I can't say that I am all that surprised by this report, or the events. Actually, every since the enactment of "Special Order 40" the tension and anger seems to be growing and growing in Los Angeles. There is a lot of hate in this city on all sides.So many resources are spread so thin. I think it will only get worse before it gets better. Hard to imagine that our schools, etc. can get much worse.
P.S. On the one hand Special Order 40 is basically asking citizens to support those that break certain federal laws, while on the other hand the city is condemning others that cannot handle this request or are "strained" by the entire situation.
The result is that 80 officers are off the streets, and law suits are being filed that will cost this city millions. Personally, I don't think it is appropriate to expect this stuff to not happen when laws are selectively enforced. We are such a dysfunctional family.
In one respect, it is like a parent who smokes telling her children not to smoke. Or, some might argue that it is more like a parent who smokes telling just a few of her children not to smoke, while permitting the others to smoke. Does anyone benefit in this last situation? Man this stuff is confusing. :)
It is especially more explosive when you consider the gang / drug issues that we have in LA and all the complications (or at least anger) that Special Order 40 theoretically creates. Basically, no one is happy in an environment of selective enforcement.
Just more problems our children will have to solve; as I am way too old for this stuff. But, on a positive side, I no longer wonder why LA has never been able to get a handle on its drug and gang problems. And like all good problems, the situation in LA has become so complicated that actually attempting to outline cause and effect is becoming impossible.
Here is part of a very "critical" write-up:
Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where crime from these lawbreakers is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of gang members from a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have snuck back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, shootings, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should an LAPD officer arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is the officer who will be treated as a criminal by his own department — for violating the LAPD’s rule against enforcing immigration law.
The LAPD’s ban on immigration enforcement is replicated in immigrant-heavy localities across the country — in New York, Chicago, Austin, San Diego, and Houston, for example. These so-called "sanctuary policies" generally prohibit a city’s employees, including the police, from reporting immigration violations to federal authorities.
Sanctuary laws are a testament to the political power of immigrant lobbies. So powerful is this demographic clout that police officials shrink from even mentioning the illegal alien crime wave. "We can’t even talk about it," says a frustrated LAPD captain. "People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics." Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: "I would get a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals]." Neither captain would speak for attribution.
But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom of a much broader disease: the near total loss of control over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy may have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The non-stop increase of legal and illegal aliens is reshaping the language and the law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal immigration and, ultimately, the very idea of national borders.
It is a measure of how topsy-turvy the immigration environment has become that to ask police officials about the illegal crime problem feels like a gross social faux pas, something simply not done in polite company. And a police official, asked to violate this powerful taboo against discussing criminal aliens, will respond with a strangled response—sometimes, as in the case of a New York deputy commissioner with whom I spoke, disappearing from communication altogether. At the same time, millions of illegal aliens work, shop, travel, and commit crimes in plain view, utterly confident in their de facto immunity from the immigration law.
I asked the Miami Police Department’s spokesman, Detective Delrish Moss, about his employer’s policy on illegal law-breakers. In September 2003, the force had arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven terrifying rapes. The previous year, Miami officers had had the suspect, Reynaldo Elias Rapalo, in custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his visa overstay, a deportable offense. "We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing with immigration issues," explains Detective Moss, choosing his words carefully, "because of our large immigration population."
Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:
• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.
• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the bloody 18th Street Gang in California is illegal (estimated membership: 20,000); police officers say the proportion is undoubtedly much greater. The gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complicated drug distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and is responsible for an assault or robbery every day in Los Angeles County. The gang has dramatically expanded its numbers over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, a vast proportion illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
• The leadership of the Columbia Li’l Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Luis Li. Frank "Pancho Villa" Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.
Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis. The LAPD and the Los Angeles City Attorney recently requested a judicial injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood. The injunction targets the 18th Street Gang and, as the press release puts it, the "non-gang members" who sell drugs in Hollywood on behalf of the gang. Those "non-gang members" are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a trafficking ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The illegal Mexicans pay off their transportation debt to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business.
The immigration status of these non-gang "Hollywood dealers," as the City Attorney calls them, is universally known among officers and gang prosecutors. But the gang injunction is silent on the matter. And if a Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the street as a "border brother") for his immigration status, or even notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),* he would be severely disciplined for violation of Special Order 40, the city’s sanctuary policy.
Not sure about the numbers. Some see high to me; but even if they were cut in half, the issues, problems would still seem significant. How many drug related crimes are acceptable? How many of our kids need to abuse drugs before we consider the 60 percent (plus) of the cocaine and meth that is coming across the border to be a problem?
It is clear to me that to attack the drugs at the border would significantly reduce the cheap labor available to businesses. So we ignore the drugs coming across the border and focus on keeping our economy number 1.
It is sad that we seem to care more about economic prosperity than the well being of our children. As a society, our first goal should be the well being our our children. At least, that should be the goal for a truly moral, spiritual society. Maybe it is time to examine if this is still a primary goal; or is it more about keeping up with the Jones?
Really, one is about the future leaders of our country, and requires great selflessness. The other is about amassing as much stuff in the here and now. One is for other future individuals, and the other really is not. But that is just the cynic in me.
For the last 50 years, the people of the USA have been relying too much on "institutional" care for the well being of our kids. More and more, both parents are out of the house, while the kids are cared for by others. Also, as recently reported the gap between the have and the have-nots has been growing (to unacceptable levels). Maybe it is time for a change?
Please take a look at the book by Dr. Brazelton called "The Irreducible Needs of Children" for an interesting take on the impact that using others to take care of our kids during the first 2 years has on our kids.
See Encounter Books.
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