According to this article, some LAPD officers are seeking to change LAPD policy of not inquiring about a person’s residency status when they are arrested for drugs. As many of you probably kow, I’d advocate looking into the status of anyone arrested, but what is at issue here is drug arrests. Evidently, officers can look into the residency stautus of those arrested for gang-related offencss. This lawsuit seeks to expand that ability/requirement(?) to drug offenses.
I ask primarily those posters who are more accepting of illegals, does this strike you as a reasonable step to take? If not, why?
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why wouldn’t they? I mean, if I were to get arrested, don’t they enter my name, SS, fingerprints, whatever, into some kind of database? If I, say, don’t have a SS number, or other credentials that are legit (fake out-of-state license, for example), wouldn’t the police figure that out as a matter of course?
Can our criminal justice system process people and not come across the fact that they are not US citizens?
I think the reasons are twofold. First, municipalities, especially one like LA where the incidence of illegality is so great, are already strained for resources and don’t thiink they should have to take on the additional burden of immigration, which they view as solely a federal matter. The other reason I believe is a desire to normalize illegality to the point that nothing can be done about.
As I’ve stated numerous times on these boards, this problem is the result of an unholy alliance between the two parties. Dems see some humanistic fairness, and eventual votes. The Reps see a steady stream of cheap labor and inroads into a voting bloc that is big and getting bigger. Both of them have failed us, and thier oaths miserably.
What kind of “drug” arrests? Pot possession? Dealing crack to toddlers?
Houston Police inform the feds when someone charged with a serious crime may be undocumented. They don’t ask about crime victims, witnesses or jaywalkers. Of course, the usual suspects have bitched about this policy.
David Klehm is the lawyer behind the case. He’s also behind this, although his name is absent from the website. Apparently he was into malpractice before he discovered this new “crusade.”
I’m pretty liberal, and I have almost no problem with illegal immigration (the problems I do have stem from the victimization of the workers by the companies that employ them). I do have a problem with crime though. I do not think, nor has it ever been shown, that undocumented aliens commit more crimes that citizens, but if one does commit a serious crime, or a series of smaller crimes (like speeding, for example), I don’t have a problem with the federal government being alerted, and the person deported. I think of all immigrants as guests; I don’t mind them being here, but you need to obey the rules.
I have a very big problem with investigating the status of witnesses and people who commit misdemeanors; the former because it breeds more crime in the long run, the latter because it’s too easy to abuse.
My objection to this stems from my objection to the War on Drugs; there is no morally defensible reason to distinguish “drug crimes” from any other type of crime.
Most drug crimes should be misdemeanors or decriminalized altogether. If residency status is not reported in misdemeanors, nor should it be for drug crimes.
If it is the case that drug crimes are misdemeanors but, unlike other misdemeanors, require the reporting of residency status, that would be a transparent (and IMO quite objectionable) way to use the legal system to unfairly target illegal immigrants.
If the drug crimes in question are not misdemeanors, then I object to that classification.
But “not a US citizen” isn’t the same thing as “an illegal immigrant”. There are lots of non-US citizens in the country right now who are not here illegally- tourists, foreign students, permanent residents, and what have you.
Some illegal immigrants have fraudulent Social Security numbers or green cards. A cursory check on being arrested might not find that.
Do you find it confusing when the police put a higher priority on stopping certain crimes (like rape and murder), thus making it possible for people to get away with other crimes (like driving faster than the speed limit or jaywalking)?
I agree with this. I think whether police check immigration status should have to do with the severity of the crime, not with whether or not it was a drug-related crime.
I also think Houston is doing the right thing in checking the immigration status of people suspected of crimes, but not of witnesses or victims of crimes. If they checked your immigration status if you were a witness or a victim of a crime, that would make illegal immigrants less willing to report crimes or come forward as witnesses, which might mean that more people would get away with crimes.
There’s a potential problem with checking someone’s immigration status when they’re suspected of a crime, though. Suppose I know someone who I know is (say) selling stolen car stereos, but I don’t know if he’s an illegal immigrant or not. I might think that going to jail for a while would be an appropriate punishment for what he’s doing, but that being deported from the country wouldn’t be an appropriate punishment, so I don’t say anything to the authorities about his illegal activities.
