If my schedule will cooperate, I’m going to try to sort through the various views of Special Order 40 and where LA ought to go with it from here. This includes the points of view of LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, City Councilman Dennis Zine and his proposal to amend SO40, the proposal contained in Jamiel’s Law (which is just a little different than what Zine is suggesting), the view taken by the Police Protective League, which in general supports Zine’s proposal.
In the meantime, take a look at this opinion piece in Sunday’s LA Times in which researcher Monica Varsanyi tells what 450 police chiefs across the country said when asked how they feel about cops doing immigration enforcement.
And be sure to read the compilation in this morning’s LA Times Opinion in which 40 “prominent Angelenos”—chosen from one end of the political spectrum to the other—sound off on Special Order 40.
UPDATE: I missed linking to Rick Orlov’s column on the issue, which is at least fun to read, while advancing the dialog
Here’s pieces of his Bratton quote:
(ABOUT ZINE & HIS MOTION)
“He has not had a conversation with anyone, including my leadership team. He talks so much about being a reserve officer, he should go to his commanding officer for clarification.”
(ABOUT SO 40 IN GENERAL)
“I don’t understand what’s so difficult. We don’t ask people their immigration status if they are not breaking the law. Once they are arrested, we check to make sure they are in the country legally.”
“Our priority is going after gangbangers,” Bratton said. “Once they are arrested, we check their immigration status and if they are in the country illegally, turn it over to ICE.”
I love when Bratton gets on his high horse. (I’m not being ironic here. I actually do.)
And here’s Councilman Dennis Zine:
“This chief doesn’t think anything needs to be changed,” Zine said. “Ask any 10 officers on the street and they will tell you they don’t know what to do with Special Order 40. They feel they can’t do anything.”
Which suggests that Bill Bratton’s right; it’s not a legal issue, it’s a training issue. The problem isn’t with Special Order 40, it’s with the rank and file’s knowledge of it—-meaning the training and oversight on the matter is faulty.
But….although I’ve taken a POV on the issue before, I’m willing to concede that its a complex matter with various valid perspectives to consider. So I’ll continue to gather puzzle pieces for further discussion.
PS: I’ve put in a call to the LAPPL for clarification of their stand. Back with more on that tomorrow or the next day.
I’m getting a Page Not Found response from Celeste’s link to Monica Varsanyi.
I’m guessing the Opinion piece to which she refers is here.
…what 450 police chiefs across the country said when asked how they feel about cops doing immigration enforcement.
Each police force has its own priorities based upon needs, crime, political instructions, etc. Why should 450 other police forces care about problems especially unique to L.A.? Despite being important to some in law enforcement, do you think that 450 police chiefs would care about the poaching of polar bears?
BTW, be very, very suspicious of public surveys of police chiefs who have to say what they are told rather than what they personally and privately know to be best.
Funny how Colorado has seen a reduction in crime and unemployment when it started enforcing immigration laws. Ask the majority of Colorado residents their opinion, about their cops working as La Migra. Colorado is where the reality and supposition about immigration enforcement can me separated.
http://cbs4denver.com/crime/Denver.Colorado.Colorado.2.560028.html
http://www.cairco.org/sanctuary/sanctuary.html
Special Order 40 is a blatant violation of Federal and State Laws.
In 1996, Congress enacted legislation which states, “…a Federal State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement) information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
California law also mandates that LAPD officers enforce immigration laws and work with federal immigration officials. “Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement) regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws.”
If you the police or city officials do not like state and federal laws, they should work to change them, not just create a “SPECIAL ORDER”, which blatantly violates federal and state laws.
A lawsuit was filed in 2006 (LA Superior Court) to stop the illegal use of taxpayer money to carry out the provisions of Special Order 40. This lawsuit is proceeding forward despite the stalling of Bratton and the ACLU.
Pokey, to liberals, the laws of our nation are like the “Pirates Code.”
You’re pirates. Hang the code, and hang the rules. They’re more like guidelines anyway.
Hey, Pokey, welcome back! Thanks, Listener, I’ll fix it.
Funny, Woody. I like that.
