Will You Stand Between Your Community and Injustice?
In a free and democratic society, the mission of police is clear: to protect and serve everyone in their community — not just the documented, not just the wealthy, not just the politically connected — but everyone. That includes the undocumented neighbor who has not been convicted of a serious crime, the asylum seeker fleeing danger, the family in the shadows trying to build a better life.
To call those who wish to live among us, but who do not yet have citizenship, as “killers, drug dealers, or rapists” is simply a lie.
Today, millions of our undocumented residents are under direct threat from the actions of federal immigration enforcement officers who, in too many cases, are operating extra-legally and outside the bounds of our laws and values.
I am talking about ICE agents who arrive masked, unbadged, and unidentifiable, moving through our streets like secret police. They seize, incarcerate, and deport individuals who have not been convicted of any crime — people who are here seeking asylum, pursuing legal pathways to citizenship, and who have every right to expect due process under our Constitution.
This is unacceptable. It is anti-American. It strikes at the very core of Community-Oriented Policing.
If you are a police chief, sheriff, or officer reading this, here is the challenge before you:
- Will you stop these unaccountable federal agents when they attempt to take people without proper legal authority?
- Will you protect your residents — all your residents — from unlawful arrest?
- Will you choose the Constitution and your Code of Ethics over cooperation with lawlessness?
If you will not, then understand this: policing in your city will continue without the trust, confidence, or cooperation of the very people you are sworn to serve. And without that trust, your ability to keep your community safe — for anyone — will collapse.
The result will be that you will then begin to rely on threat and physical force, not trust or cooperation, to carry out your mission of community protection.
This is not a time for excuses. This is not a time to hide behind “I was just following orders.” This is a time for courage, for moral clarity, and for a return to the foundational principles of policing a free and democratic society.
Community trust is not a gift — it is earned, and it is earned by lawfully protecting the most vulnerable among us, especially when it is risky to do so.
The oath you took was not to ICE, not to Washington, not to political party or convenience. It was to the Constitution and to the people of your community. All of them.
Will you stand between your community and injustice?
Or will you look the other way?
History will remember your answer.
Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 
What are you suggesting the police to do? Interfere with federal law enforcement? When do police deviate from following the law to act on the feelings of some people? This is dangerous. It is akin to having police ignore the law and respond in accordance to their personal feelings and beliefs.
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Important to remember: Laws are not always just. Segregation once was “lawful.” Autocrats pass laws for their benefit and not for the benefit of others.
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The police as the arbiters of justice? What scales are used?
The police should ignore unjust laws? Can the police ignore unjust court rulings? Can the police ignore unfavorable SCOTUS decisions? Can the police arrest when there are no laws, for justice?
Are there examples of this kind of police behavior that was determined as legal?
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Scott, I would bring to your attention the huge matter of police discretion — which does, in fact and practice, make police arbiters of justice. I might add that when laws prohibit people walking in the street, they can be overlooked — such as during the exercise of first amendment rights, police decide not to enforce those laws. When police leaders argue they do not have the resources to enforce certain laws that citizens may be demanding, they are arbitrating justice. Nevertheless, it is always a difficult decision and can easily backfire. So what I was presenting is a moral argument about protecting people — and that just because a law exists does not necessarily mean it is moral or just. Segregation was also “legal” and those whom the Third Reich decided to exterminate was all done “legally.”
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Police are part of the larger Criminal Justice System. Police are the gatekeepers. True that the police departments (PD) and police officers (P/O) have discretion. P/Os don’t have discretion to ignore a category of crime. I always thought that discretion was more situational than a plan to stop enforcement of specific laws. P/Os and PDs are accountable to larger political and community forces. Good or Bad.
Your example of police not enforcing laws that prohibit walking in the street or blocking traffic is not a moral decision as much as it is a political decision. The protestors can easily get a permit to march and accommodations would be made and marching in the street and blocking traffic would be permitted. There is a difference. In the first instance an illegal march is afforded a protest exemption because it’s believed to be politically favorable for the police not to intervene. In the second example protesters can march legally in the streets as long as they abide by location and time limits.
Your last example is a bit extreme comparing ICE’s roundups of criminal illegal aliens to Nazi Germany. Investigating and locating illegal aliens that have committed crimes or had their admission to the US revoked is vastly different than in Nazi Germany where German citizens were arrested and killed.
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Thanks, Scott, for this important discussion. These decisions (or this era in which we seem to be entering)is not and will not be easy… We all must be alert.
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ICE hasn’t been very successful in locating illegal aliens because corporations don’t want ICE to find them. Yeah, and many of the Germans who were arrested and killed were Communists, Socialist, Liberals, and Progressives not just the Jews.
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