Drug Arrests in LA and Illegal Immigrants

[BrightNShiny]

@Algher

1. Cost of adding status to the booking process is too much under a strained system:
   I hear what LAPD is saying. However, this is another crime committed that needs to be managed. I think that the booking officer is MISSING critical information if he does not capture residency status. If illegals are committing crimes in excess of there portion of the population, we should know it. Pretending it does not exist does not help the debate - it instead potentially hides it. I am a big believer in data, and the data is poor. Perhaps there is a compromise here - get SSN as part of the process, check it against the database, see what happens. Note it in the DB at least for someone else (immigration) to follow-up as they chose.

Great, collect all the data you want. For reasons I’ll explain below, the Feds are in the best position to collect it.

2. The data already exists if the feds want to get it.
   This SEEMS to contradict your statement that they can not gather the data. Is it there or not? Is it made easily accessible to the Feds or not?

No contradiction. The LAPD collects info that identifies a person when they arrest him (name, height, weight, fingerprints, photo, etc.) All that info is available to the Feds (or any other law enforcement department in the country).

However, determining a persons residency status is a completely different can of worms. It can be an easy process that takes five minutes, but often enough, it requires an investigation and sometimes even an administrative or court ruling. This can take days or weeks.

Part of the reason for that is a wide variety of records can be used to prove residency–birth records, draft records, naturlization records, the list is pretty extensive. These records are collected by different agencies on both a Fed and State level and can be in different formats. Some of them may not even be computerized yet. We could potentially alleviate some of this by having some sort of national identification system–but that proposal is oppsoed by a broad spectrum of groups of all political stripes and not always over immigration issues.

Add to this the complexity of our immigration laws, a lack of funding for immigraiton agencies, and simple government ineptitude, and you get a haphazard, complex system for determining residency status.

There’s no way for the LAPD to determine who is here legally and who isn’t. I’m assuming that nobody here is proposing that the LAPD track down birth records from South Carolina, right?

So, basically what we’re left with is a cop with a suspicion. So, he does what? Calls up the Feds and tells them. And what if the Feds don’t get back to him in a week? What do the cops do with the arestee who they would have normally released in the meantime? Keep him in the county lockup? Who pays for that?

If there is enough there for the Feds to comb through the population of convicted felons in the California penal system and find illegals, then my ire can be directed at the Feds for not doing their job. All I want is for the State / Local to make it easy for the Feds to do their work - not to do the work for the Feds.

Right, but the LAPD isn’t preventing the Feds from looking through their files. Arrest records are public records. The Feds just don’t have the resources to look through all the arestees records and then do an investigaton on each arestee. But that shouldn’t be the LAPDs problem.

The Feds conceivably have enough resources to deal with this on a pilot basis in a couple of cities. I would be surprised if the Feds had enough resources to determine every arestee’s status in anything approaching a timely basis.

3. Deporting a Felon just means he sneaks back in.

I did not say deport a felon rather than lock him up. The current system, as far as I understand, is that first you serve your time - THEN you get deported. I have an issue with letting a guy out of county or state jail after serving his time and letting him back on the street if he is also an illegal immigrant, tourist, or other non-citizen without legal permanent residency status. If you come to my country and break the law (I am using felony here as trigger, not misdemeanor) - then you are going to wear the orange jumpsuit. On the day you have served your time, you get hauled off to the Fed holding pen to await the next charter flight of non-resident criminals we are deporting.

As I’ve said, I’m only dealing with arestees here. Presumably, if someone is convicted and serving jail time, one would hope that the Feds have enough time to run their investigation. Jail records are public, and my same argument applies here. If he’s in jail and the Feds want to run down and pick him up, go for it. Heck, they could just issue a warrant, and the state would turn him over at the end of his jail time. But if his time is up, and the Feds haven’t issued a warrant, then I don’t want him taking space up in the local jail system.

To be clear - I do NOT want beat cops checking status when they pull people over for a traffic violation, interview witnesses, or do their DARE time at the local school. I want to simply start with checking the status of all convicted felons and deporting them after they serve their time. I added in that I think we should consider status when setting bail, as I THINK that an illegal is less likely to show back up for trial than someone here legally.

The article the OP linked to was about drug arrests, and that’s what I’ve been arguing about. As for the issue of bail, that moves from being an LAPD issue to a District Attorney issue. If the DA feels that a person is a flight risk because of their residency status or country of origin or because they’ve been seen eating Freedom Fries, the DA is always free to make that argument, and the DA can utilize county resources to compile evidence to present the argument. Since a DA has a better ability and resources to deal with the complexity of immigration law, I have no problem with this–but that wasn’t the topic I was debating.

