This has been a fairly busy week, but I wanted to circle back to two things that happened this week to quickly analyze and opine: the law enforcement response to the hate letter sent to the Islamic Center of Davis and the legislation introduced on immigration law.
On Tuesday, law enforcement and community leaders pushed back against a hate letter sent to the Islamic Center in Davis. The message was delivered by DA Jeff Reisig, and he said, “If you see a hate incident, report it, we will act.”
As an editorial in the Enterprise noted, “In this case, the ‘Americans for a Better Way,’ the people (or, more likely, person) responsible for these letters, have chosen to stay hidden; and it’s a sign of our information-saturated society, and the post-election climate of uncertainty, that one disgruntled letter-writer and his copier could sow consternation and fear all over the country.
“But society showed us something else; that sometimes an action can have an opposite and unequal reaction. The outpouring of support for our Muslim neighbors from Davis political leaders, law enforcement and ordinary citizens vastly outstripped the ugly sentiments.”
I have mixed feelings on the response, but I do think it was overall the right thing to do. Some on here and elsewhere suggested that this was largely “fake news” and generated by the media.
Well perhaps, but this event was called by the district attorney, and flanked by law enforcement leaders in this county like Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel and Sheriff Ed Prieto.
In my view, this was a time for the law enforcement leaders to hit back hard on a message that was clear and ambivalent. When a letter says, “He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And, he’s going to start with you Muslims. He’s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews,” there isn’t a debate over whether this is hate speech.
Moreover, this sends a message that the community is not just going to sit by and allow one group or a number of vulnerable groups to get singled out. That is the biggest lesson of the holocaust – no one spoke out against the regime’s singling out of individuals until it was too late for people to act (and yes, given the content of the letter, the holocaust is the appropriate analogy here).
So why am I ambivalent here? A few points. First, I do believe that publicizing and overreacting to obnoxious but otherwise fairly benign incidents is more likely to encourage than discourage further incidents.
Second, the message sent back was a little over the top. Jeff Reisig stated, “As the District Attorney I simply want the community to know that we will vigorously investigate and prosecute all crimes that we can prove in this regard.”
Sheriff Prieto added that any complaint received by the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office “is going to be rigorously enforced and we will investigate every single complaint that we see.”
But, as Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel acknowledged, the letter that was sent does not represent a hate crime, as it does not have a specific and actionable threat against a group. Instead, it is classified as a hate incident. Which means – there is no ability for the police or law enforcement to vigorously investigate and prosecute, because there is no crime.
Finally, while I again think it was important for law enforcement and local leaders to respond, it is striking that those speaking at this event: Jeff Reisig, Ed Prieto, Darren Pytel, Robb Davis, Don Saylor, Jim Provenza, Carlos Matos and Hamza El-Nakhal were all males.
The optics of that is not great, but the intention of the press conference was good.
Immigration Legislation
San Francisco, led by Public Defender Jeff Adachi, took the immediate lead in looking to provide legal services for those caught up in the immigration system. As we saw in the article last weekend, even legal immigrants can face lengthy proceedings without access to a bail hearing, legal representation, or due process of law.
All the legislation introduced this week seeks to do is to “strengthen due process rights and protections for undocumented residents should President-elect Trump pursue overly aggressive immigration enforcement actions.”
Is that unreasonable?
SB 6 by Senator Ben Hueso (D-San Diego) would create a state program to fund legal representation for those facing deportation. AB 3 by Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) would create state-funded regional centers to train defense attorneys and public defender’s offices on immigration law and the consequences of criminal convictions.
One poster wrote, “Do we really want to protect someone that sneaks into our country illegally and commits crimes?”
The real question is whether we believe that all people, regardless of status, are innocent until proven guilty – and have the right to due process to determine their immigration status.
The specific laws introduced here have nothing to do with “choosing which laws to obey and which to ignore.”
What this quickly became is an argument against other California policies already on the books. As one commenter argued, “Can you find anyone who believes they are not related?”
That would be me. I believe that we need to have due process of law, where people have to have representation funded by the government if we wish to remove them from the country or charge them with a crime.
Basically, we are setting up a public defense system for those people charged with immigration violations.
What people are effectively arguing is that having representation in a criminal matter is tantamount to condoning immigrants committing a crime. Most people believe that is ludicrous.
We can debate over what the proper policy should be for those who get to live in the US. We can debate over whether we should be cracking down on those living in this country without proper documentation. However, if we wish to crack down on those people – and I will clear, I am not in support of that – at the very least we should have a fair process just as we have for taking away people’s liberties through the criminal justice system.
