Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Mark Uncapher called on County
Police Chief Thomas Manger and County Executive Ike Leggett to permit
officers access to Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) databases provided
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This life-saving resource
provides our officers with the immigration status and gang identity
information of anyone suspected of criminal activity. It is available to
state and local law enforcement agencies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and
provides data gathered from 8 DHS databases, the National Crime Information
Center (NCIC), the Interstate Identification Index (III) and other state
criminal history indices.
"As violent gang activity continues to increase in Montgomery County, it is
imprudent of our leaders to thwart police officers from making use of
information which serves to protect all of the people in our county,"
Uncapher stated. ICE maintains specific resources on gangs, such as MS-13,
through "Operation Community Shield" which exists "to identify, locate,
arrest, and prosecute gang members and associates and ultimately disrupt and
dismantle gang organizations."
"There is no excuse for preventing access to this database, especially when
you consider that Montgomery County Police average about 35 to 40 arrests
per day in a county with nearly a million people," Uncapher added. "And
there is no danger of profiling, since officers could very easily do routine
checks of every suspect against this database. But by limiting the access of
individual officers to this "round the clock" police resource, citizens and
non-citizens alike are being put at risk."
According to published accounts, the Montgomery County Police Department
has recently changed its policy on cooperation with Federal Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. According to the news story,
individual police officers will no longer be able to contact ICE directly
when arresting someone for violent crimes and/or weapons offenses. The
policy had been changed last February to allow officers to report the name
of a suspect to ICE agents so that they could checked against ICE's
database. The old policy allowed officers to "notify ICE by telephone as
soon as possible after the arrest." See:
http://www.thesentinel.com/mont/CountyPolice
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=adtjjbdab.0.0.u7w6u5aab.0&ts=S0419&p=http%3A%2F%2Fw
ww.thesentinel.com%2Fmont%2FCountyPolice&id=preview>
#############################
MCGOP CONVENTION!