The cops are just one part of the puzzle - but they ARE a part.

Generally, I disagree.

On another note, I have finals in two weeks so I’m not going to have much time to devote to this thread. GIGOBuster, thanks for the cites. Interesting reading.

[GIGObuster]

@Artemus

You’re being unreasonable. The cite is the same cite given by MacDonald when she was pressed on it - she got it from the LAPD warrants section. You gave a bunch of links from people whose only grounds for criticizing the figure are that LAPD supposedly doesn’t track immigration status of murder suspects, and I’ve told you why those people are wrong. I strongly doubt you would be equally skeptical of data from, say, the Ford Foundation. I’m not going to personally go over to City Hall and ask for the data, and neither are you, and even if I did, you (and dear old Snopes) have already said “Yeah, but that statistic is misleading or irrelevant because of this and that and…” so let’s just drop it.

You better, because the specific number is still unsourced.

And here is why it is misleading even if it is an accurate number (and I still see it is inaccurate based on what I have found since you did not bother to find a cite) illegal aliens might disproportionately be represented in outstanding warrants because they are indeed more likely to flee, not because they commit a far greater share of the homicides in LA. or that it is at the same level everywhere, which is what you implied when you brought that number in the first place. (This was also noticed by Snopes)

You never did answer my question about whether the LAPD should be able to arrest an illegal alien solely on the basis of immigration status when that illegal alien is known to be a previosly deported felon.

I have no problem with that.

Also, you might want to check this out.

See the Snopes point above, you bringing that up would be like me pointing out that since the current mass murderers in Virginia are of Asian descent that then we should fear all Asians. (I’m taking into account the context of your fear mongering)

Can you guess the fallacy you are using?

[Artemus]

@GIGObuster

You better, because the specific number is still unsourced.

The number is 95%. My cite is testimony before Congress by a nationally known policy analyst. Moreover, the LAPD itself, which was the source of the statistic, has never repudiated it, even though it would be in their interest to do so. Neither did Snopes, and they’re usually pretty thorough.

All you have provided in contradiction to this is a single repeated claim that the LAPD does not track immigration status of suspects and therefore the statistic must be phony.

Let me explain to you why that claim is wrong. There is something called “Special Order 40” that prevents the LAPD from initiating contact with anyone solely on the basis of a suspected immigration violation. Special Order 40 is what this thread is really about. A lot of people both pro and con, who should know better, including the LA Times and all your cites, think Special Order 40 means the LAPD can never investigate the immigration status of a suspect. This is not true. The people you cited are using an incorrect, but popular, understanding of Special Order 40 to try to dismiss the 95% statistic.

You have given no evidence other than what I just disposed of to refute the 95% number. You can give some other evidence, or you can keep beating your dead horse; I don’t care.

And here is why it is misleading even if it is an accurate number (and I still see it is inaccurate based on what I have found since you did not bother to find a cite) illegal aliens might disproportionately be represented in outstanding warrants because they are indeed more likely to flee, not because they commit a far greater share of the homicides in LA. or that it is at the same level everywhere, which is what you implied when you brought that number in the first place. (This was also noticed by Snopes)

I never said whether illegal aliens were more or less likely to commit crimes. I just said that many violent criminals happen to be illegal aliens and that the LAPD apparently would rather put up with their violent crimes than put up with criticism from the likes of MALDEF and every cheapskate motel owner who needs illegal immigrant maids who will work for $8 an hour, cash.

I’m talking about crime. The fact that there is an immigration dimension to it is incidental. If 95% of the fugitive murder suspects were gay, and the LAPD started looking for them in gay clubs, all Hollywood would be leaning on the LAPD to stop harassing the poor innocent law-abiding gay people because of a few bad apples, and knowing LA, they’d probably get their way.

[GIGObuster]

@Artemus

The number is 95%. My cite is testimony before Congress by a nationally known policy analyst. Moreover, the LAPD itself, which was the source of the statistic, has never repudiated it, even though it would be in their interest to do so. Neither did Snopes, and they’re usually pretty thorough.

All you have provided in contradiction to this is a single repeated claim that the LAPD does not track immigration status of suspects and therefore the statistic must be phony.

Nowhere on the cites I see that the LAPD said that, the dead horse here is claiming that 95% item is relevant when it may be ok in that specific place and time. And you are still only fear mongering. (I fear you are not realizing I’m saying it may be accurate, but in an specific time and place, (you know, there is lies, damn lies and statistics) your fallacy still remains)

You have given no evidence other than what I just disposed of to refute the 95% number. You can give some other evidence, or you can keep beating your dead horse; I don’t care.

