Guest Opinion/Commentary*

Saturday, May 15, 2010

It’s Tough Being Enlightened
  Law piece by Guest: Michael R. Shannon

We haven’t been swapping senior living tips lately, but something tells me Prince William County, VA Jefe de la Policía Charlie Deane won’t be moving to Arizona when he retires. I doubt he’ll even consider a vacation there, considering what’s been happening on the illegal immigration front.

But I tell you, I could have sworn I saw him carrying a sign in one of the marches protesting Arizona’s new law that requires law enforcement there to detain illegals rather than harbor them.

And did you notice how most, if not all, of the protest marches were held in “sanctuary” cities where the police are not allowed to enforce immigration law? I don’t think it was a coincidence.

Of course time really flies when you are harassing Mexicans. It was only three years ago that Prince William County (PWC) passed our first response to the illegal alien invasion, which at the time was characterized as revival of the Nazi racial laws, but it turns out is weaker than Arizona’s law.

Once the PWC law was passed the racial grievance mongers - or more accurately tribal, since a common language doesn’t constitute a racial group; in spite of what ignorant liberals would have you believe - have been dancing a complicated two-step. First the law is an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of foreigners to break our laws; and two, it won’t work anyway.

So it’s no surprise the University of Virginia is releasing results of a preliminary study of the law that “prove” the effects of the law are small potatoes and have no bearing on the drop in violent crime in PWC since only 2.2 percent of the arrestees caught in our draconian dragnet were illegal.

Que Dios nos ayude!

There is less here than meets the eye since there are some peculiarities to enforcement of our law that may not be found in Arizona. For example: our líder sin miedo, Jefe Deane had no intention of enforcing the ordinance if he could avoid it. The fact a majority of the board passed the ordinance and he works for the board and the citizens they represent had no bearing on the matter for the Detrick Bonhoeffer of Prince William County.

Unfortunately the election he had hoped would defeat members of the Board of Supervisors who supported the bill turned out to re–elect them quite handily. Pesky, unreliable voters!

So it was off to Plan B. Deane announced, “We made it very clear . . . that we were going to focus on individuals who had committed crimes, and that we were going to protect crime victims and witnesses regardless of their status, and we were not going to do racial profiling, roadblocks, sweeps or employment investigations.“

No wonder Deane only catches 2.2 percent. When the chief actively discourages enforcement it really puts a damper on the enthusiasm of patrol officers who want to enforce the law, but also want to stay on the good side of the command staff.

Not doing ANY employment investigations is like refusing to visit pawnshops in pursuit of burglars because it interferes with the free market.

Personally, I feel kinda sorry for the illegal felons who actually fled the county when the ordinance was first passed because they assumed - wrongly as it turned out - that police would be making life much harder for them.

In spite of the fact we had law enforcement handling foreign lawbreakers with kid gloves, there were still complaints about the “climate of fear” in some PWC neighborhoods - not to be confused with the “climate of hate” produced by the TEA Party that also jockeys for mainstream media time.

But isn’t that the idea? If a neighborhood is full of lawbreakers isn’t it a good thing for them to be apprehensive?

It’s also pretty obvious that Deane has a fairly low opinion of the character of his own officers, since he is evidently fearful that without his constant nagging and oversight they would use the ordinance to institute a reign of terror in some county neighborhoods.

And speaking of Nazis, what does this Arizona law actually do?

It forbids sanctimony by banning “sanctuary cities;” increases penalties for conspiracy by cracking down on illegal laborers and their employers; permits arrests of immigrants found without their documents (something already required by federal law) and penalizes those who knowing transport or harbor illegals - which is sending tremors through the NGO community and their bus drivers who routinely haul illegals to demonstrations throughout the country.

Sounds like a great law to me and one the Commonwealth should adopt. It’s a certainty that if Virginia followed Arizona’s lead, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli would be much more apt to follow the will of the General Assembly than our own Charlie Deane.

Michael R. Shannon

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe.

Posted by Guest: Michael R. Shannon on 5/15/10

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