Police Chiefs Oppose Arizona Law, Meet with Attorney General Eric Holder

America's Voice Blog

Posted 05/26/10 at 04:18pm

Ten police chiefs from cities across the country, including three from Arizona, traveled to Washington, DC today to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder and reiterate what they’ve been saying for weeks: Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law will make their jobs harder, erode working relationships built on mutual trust and cooperation between law enforcement and immigrants, and make communities less safe. The federal government should step in to prevent more states from following suit.

Watch a clip from the AP:

The chiefs, representing cities and counties with large immigrant populations from Phoenix to Philadelphia, should know. Between them they have more than 100 years of policing experience and they know what works and what doesn’t work. What doesn’t work, they say, is state legislatures imposing new mandates on already stretched police departments requiring local officers to do the federal government's job by going after illegal immigrants.

That message came through loud and clear during a news conference the chiefs held today. One after another they spoke of the challenges immigration enforcement laws such as Arizona’s present to police departments, including three police departments in Arizona – Phoenix, Tucson and Sahuarita – that are most likely to feel the effects first if the law goes into effect, as expected, on July 29.

“The primary job of local law enforcement is not immigration enforcement,” said Charlie Beck, Los Angeles’ police chief. “It is to protect the community from crime. The Arizona legislation does not do this. We now very well how to do our job and legislation like this inhibits us from doing our job.”

Like other city residents, he said, “Undocumented immigrants are witnesses to all kinds of crime. If people don’t come forward to report crimes, regardless of their immigration status, it really inhibits our jobs and threatens the work that we have done” establishing good working relationships with immigrant communities.

“The bottom line is the wedge that something like this can drive between the police and the community,” added Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, formerly chief of the D.C. police department. “Those relationships are very fragile; it doesn’t take a lot to destroy them.”

Chief Beck said the Los Angeles police department worked for years to gain the trust and cooperation of the city’s massive Latino immigrant community and now enjoys a strong working relationship with it.

“I know we have the trust of the immigrant community. I saw it during the last May Day demonstrations which over 100,000 people attended. It was one of the most peaceful events we’ve had,” he said.

Though the chiefs didn’t say so explicitly – they didn’t have to – their message was clear, the Obama administration needs to act quickly to blunt the impact of, or supersede, the Arizona law and to deter the more than 12 other states considering copycat legislation from moving forward.

Illegal immigration, Ramsey said unequivocally, “is a national problem and should be dealt with on a national level.”

Though people often talk about law enforcement in very general terms, “There’s a big difference between local, state and federal law enforcement,” he said. “We have to have day to day relationships with our community, file police reports and investigate local crimes. Undocumented immigrants will not help police fight crime or solve investigations if they think we are we are there to check their immigration status or even that of a relative.”

The chiefs said Attorney General Holder asked many tough and detailed questions during their meeting. Hopefully their answers will have as strong influence on him as they have on Arizona watchers around the country who have been impressed, and swayed, by the police chiefs’ public statements.

So far, the chiefs' opposition has been picked up by CNN, ABC News (and here and here), CBS News, AP and AP video, Reuters, Washington Post, Fox News, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, NY Daily News, AZ Republic, and more.