegal aliens to the feds for deportation. An entire investigation and prosecution has to take place, along with the expensive jailing of the accused, which has a jail sentence and fine attached to it. Only later does the possibility of deportation come up. And the federal government may nullify this by refusing to take the person.

This law, while an attempt to keep America whole, is blatantly un-American. It undermines many of the principles that we are founded on and places the police and county sheriff's offices in an untenable position. It is at odds with our mission to gain the trust and cooperation of our democratic society. Without that trust, the most vulnerable victims, and our ideals, will suffer.