Bethlehem City Council narrowly approved a partnership between the city police department and a division of the Department of Homeland Security to conduct complex investigations into crimes like human trafficking, despite concerns about the federal government\u2019s immigration-enforcement policies.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem police Chief Michelle Kott had asked council to approve a memorandum of understanding with Homeland Security Investigations, which would include investigations into the following types of crimes: human trafficking, child predator investigations, drug smuggling, cybercrime, financial fraud and export violations.<\/p>\n
Under the partnership, a Bethlehem police detective would become a Homeland Security \u201ctask force officer\u201d and would spend at least 30 hours a week working with a federal Homeland Security supervisor.<\/p>\n
Kott told City Council on Tuesday night that the partnership would help detectives more efficiently investigate complex crimes that often stretch beyond the borders of the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of our geographic location, because of the Lehigh Valley being a metro area, we need to utilize partnerships and collaborations with agencies to effectively enforce the law and protect victims, and this MOU will enable us to collaborate with HSI, with Homeland Security, on complex investigations that require additional funding, which require additional training, which require additional resources,\u201d Kott said.<\/p>\n
The memorandum explicitly states that the partnership will not enable Bethlehem police to enforce federal immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
Still, some City Council members said that they could not support the partnership due to Homeland Security\u2019s role in the immigration and deportation crackdown nationwide under President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI trust you, chief, I do not trust the Department of Homeland Security,\u201d City Council member Hillary Kwiatek said. \u201cThese task force officers get dragged into things that are working directly with a first- or second-line [Homeland Security] supervisor for a minimum of 30 hours a week, and they are granted authority to make arrests, seize property. \u2026 We have seen the use of accusations of crime to perform immigration activities without judicial warrants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kott told City Council members that the task force officer would remain under her purview, and that she would not approve Bethlehem police involvement in any immigration-enforcement actions. Bethlehem police do not enforce federal immigration laws, she said.<\/p>\n
An effort from City Council member Colleen Laird to ask Kott to negotiate a specific end date to the Homeland Security partnership failed. Laird had sought a requirement that council and police review the partnership on a regular basis to ensure compliance with the city\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
Under the memorandum of understanding, the length of the partnership between Homeland Security and Bethlehem police is indefinite, but either party can choose to terminate the agreement with at least 30 days written notice.<\/p>\n
The vote was 4-3; Rachel Leon, Michael Colon, Bryan Callahan and Justin Amann voted to approve the partnership. Kwiatek, Laird and Jo Daniels voted against it.<\/p>\n
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bethlehem City Council narrowly approved a partnership between the city police department and a division of the Department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,153,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-287519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-bethlehem","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}