http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/new ... 883193.htm










--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on Fri, Jun. 23, 2006



Johnson: It's not job of police to enforce immigration laws

By SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM
simone@phillynews.com 215-854-5324

The City of Brotherly Love is living up to its name - at least when it comes to the "love" seemingly directed by the police toward the thousands of illegal immigrants living in this town.

Philadelphia's top cop stressed yesterday that his officers will not chase after undocumented foreigners despite pressure from the federal government for municipal police departments to start getting more involved.

"We don't enforce immigration laws," said Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson.

"Our concern is to keep a relationship with the immigrant community," he added. "If an [undocumented] person is a victim of a crime, we want them to come forward."

Johnson said he was speaking out against having his officers track down immigrants without green cards because his department has lost "millions of dollars" in other federal funding while people continue shooting each other on city streets.

Since 2002, the department has lost about $3 million in federal block grants, officials said. That money went to funding overtime and cleaning up quality-of-life issues, such as street gambling and vandalism, police said.

Johnson said the federal government does not support big-city police departments' fight against what he called "domestic terrorism," including rising homicide and shooting rates. Meanwhile, financially strapped metropolises, like Philadelphia, can't afford to quell gun violence while turning in illegal immigrants to the feds.

"It will harm us going out there enforcing immigration laws. We don't know the immigration laws. We don't know how to enforce those things."

Johnson was referring to congressional immigration proposals that would give state and city law-enforcement agencies a range of new powers - from detaining illegal immigrants to reporting their status in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a database normally used to track criminals.

Johnson, along with 56 other urban police chiefs, met in Idaho earlier this month, questioning the role of local police departments in proposed immigration legislation.

The Major City Chiefs organization even sent a letter to President Bush, Johnson said, expressing its concern over involving cops in the brewing immigration battle.

The organization's president, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, issued a detailed press release spelling out "concerns with local police enforcing federal immigration law.

"Immigration laws are very complex, and the training required to understand them would significantly detract from the core mission of the local police," the news release stated.

The organization's vice president, Chief Darrel W. Stephens, of Charlotte, N.C., was scheduled to meet with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, a spokesman for Stephens said.

The Department of Justice did not return messages seeking comment on the enforcement debate. But White House spokesman Alex Conant, in an e-mail, stated, "The President has said we must fix the problem of illegal immigration and he is committed to comprehensive reform."

When the Senate passed its version of an immigration bill last month, calling for a guest-worker program and the registration of immigration "violators" in the NCIC, Bush praised the legislative body.

The House bill is still being debated.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2006 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com