Amid political clashes over the role of police in President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown, the Dallas Police Department has resisted attempts to be pulled into extremes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We wish Gov. Greg Abbott would show the same restraint.<\/p>\n
The governor sent a letter to the city of Dallas threatening to pull $32 million in funding over language in the Dallas Police Department\u2019s general orders that prohibits cops from detaining people solely for immigration reasons. Abbott has failed to credit DPD for efforts to strike a balance between cooperation with the feds in criminal investigations and the reality that local officers cannot themselves enforce federal immigration laws.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, police Chief Daniel Comeaux, a former agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, declined a request by the Community Police Oversight Board<\/a> to detail his officers\u2019 interactions with immigration officers. Dallas police often work alongside federal officials on gang arrests and other criminal investigations, and for months, DPD has faced unfounded suspicion and pressure from activists who want cops to renounce all cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n On the other end of the spectrum, Mayor Eric Johnson forced the council last year to consider a partnership with ICE<\/a> that would have deputized police officers for immigration enforcement even after Comeaux had already rejected it. The chief said the program would have pulled officers away from answering 911 calls \u2014 this in a city that struggles with response times \u2014 and the council ultimately sided with him.<\/p>\n It seems to us that Dallas police understand that cooperation with federal immigration authorities is necessary and that, at the same time, cops don\u2019t have the bandwidth or authority to be immigration officers.\u00a0<\/p>\n If Dallas police arrest a person on suspicion of a crime, the person is booked at the Dallas County jail, where county officials can and do hold inmates for ICE. But if police have no crime for which to arrest someone, DPD\u2019s general orders state that cops can\u2019t prolong the stop just to investigate the person\u2019s immigration status or to hold the person for immigration authorities. However, officers can volunteer information about the person to ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is less a political posture than a legal one. Multiple law enforcement associations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, have raised concerns that a decision by a police officer to hold someone solely for an immigration warrant \u2014 a civil matter the cop can\u2019t enforce \u2014 will expose cities to lawsuits. These are lawsuits that we, the taxpayers, will be on the hook for.<\/p>\n After Abbott\u2019s threat, Comeaux, diplomatic as ever, said the department was reviewing its policies. But Sgt. Sean Pease, president of the Dallas Police Association, called Abbott\u2019s move \u201cdeeply disturbing.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n DPD has tried to do the right thing here, recognizing that, Trump\u2019s excesses aside, there remain valid grounds for cooperation with ICE to capture gangsters, traffickers and other criminals. So how is it that Abbott is threatening to defund a police department led by a former federal special agent who wants to bring down his department\u2019s response times while standing up for cooperation with the feds at a time when it is deeply unpopular?<\/p>\n Dallas police are not the enemy, governor.<\/p>\n Have thoughts about this?\u00a0Send a\u00a0letter\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0editor\u00a0using our\u00a0letters\u00a0form<\/a>\u00a0or email\u00a0letters@dallasnews.com<\/a>.\u00a0Letters\u00a0should be no more than 200 words and include\u00a0the\u00a0first and last name of\u00a0the\u00a0writer and city of residence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid political clashes over the role of police in President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown, the Dallas Police Department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-260816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}