I was invited to a small meeting at the Eastside Library a few weeks back. The City Administrator, Police Chief, Eastside Councilmember, the Riviera Councilmember, and some community members and activists were present. I appreciated the need for the meeting – to respond to ICE’s activities in our community, and the feeling of some in the community that SBPD wasn’t handling it properly. I learned quite a bit that day, but here are the main points I want to discuss:
- Police are no longer notified by ICE that they will be operating in our jurisdiction. The former professional protocol of inter-agency cooperation is gone. SBPD found out ICE was in our city from the 9-1-1 calls on January 28 that initially sounded like a huge fight in the street. Our mayor wrote in these pages recently hoping for a return of that protocol, but that’s not going to happen. What will happen is further escalation between ICE and our community.
- Some of our police are struggling with what ICE is doing in our community, understandably.