Thread: CA-Police checks will persist

Police checks will persist
Pomona votes to accept grant
Monica Rodriguez, Staff Writer
Article Created: 09/09/2008 09:48:58 PM PDT


POMONA - City residents and nonresidents alike went to the City Council this week to weigh in on whether the city should accept a state grant to help pay for DUI enforcement checkpoints.
After listening to more than 25 speakers, the City Council voted 6-1 late Monday to accept the grant. Councilwoman Cristina Carrizosa cast the opposing vote.

Members of the audience burst into applause and cheers at the decision. Checkpoint opponents held a vigil outside City Hall.

The vote is the most recent flashpoint in an often passionate debate involving the use of traffic checkpoints in the city.

The debate began after a checkpoint May 3 that stopped all traffic at San Antonio Avenue and Mission Boulevard drew protests from Pomona Habla/Pomona Speaks, a coalition of community groups and residents. Opponents said officers were profiling Latinos.

Among the speakers who called for the council to accept the grant was Virginia Madrigal, who said the discussion of checkpoints seems to always lead back to May 3.

"There are so many issues the city is facing. We don't need to go over that again," she said.

Among those calling for the council to postpone a decision on the grant was Francisco Espinoza, a Pomona businessman and a representative of the Pomona Valley Latino Chamber of Commerce.

The traffic checkpoints carried out by the Police Department need to stop, he said.

"They are profiling Latinos in the community,"

he said, drawing jeers from the audience.
While votes were being cast in the council chambers, more than 100 people calling for the council to reject the grant gathered outside for a vigil. Some held candles, prayed and sang solemn songs.

At times the vigil took a rally-like feel when the crowd broke out in cheers, in both Spanish and English, of "The people united will never be defeated!"

Before the vote, Mayor Norma Torres told the audience that in the past three years the council has accepted grants to address impaired and unlicensed drivers driving on the city's streets illegally.

"As City Council members, we have taken an oath to uphold the laws of the state of California," Torres said.

Issues related to immigration have become part of the checkpoint debate, but she said that issue is out of place at the city-government level because it falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

The debate has also included false information, including allegations that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been at checkpoints, Torres said.

Torres asked members of a council committee established this summer to review the use of checkpoints to give a report on their work.

Carrizosa, a member of the committee, said the body has met twice and is "still, in my opinion, in the phase of fact finding."

For members of Pomona Speaks, the vote will not deter their efforts as they seek a policy involving the use of traffic checkpoints.

The coalition intends to continue to seek an independent investigation into the May 3 checkpoint and another independent investigation into an Aug. 21 verbal dispute involving off-duty police officers and audience members at a meeting organized by the coalition.

The topics of discussion at the meeting revolved around the use of checkpoints.

"For now, we are looking at how we can best bring positive change," said Arturo Jimenez, a member of the coalition.


http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_10423509

Focus also on i-9ers and green cards for job losses to Americans. We are being distracted to catching illegals, only.

Our government is so smart; but why?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Oh we have many illegals! But the new fight which we must fight is legal immigration. Dear Lord Help Us!

The i-9's and the green cards are killing the jobs totally for Americans.

Where are the Americans working?

Hate or Love a country? Is the question?

http://tinyurl.com/5tv8k4

BALTIMORE -- A Snow Hill man will spend three years in prision for trying to bribe state and federal officals in a scheme that cluminated in raids on several Lower Shore businesses last fall.

Javed Iqbal, 40, was also given three years supervised release Tuesday for a racketeering conspiracy related to a scheme to bribe officials with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to illegally obtain green cards and the Maryland Comptroller's Office to receive abatement of state taxes, said officials from the U. S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.

REMEMBER THIS BECAUSE THIS IS THE LOOPHOLE... ALL FOREIGNERS WANT I-9'S AND GREEN CARDS AND ETC. THEN THE AMERICANS JOBS ARE THEIR'S LEGALLY AND THE BABIES PRODUCED ARE AMERICANS?

This is an update of a thread at
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-131004-0.html

"For now, we are looking at how we can best bring positive change," said Arturo Jimenez, a member of the coalition.

This IS positive change and about time too!

How do you profile at a checkpoint when All cars are stopped anyway? Do latinos have separate lanes just for them? This argument is so assinine it brays!