How is that fair to illegals? From your argument I could see how it might be construed to be unfair to those involved in drug related crimes, but not illegals. Unless you’re of the opinion that all illegals are involved in drug crimes. But I know you don’t think that.
No, but I would find it confusing if rape and murder were illegal but the police turned the other cheek to concentrate on jaywalkers and speeders. If it’s against the law, then I would expect the police to react, regardless of whether or not I thought it should be legal.
I’m all for legal immigration, relaxing of immigration laws, stricter enforcement of existing immigration laws with regards to employers who hire illegal immigrants, no problem. I’m not so much for allowing people to break one set of laws because I don’t agree with those laws, then crying foul when subsequent arrests lead to punishment for breaking the original laws. Same with drug laws. I don’t agree with many of them, but I wouldn’t use “that shouldn’t be illegal in the first place” as my defense if I got busted for drugs. Working to change the laws I don’t agree with, sure.
I don’t think that’s quite the issue. It’s more an issue of not expending a lot of effort looking for violations of some laws. That could include not going to the trouble of finding out if the person who just got arrested for some other crime is guilty of violating those laws. For example, I strongly suspect that, if someone is arrested for murder, no one starts looking for evidence that that person previously did something like shoplifting. That doesn’t mean that people are being allowed to get away with shoplifting (the police would still arrest someone they caught shoplifting), but they’re not trying to find evidence of shoplifting in cases that have nothing to do with shoplifting.
I’m against illegal immigration. I generally tend to avoid these debates because I don’t agree with a lot of the positions that anti-illegal immigration advocates tend to take. But I’ll go ahead an weigh on in this issue.
I live in Los Angeles. And our police force, like most police forces in major cities, is always tight on resources. Even if our police force spent 24 hrs a day solely dealing with illegal immigration, it wouldn’t make a dent in the illegal immigration population in this city. We’re a major hub for international trade and tourism and we’re 2 hours away from an international border. As long as the Federal government remains unserious about controlling illegal immigration, it’s simply a waste of resources for the police department to focus on it. It is a waste of the tax money that I pay to the city to be used for efforts that will be systematically undermined by the Federal government at every turn.
I pay taxes to the city of LA for police protection. What I am interested in is that the city protect my property and protect my safety. If the police feel that turning illegal immigrants over to the feds compromises their ability to protect my property and safety, then I am completely willing to back them. The usual argument (as pointed out earlier in the thread) is that putting the police in an immigration enforcement position creates mistrust in the illegal immigrant community and makes it more difficult for them to investigate crimes. I’m not an expert on whether this is true or not, so I defer to the police on this issue.
Now I’ll have to backtrack a little bit. For more serious crimes, I don’t mind if the police turn an illegal immigrant over to the Feds (but I don’t see exactly how a deportation across a porous border makes me any safer from this person). While I do agree that drug laws should be liberalized, it is a fact that the drug trade currently drags along with it an immense amount of violence. If an illegal immigrant has a kilo of cocaine on him, I’m not losing sleep if he’s deported. But if somebody has a baggie of marijuana on him, then I’d prefer that the police not waste time on immigration enforcement.
That said, it appears that the police might be required to report under California law. In California, municipalities cannot ignore the plain reading of a law unless it is overturned by a court. If it is indeed the case that they are required to report under California law, then I think they should do it–but I also think that the law is stupid and is wasting my tax money.
If someone is truly dangerous, I think our own legal system might have more efficient ways to protect “society” than turning him over to the Feds. So he can be deported & come right back.
If he’s a criminal, prove it in court. (Yes, just the charge isn’t enough.) Then let him serve time. Perhaps La Migra will figure out what needs to happen afterwards.
If you realize that it’s just a lawyer looking for clients–nothing. He abandoned another legal field last year for greener pastures. But it’s odd that his name does not appear on the site. Why can’t he just buy time on TV? (Of course, his old firm was not the type to run cheap, sleazy ads for personal injury cases. They defended against that sort of case.)
In fact, some of the comments on his site are quite amusing; here’s one from A Little Old Lady:
I did point out that I didn’t see how deporting someone across a porous border makes me safer.
But either way, we’re just reshuffling the deck. Put him in jail and six more people will take his place–porous borders + drug war means we have a steady supply. Deport him, and he’s one of the six.
Of course, all criminal allegations should be proven in court.