I know. I can hear you asking, “Hey Trench. What’s with all the ICE stories lately?” Well, schools are closed, so there can’t be any shootings there, and ICE has decided to pick up the slack. But I digress.
But this time it’s not agents pulling triggers; it’s the Trump administration going after police departments themselves. The DOJ is threatening to yank federal grant money from any city that won’t sign a cooperation agreement with ICE, and the list of things on the chopping block reads like a public safety wish list gone wrong.
Corvallis, Oregon, stands to lose funding for bulletproof vests for its officers. And here I thought Republicans were supposed to be the anti-defund-the-police party. Apparently that only applies if the department in question agrees to play immigration cops on the side.
Cops without proper body armor is a genuine safety issue, full stop. So it’s a little rich watching an administration that talks endlessly about “officer safety” turn around and threaten to strip away the actual equipment that keeps officers safe because a city won’t hand over the immigration information it’s legally barred from sharing anyway.
Unless, of course, “officer safety” only applies to ICE agents. Which, given how many Hispanic people they’ve been shooting lately, might be the case. Funny how that works.
Not surprisingly, when reporters asked the DOJ to explain itself, they got the bureaucratic equivalent of a shrug. Spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle’s entire response amounted to “applicants are required to submit a certification that they will comply with federal law.” That says nothing and answers nothing. It’s the same move we’ve seen out of DHS all summer, where they issue a vague statement, dodge the actual question, and let the local officials scramble to figure out what’s really at stake.
Nowhere is that more evident than in Fresno, California, where the city is right in the middle of testing a batch of 400 rape kits using a $2 million federal grant. City Attorney Andrew Janz has already used similar money to test more than 2,500 backlogged kits, open 33 new cases, and land four rape convictions. So this isn’t some hypothetical program. It’s one with a real track record.
Now the DOJ is holding that funding hostage because Fresno won’t sign onto ICE’s cooperation agreement, and Janz isn’t exactly playing along either. He sent DOJ a letter making clear the city has no intention of “kissing the ring,” and he’s bracing for the lawsuit that will almost certainly follow. Meanwhile, actual rape victims are the ones left waiting to find out if their evidence will ever get tested.
This is not how a government is supposed to operate in a democracy. Withholding rape kit funding and body armor because a city won’t do your bidding isn’t governing; it’s a shakedown. The whole thing reads less like federal policy and more like something out of a mob family’s playbook.
Nice little police department you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.
(Source)
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