Varsanyi’s research into whether cops should be “la migra,” a misleading and false premise to begin with (no one, neither Zine nor the Shaws, is suggesting that cops raid sweatshops, just question suspects – in Zine’s case, only those suspects who are known gang members), starts off with an obvious bias as to what she expects to find. “The reason should be obvious (why cops don’t want to enforce immigration law). “In a city with growing immigrant populations, especially Latino…” No, the conclusion (not to check for legal status) is NOT obvious, and many would and do draw exactly the opposite conclusion, based on the fact that the illegal Latino population has grown so dramatically. It certainly isn’t “obvious” in Arizona, either, parts of which have recently implemented some of the toughest anti-illegal immigrant laws in the nation.
Varsanyi is an “assistant professor of the School of Justice and Social Advocacy” at Arizona State. In other words, she’s a social activist using her teaching and writing positions to further her causes, very much like Celeste. If she wants to write Opinion pieces and call them such, fine and well, but everything about her “research,” starting with the title and expectation of a finding, are biased. And they’re clearly at odds with the rank and file of LAPD, the only people qualified to know what does and doesn’t work on the streets of L A. (The rest of the country, including all those other chiefs, have nothing like the same problems or numbers as we do, where half the population is now Hispanic, many illegal, and we have the worst gang problems in the nation. Their demographics are at most more like L A’s were in 79, when Gates implemented the Order — which he now feels is obsolete.)
WBC,
“her teaching and writing positions to further her causes, very much like Celeste.”
I don’t know about Varsanyi whose research struck me as interesting but somewhat weak (and which I presented with no other spin pro or con other than it’s worth reading as we examine all sides of the issue), and THIS is what you decided to come back with???
Nice.
Blogging is opinion driven. I said as much over the weekend.
But don’t ever presume to think you know how I teach. Clearly you don’t.
Instead of guessing what is going to happen if states start enforcing immigration laws, why not look at Colorado and their results. The results in Colorado have been positive for the legal residents of Colorado. There were predections about labor shortages and etc, none of this happened in Colorado. Ask the Colorado residents what they know from personal experience of having their cops enforcing immigration laws.
http://cbs4denver.com/crime/Denver.Colorado.Colorado.2.560028.html
http://www.cairco.org/sanctuary/sanctuary.html
Oops, I guess I should have distinguished the writing and blogging from the teaching in that sentence, especially with sensititives justifiably sore from the wacko on the Clinton thread. However, in general I think it’s fair to say that your writing and activism go hand in hand — you were on a panel listed at some conference, as an “activist writer” or some such designation (can’t recall exactly where I saw it, there are so many conferences, PEN listings, etc.) and that’s how people generally think of you.
As far as the classroom, no, I’ve never seen you in action, and I’m sure you a good job of instilling in students the Five W’s of journalism and all the other fact-based criteria that go into it. Still, I’ve never had or met a professor who doesn’t bring his/her personal views into the subject matter, especially in the humanities, since who they are colors how they think and teach. Varsanyi seems to be to go beyond that, and let her bias pre-judge her research; I’ll bet it factored into HOW her questions were couched, too.
There was an interesting piece in the L A Times last week (4/14), by Michael Sharmer, “Marxist Professors or Sensitive Students?” about how they take umbrage when students reveal them to be biased towards the left.
Sharmer writes, “Students should complain about professorial indoctrination, because it is real and it is loaded heavily to the left, especially in the social sciences and humanities.”
He references a 2005 study which found that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 10:1 at Berkely and 7.6:1 at Stanford, but in the humanities it jumped to 16:1 at both schools, and was 30:1 among assistant and associate professors. “In some departments, such as anthropology and journalism, there wasn’t a single Republican to be found.”
(And I might add, in my experience, these profs weren’t just Democrats, but often extremely liberal ones.)
“Given the reality, is it any wonder the academy has a reputation of being a bastion for bleeding-heart liberals? Unless they are openly teaching a course entitled, in effect, ‘Why Liberals Should Rule the World,’ professors have no business introducing their political bias to students. Their job is to teach the curriculum of the subject, not churn out a bunch of Marx-worshiping, Bush- hating, Che Guevara- loving, pinko graduates who will go out into the world woefully ignorant that most Americans think entirely differently from the way do.” (With some studies showing that 45% of Americans are now evangelical Christians many of whom believe in Creationism, that makes Woody a progressive in many circles.)
