BURN: Deemocrat Police Chiefs Play The Fear Card On Immigration

This was totally predictable.  A cabal of collectivist police chiefs have flopped the fear card on the table in response to Arizona-style laws being proposed across the nation.  It is a tried and untrue tactic of the collective.

In the face of overwhelming support by the people citizens of Arizona and the entire U.S., the collective is trotting out the canard that enforcing law will result in more crime.

"This is not a law that increases public safety. This is a bill that makes it much harder for us to do our jobs," Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. "Crime will go up if this becomes law in Arizona or in any other state."

Well, too late, Charlie!  The law IS the law in Arizona, and several other jurisdictions are headed in that direction.

But let's look at the argument these APPOINTED police chiefs are putting forward:

The new Arizona law will intimidate crime victims and witnesses who are illegal immigrants and divert police from investigating more serious crimes, chiefs from Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia said. They will join their counterparts from Montgomery County and a half-dozen other U.S. cities in meeting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday morning to discuss the measure.

 I've heard the same nonsense from Bill White, candidate for Texas Governor and former Mayor of Houston, Texas.  "Why, golly, if police are made immigration cops, they just won't have time for effective crime prevention."  As I wrote a while back:

How does it REMOTELY cost good crime fighting...for the city to ALWAYS refer the illegal alien to ICE?  I suggest the opposite is true, and for this reason; illegal aliens are disproportionately likely to commit crime, as compared to other segments of our population.

In fact, I think it deductively obvious that RELEASING an illegal alien from either a custodial stop or actual incarceration is IRRESPONSIBLY EXPENSIVE.  We have them; we know or can learn their status; how is "catch and release" anything but a poke in the eye of immigration law...or effective police work?  A very good case can be made that the White policy...which is used by other Texas mayors...cost several peace officers their lives.

The other half of that BS is that illegal aliens will not cooperate with police investigations if they are prone to suffer the consequence of being in this country illegally.  There are several things wrong with that--

1. There is nothing in the Arizona law that would suggest that a witness would have their immigration status questioned.  (Read the law, dammit!!!)
2. The same "reasoning" would argue that we should not enforce drug law, since a drug user would have the same theoretical reluctance to provide information to police investigating a crime.  (The same applies to any law and offender.)
3. The idea presupposes that illegals are cooperative with police investigations now.  That isn't established: "[Pinal County Sheriff Paul] Babeu called the police chiefs' argument "'flawed from the beginning.'"  Cooperation from illegal immigrants, particularly those coming from Mexico, is already low, he said, because they are in the United States illegally and because of law enforcement corruption in their native countries.  "'Somehow when they appear in the U.S., magically their perception of law enforcement improves overnight?'" Babeu said." 
4. Police are not stupid; they extend protection within their discretion NOW to witnesses or informants in exchange for information.  In the Arizona law, there is more than adequate discretion for officers to simply avoid the ambit of immigration status when questioning a cooperative witness.
5. The argument that there is a population of people who will not cooperate with public safety because of their own illegal status works AGAINST, rather than FOR the Deemocrat chief's case.  They are, by admission, people who present both a prey population for criminals, and a population of abettors of crime.

 The chiefs behind this are APPOINTEES by very Deemocrat administrations (Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Tuscan and Phillidelphia.  Sheriffs, like Babeu and Arpio, who have to face voters, and who deal with the horrific consequences of illegal immigration every day, are supportive of the new law.

Deemocrats and their appointees like "catch and release" in lieu of enforcing the law, just as they are pushing amnesty (aka "comprehensive immigration reform") instead of securing our borders.