That is all this legislation attempts to address and it seems quite reasonable.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Oh my gawd, the PC news conference that was un-PC.
Like anonymous posters in the Vanguard sow consternation all over Davis.
He got the power! (to sow consternation, if we give it to him).
How about a testosterone boost, guys? (macho guys do not readily submit to being ‘sowed’)
If you think providing legal council is a waste of money are you willing to pay to detain someone who doesn’t need to be detained? It may turn out that there is a cost benefit balance that favors providing legal council, faster disposition and reduced detention.
Of course there is the moral argument as well, to be a nation of laws and “liberty and justice for all” we will always need lawyers.
So if an illegal alien is caught by border guards while trying to enter the U.S. at what point should they be offered council? What if they made it 5 miles into California and then caught? How about if they were caught a week later?
We would have to read the legislation to see. What happens now?
That the examples I noted above are even in question just shows how bonkers this legislation is.
I just don’t know even the current law in that respect. I also don’t know the triggering point for this legislation. You’re inferring too much from my lack of knowledge of particulars
BP
Yes, to all three circumstances. If a person is “caught” or found to be within the US, they should be entitled to due process which in my opinion would include legal representation.
Really Tia, if an illegal is caught that has just crossed the border we as Californians should have to pay for legal representation for them? That’s crazy.
If a Mexican-American who doesn’t happen to have identification with him is arrested by the border patrol, I think it should probably not be up to them to decide he’s illegal, or as to whether or how he gets deported. In other words: they are the enforcement agency. They should not also be the judge and jury. Anybody apprehended for any reason has a right to counsel. That’s such a basic principle of our legal system, I find it hard to believe anyone would argue with it. I don’t think you want the border patrol, or any other agency, acting as an extra-legal judiciary.
Mostly the issue involving sanctuary cities and campuses is whether their police agencies should be required to function as agents of the federal immigration authorities.
I can’t imagine the cost to the state to have to supply a lawyer to everyone they caught crossing the border. Right now it’s estimated that 2000 illegals are crossing daily.
How much you think we spend on public defense? We’re talking millions of people a year who get caught up in the legal system.
So what, so we should throw more money down the rathole?
I think it is bigger than this. I think the long-standing practice of over-reaction and over-publicizing of incidents that clearly support the liberal social justice narrative (largely false in my opinion) of a terrible racist country… that have significantly plausibility of being a hoax perpetrated by members of the same group claimed to be victimized, or their social justice liberal advocates… or even another individual or group just wanting to stir up a controversy… or even trying to have some fun in a twisted way… is a big reason why the media is so distrusted today and why the Democrats have been pummeled in elections the last six years.
People are really quite sick of it.
Think about it… Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton lecturing the voters that they are wrong in their opinion that America is NOT doing well and is NOT on the right track, while both of them being deeply entrenched in the liberal social justice narrative that the country is exploding with all sorts of hate incidents and crimes.
The truth has been exactly the opposite. The truth has been that the country has been heading in the wrong direction economically and socially, while we should have been celebrating our civil rights advances that frankly put the US above every other country in terms of multi-ethnicity integration. It is not a perfect utopian situation because tribalism is real and human and will always exist… but it is damn good and the best in the world.
I remember 20 so years ago at a giant tech conference where Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were on stage and asked if they had any regrets about the direction of Microsoft and its products. They looked at each other and I think it was Ballmer that said they were too dismissive of the number of smart people in the world without enough productive things to do and willing to spend their talent and time to just cause malice. Of course he was talking about hackers and writers of malware code. But this point resonated with me. First, it pointed out that there are people out that just like to cause trouble because they are otherwise bored. Second, it pointed to the need to keep people working on positive and productive things so they don’t get bored and start causing trouble.
And yet, this press conference was called by the conservative Republican DA
An elected official that would be at risk of having his career destroyed by the liberal totalitarian regime if he does not frog-march to the PC code.
I’d guess he’s not real concerned about that. He got 100% of the vote last time. http://www.yoloelections.org/election-returns/archives/20140603/25
Frankly
“People are really quite sick of it.”
I believe that a more accurate statement from you would have been “I am really quite sick of it.” I am also a person, and I not only do not see it this way, but I am quite sick of the suggestion that the majority sees things your way, when I would say that at least as recorded by the recent vote, more voters do not see it your way regardless of outcome.
David
“The optics of that is not great, but the intention of the press conference was good.”
I am curious. What about “the optics”of not having a woman speaker do you see as “not good”?
I am a gynecologist who happens to be female and yet I do not have any desire to have the qualifier “female” or “woman” placed in front of my title. I want to stand on my merits as an expert in my field. I expect no special standing because of my gender.