“As for those namby-pamby professors who wine about students who have the audacity to tell people on the outside what is actually going on in American classrooms, now you know what it’s like to be in the real world…so buck up and take a little criticism like the rest of us have to on Planet Earth.”
Thanks, WBC, for clarifying. Yep, I’m likely a bit crankier than usual today.
What you said above seems fair. There is certainly an activist bent to the bulk of my work, although not all of it. With rare exceptions, I don’t do straight reporting. When not blogging here (or book writing, or writing Op Eds), I’m primarily a feature writer, with a leaning toward literary journalism, and that’s a form that allows me my social justice leaning.
(This does not mean I think it’s okay to shave the dice in presenting a story. Ever.)
Since I don’t believe objectivity exists, what I work very hard to do is to be fair, even though I often permit myself to draw conclusions—with which the reader will either agree or disagree. When I do it right, I’ve given the reader enough info that they can have an informed opinion—even if their ultimate conclusion on any given matter is different from my own.
What I tell my students is that they must be aware of their own biases, since they assuredly have them, and be sure that they repeatedly challenge those biases with countervailing views.
I’m sure that they’d tell you that plenty of my biases bleed through in class—I wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. But I also do my damnedest to acknowledge them as such, rather than viewing them as the walls of the universe that I must use to confine students—-which I think is an appalling thing for professors to do. All I want from my students is to learn to challenge themselves, be rigorous and fair minded in their reporting, work their butts off, have a good time doing it, and write engaging stories that have something to say.
I’m happy when they challenge me, which very they often do.
PS: I suspect you’re right about Varsanyi. That was my gut feeling as well.
PPS: OKAY I LIED: I DO have one bias I totally impose on my students: Whenever I possibly can I include in their weekly New Quiz….one question that has to do with a news story about an animal. (And I’m not one bit sorry. So if you find a good one for this week, let me know.)
Celeste, if professors shroud themselves with other professors, they won’t recognize any biases in themselves. Plus, their typical arrogance keeps them from accepting contrary views from the “real world,” such as those offered by conservative students, whom they ridicule. Rather than instructing students just not to show bias, students would best be served by first teaching them simply to recognize the bias that outsiders see in them.
Here’s my animal news story: Puppies, zebras and pigs, oh my!
…Off-topic here, but just a strange reference back to your Springsteen – Obama posts: US elections 2008:
“Bruce Springsteen has angered many of his working-class fans, and his endorsement won’t help Barack Obama. …Springsteen, as much as I love him, has become a kind of working-class fetish for the once hip liberal intelligentsia. When it comes to the mythic American workingman, these days Springsteen angers as much as he inspires. …”
Someone else skeptical about Varsanyi’s conclusions wrote a pretty articulate Letter to the Times yesterday. Dan Milchovich, who says he’s a retired captain with the Inglewood Police Dept., writes: “National surveys, research and statistical data are peculiar beasts. The danger of manipulated, as well as exclusionary, research is obvious. It becomes propaganda disguised as scholarly work…I trust that she (Varsanyi) and her colleagues are not particularly familiar with law enforcement, which lives in the street and not in executive offices. And therein lies the weakness of her conclusions. Polling police chiefs and sheriffs concerning the impact of social policy is tantamount to requesting Hillary Clinton’s opinion of maple syrup in Vermont. With few exceptions, you will likely to get political answers based on job retention.
“To study issues that affect cops’ ability to function, don’t go any higher than a first-lime supervisor. Beyondthat, the stench of diplomatic deference begins diluting the response. Street cops see far more of the big picture, and they don’t need to coat it in political icing to remain relevant and employed.”
So relevant to the way in which Bratton is so dismissive of anyone who questions SP40, while the rank-and-file’s union, Police Protective League, supports Zine’s motion and believes that the way it’s interpreted now ties their hands. (However, Milchovich’s last sentence seems off in this case, since many admit privately to reporters or under pseudonymns like “Jack Dunphy” in the Times’ that even street cops ARE worried about remaining employed, if they so much as touch on the illegal status of suspects. THAT as much as any other, is a reason to support Zine’s motion to specifically empower them to follow the law.)