It doesn’t work that way, I called you on that not being sourced or doubtful, produce the numbers and then we can judge, otherwise I will have to assume the critics are correct: there is an reason why the big picture is avoided by the proponents of xenophobic solutions in discussions like this.

[GIGObuster]

@Artemus

The number is 95%. My cite is testimony before Congress by a nationally known policy analyst.

Just so it is clear: I already did check her testimony, that analyst has less experience than me dealing with statistics and crime with Latinos, you bet I still have to point out that she does not source the 95% bit and I do want to see how she came with that number, it is indeed really bad when there is no citation, and she still had to say that her numbers were estimates. It is a cite, but I already mentioned that it is not a good one. And that is how I see your debating here.

[BrightNShiny]

@Artemus

And all for the same reason.

Sez you. Why should I take your word over the police departments?

Besides, that a position pleases certain special interests doesn’t necessarily invalidate the position. You still have to adress the other arguments behind the position. I can make arguments like this all day long: “The reason we don’t have a national ID program is because the Feds are pandering to Fundamentalist Christians.” It may please certain Fundamentalists not to have a national ID program, but that doesn’t mean that I can get away with not addressing arguments against a national ID program.

Then what’s the problem with using the threat of deportation as a law enforcement tool?

I specifically avoided the abuse argument because I don’t think its necessary to my argument and I didn’t want to get bogged down in discussing the minutae of the reliability of allegations and testimony. If this thread is still running after exams, I might tackle it.

As for threatening deportation–the thead topic was whether the police should inquire into immigration status. The police always make all sorts of threats when they’re interrogating suspects–but that’s a different issue which goes to abuse.

Inquiry to me means that the police are going to spend time and resources investigating a person’s immigration status. As I’ve said, I’m fine with this in conjunction with the investigation of high-penalty crime. I’ll broaden this to say I’m fine with this for cirmes that involve property or safety. But inquiry absent any other crime is taking away my local police resources to enforce Federal laws that the Feds themselves either don’t want to or can’t enforce.

I don’t think I’m getting my point across.

Case-by-case discretion as to whether the police report illegal immigrants to the feds: OK with me, already in effect everywhere.

I’m arguing normatively here–that is, what should the rules be, than rather what they are. But under current LAPD practices (as distinct from Special Order 40), it’s not clear that officers have case-by-case discretion. I’m of course in favor of LAPD clarifying its policy.

Blanket policy to prevent cops from ever snagging someone for an immigration violation: sending the message to illegal immigrants that it’s OK to flout the law, because we’re not going to enforce it

We’ve already sent that message by not enforcing the law on a Federal level. Since LA is going to be innundated with illegal immigrants no matter what the police do, my concern is that my local resources are used in the most efficient manner.

What do you think would happen if the LAPD’s policy were to be put to a vote?

How people would vote is not relevant to a cost-benefit argument.

I want the police to have that option.

Well, if a police agent 100% knew that the guy standing in front of him was an illegal immigrant (say, he was holding a copy of the deportation order in his hand), I’d be theoretically ok with this.

But practically, given the complexity of determining residency status, I don’t see how this is going to work.

Additionally, it seems to me you want police to basically be immigration agents. Under Federal law, they’re required to have specialized training to do that. Who pays for it? Who pays for the time it takes to investigate immigration status? Are the Feds going to pony up the bill?

If they end up abusing it, we can reconsider.

Like I said, I don’t want to get into a detailed abuse argument, but in light of the Rampart scandal allegations, I’m going to need to see a detailed policy with guidelines and safegaurds to prevent abuse before I get behind the idea.

[BrightNShiny]

@Artemus

I’m talking about crime. The fact that there is an immigration dimension to it is incidental. If 95% of the fugitive murder suspects were gay, and the LAPD started looking for them in gay clubs, all Hollywood would be leaning on the LAPD to stop harassing the poor innocent law-abiding gay people because of a few bad apples, and knowing LA, they’d probably get their way.

If 95% of the muderers were gay, but only 1% of gay people were murderers, and the LAPD was randomly stopping gay people, that would be harrasment, and people should protest. If the LAPD targeted a specific gay club because they had evidence that a specific suspect was there, I hardly think anyone would protest.

[BrightNShiny]

@Artemus

Also, you might want to check this out.

OK, I checked it out. What I’m I supposed to glean from this?

[Bridget_Burke]

@BrightNShiny

OK, I checked it out. What I’m I supposed to glean from this?

That you should avoid all swarthy types. White people don’t do crimes. Fear all people of Hispanic (or Armenian) descent.

Armenians are white? Well, he looked kinda dark.

Or perhaps you’re supposed to glean something about the attitudes of the guy who posted it. Something you probably already suspect.