Policies That Keep Us All Safe

Imagine you're just arriving at home, returning from a family dinner out at your favorite restaurant. When you turn on the lights you are greeted by a scene none of us ever want to face: someone had broken into and robbed your house while you were away. What would you do?

Maybe you'd call the police to report the robbery, after all you want to make sure that the police know the crime happened so that they can start an investigation. You want the criminal to be caught. The last thing you want is for someone else to become another victim.

Calling the police and expecting that they will work to keep you and your community safe when you do requires trust. Keeping our community safe, investigating and solving crime, relies on people reporting potential crimes so that they can be investigated by those we put in place to keep our communities safe. Apprehending criminals often requires cooperation from witnesses and others with information.

When our law enforcement officers work to build trust with their communities, those communities are safer. This article explores how six key policies benefit our community by building trust in local police and ensuring that they focus on community safety.

The Trust Crisis: How Immigration Enforcement Undermines Community Safety

Often, the first step in solving crime is that the crime is reported at all. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, from 2017 to 2023, immigrants were 29 percent more likely, and noncitizens were 32 percent more likely, to personally report crime than US-born citizens.

When our immigrant neighbors don't trust law enforcement, they are less likely to report crimes and help solve crimes.

Beyond the issues caused by mistrust, when local law enforcement is deputized to carry out federal law enforcement, their focus is taken away from their actual job: keeping our communities safe.

Six Policies To Help

Kent County Indivisible is working to prevent this loss of trust and focus by calling for Kent County, and cities in Kent County, to adopt six key policies that keep our local law enforcement focused on local safety issues and help to rebuild the trust of our neighbors.

Policy 1: Restricting Police from Federal Immigration Enforcement

Policies restricting the ability of state and local police to make arrests for federal immigration violations, or to detain individuals on civil immigration warrants.

This policy keeps our local law enforcement focused on local issues. When our local law enforcement takes on enforcing federal policies, it prevents them from focusing on their primary job: keeping our local communities safe. Having this policy in place would help our neighbors who weren't born in the US feel safer knowing that local law enforcement is only focused on increasing safety in their community. And their trust helps improve safety for all of us:

Immigrants also cooperate with law enforcement to stop and solve violent crimes at higher rates than the US-born population. Between 2017 and 2023, violence against immigrants was 15 percent more likely to be reported to the police, and immigrants were 29 percent more likely than a US-born person to personally report a violent crime to the police. Additionally, noncitizens were 32 percent more likely to report violent crimes. They reported over 5 million crimes from 2017 to 2023, which resulted in half a million arrests. Immigrants could be even more likely to report crimes and work with law enforcement if they had protection against deportation.

- “Immigrants Cut Victimization Rates, Boost Crime Reporting,” Cato Institute

Policy 2: Protecting Privacy During Interactions

Policies restricting the police or other county workers from asking about immigration status.

When you feel safe, you help police solve crimes. But when our neighbors fear immigration checks, crime goes unreported, hurting all of our safety. This policy will make it so that police won't ask questions like "Where are you from?" or "Are you here illegally?".

It isn't local law enforcement's job to enforce federal immigration policy. This policy sends a clear signal that helps to build the trust we need from our neighbors so that crimes are reported and solved.

Overall, Latinos in these cities [in the study] are primed to be suspicious of law enforcement. Approximately half of the respondents reported an unwillingness to contact the police, even if they were victims of crime, because they or other people they knew could be asked about their immigration status

…

Sanctuary policies in Chicago and Los Angeles seem to be having the desired effect. Negative interactions with the police in Chicago and knowing someone who was deported in Los Angeles are not significantly related to police reporting. Also, in Chicago and Los Angeles, speaking Spanish, which in a racialized enforcement atmosphere would mark someone as potentially deportable, was not significantly related to willingness to report to the police.

- IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT, THE RACIALIZATION
OF LEGAL STATUS, AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE POLICE

Policy 3: Keeping Local Police Independent from Federal Agencies

Policies prohibiting “287(g)” agreements through which ICE deputizes local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law.

Local cities and Kent County won’t allow ICE to deputize local police officers. Federal immigration enforcement stays federal.

Imagine being the victim of domestic violence. You’re too scared to call police because your neighbor was deported after reporting a crime. That’s what happens when police work with ICE. When police protect every resident, immigrant or not, our communities become safer for everyone.

When police routinely work with federal ICE agents, people stop trusting them. This leads to more unsolved crimes, and less community safety.

This policy specifically prohibits 287(g) ICE agreements, it doesn't prevent all cooperation with federal agencies, just this specific type of agreement.

Under the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government “may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” Courts have repeatedly held that the Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from compelling states and localities to participate in immigration enforcement.
- American Immigration Council

Policy 4 & 5: Safeguarding County Facilities

Policies that prevent local governments from entering into a contract with the federal government to hold immigrants in detention

Policies preventing immigration detention centers from being established in Kent County, which would include the use of the Kent County Jail as a detention facility for ICE.

This policy establishes that local jails and facilities won’t be used to hold people for immigration enforcement. We won’t let federal agencies use our facilities as detention centers.

Our local law enforcement, and it's facilities, should stay focused on local public safety. Keeping that focus maintains the trust required to keep our communities safe.

Altogether, the data suggest that when local law enforcement focuses on keeping communities safe, rather than becoming entangled in federal immigration enforcement efforts, communities are safer and community members stay more engaged in the local economy. This in turn brings benefits to individual households, communities, counties, and the economy as a whole.
- The Effects of Sanctuary Policies on Crime and the Economy

Policy 6: Protecting Privacy from Federal Agencies

A policy that will not allow the sharing of Flock camera images or any other information gathered local staff with ICE or any other law enforcement agency seeking to arrest, detain and deport immigrants.

Flock cameras are AI-powered and always recording. There are more than 100 of these types of cameras currently deployed throughout Kent County. They capture and store information 24/7 about everything they can see: license plates, vehicle makes and models, even possibly people and faces. You can find a map of them here. These cameras have a huge variety of security concerns around them, but with this policy we are explicitly stating that this data won't be shared with ICE.

Read more about flock and privacy concerns in our Fighting Flock series

Learn more

This policy works to protect your privacy. If ICE has access to our local Flock data, it will be used to target people and the system is ripe for abuse. This harms everyone’s safety, trust and privacy.

Building a Safer, More Trusting Community

Each one of these policies works to build a safety within our communities: increasing trust in our local law enforcement, focusing on preventing and solving local crimes, and preserving everyone's privacy.

These policies keep everyone safe. When our immigrant neighbors trust the police, everyone is safer in in our communities. When people trust the police, crimes are solved faster. Policies like these help to keep our community safe for all residents, not just those living in fear of ICE.

We need your support to get these policies adopted across Kent County.

Kent County Indivisible is working to have our cities and county adopt these policies, but it won't happen without public support.