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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
I don't understand why everyone is beating around the bush (actually I do, it's partisanship, or in rationalist speak "in-group bias").
ICE's mission obviously isn't a bad mission, and most people agree with the overall goal.
ICE's conduct is obviously not good, especially in an American context, which is a country that (ideally) has a stronger aversion to government overreach than most.
"Muh masks" seems to have become a meme here, but it's real. You're Americans, why are you okay being cucked by your government. Masked non-uniformed men are stuffing people into vans. Not just that, they're sending them to third world prisons??? That's insane. Obviously it's nowhere near as bad as the NKVD, but why are you okay taking even a step in that direction? What if the Democrats spin up the "super ATF" who start kidnapping people who fuck up their gun paperwork into unmarked vans to be sent to Romania? Government overreach is bad, period.
Judges, prosecutors, and the supermajority of law enforcement agents manage to do their jobs with their faces uncovered. ICE agents could too. Doxxing ICE agents is illegal and prosecuting people who do that is almost a bipartisan slam dunk. It would be especially bipartisan if ICE didn't make themselves such easy targets by acting like NKVD-wannabes. Most Americans don't like the current immigration situation. So make ICE not maximally shit looking, and then let the Democratic leadership alienate themselves protesting something Americans like, instead of currently, where Americans are starting to dislike ICE.
Further, the actions of ICE are WILDLY UNDERMINED by the fact the administration is EXPLICITLY SAYING they won't go after farm or hotel labour (why hotels?????) If they were serious about immigrants, they'd go after them where they were in large concentrations. They'd use their political capital to push e-verify. They'd go after the AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO PAY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AMERICAN DOLLARS. But they aren't, because they don't want to. This massively undermines the legitimacy of ICE.
They made ICE maximally inflammatory, and then you act suprised the Dems are inflamed? This is the sibling equivalent of winding up your little brother then acting suprised when he tries to kick you in the nuts. You'd get a lot more parental (american people) sympathy if you weren't obviously trying to piss him off and were actually doing the thing you said is your goal, because right now it just looks like you're trying to piss him off and don't care about the goal.
Not only should masked ICE agents continue to deport illegals anywhere they could be found, there should be a mandatory ICE detachment in every school, hospital and government building. There should be ICE backed up by the National guard at fucking Target. Don't even get me started on what I wish they would do to the anti-ice protestors.
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The ICE are wearing masks because if they dont they rationally think their children will be killed. That is it. If you think ATF agents have sustained prolonged sieges of major ATF buildings you want to compare these to, please do.
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That's been tried before: in 1992 (admittedly under the elder Bush administration) Randy Weaver (not the best of characters, mind you) had an undercover informant request illegal shotgun modifications, then ATF agents shot his dog, shot his son in the back, and shot his unarmed wife who was holding a 10 month old baby.
And they followed this up a year later by, on a rather flimsy set of weapons allegations, (allegedly) lighting on fire and demolishing the Branch Davidian (David Koresh again not the best of characters) compound near Waco, killing 76, including 25 children.
The resulting backlash was complicated [1] (and also pretty terrible, but Weaver did win a civil suit and there were some later investigations of the Waco incident that weren't entirely supportive of the government side), but seemed to usher in a ceasefire in practice, with the gun folks (mostly) filling out all their paperwork and ATF not shooting up (too many) places (see the two Bundy standoffs in which they didn't go scorched earth). Although the two sides, as far as I can tell, don't really have tremendous fondness for each other still.
This was actually a joint Federal operation. ATF entrapped him, a US Marshall killed his dog and his son, and an FBI sniper killed his wife.
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I made a comment here that broadly addresses some of these points you're making.
The gamble here is that the optics will have significant utility in deterring other potential migrants. The short term results suggest that it is effective.
We know the potential of the online left to find, doxx, and terrorize people. It's not even up for debate. They will terrorize ICE agents' families. The tools and collective effort that anti-ICE and anti-Trumpers have at their disposal when it comes to identifying, locating and terrorizing these people is massive, and it will be an all-hands-on-deck effort. To them, they would be doxxing Nazis, so it would be for a noble cause.
I don't think you appreciate how little "Dems being inflamed" matters anymore. It's not because I, or many other middle right people want to do that. Some do, but I don't want that. That's not the goal for me. It has just become utterly impossible to not inflame Democrats at every stop. Everything Republicans do is racist or fascist, so it doesn't matter. It reminds me of this meme. It may come off as cheesy, but it is nonetheless a great way to convey what the non-left is up against every time they do anything that deviates from kit glove treatment of nonwhites or any "marginalized" community.
they don't do this to cops, even during the 2020 summer of love
just arrest people who do this
if ICE was in any way sympathetic to the median American, doxxing them would make the Dems look terrible, and prosecuting them would make Republicans look great. If half the country is fine with them getting doxxed, you have fucked up massively, and only have yourself to blame.
Ain't gonna happen. Online doxxing mobs are not subject to prosecution. I mean as a practical matter. Even if counterfactually there was a will to prosecute, the feds couldn't get almost all of the online mob.
You don't need to get almost all. You just need to make it clear that any one of them can go to the slammer for doing the wrong thing on the public internet. That shouldn't be hard. People go to jail for CP and doxxing is inherently easier to catch.
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Here's a study out of Canada about doxxing officers.
You could arrest someone who is doing something illegal sure. How many things could you think of right now that are technically legal but that would really stress someone out after they know they're identity as ICE agent has been revealed? I know I can think of probably a handful.
The perception from the left is that they are not sympathetic, so this point is moot before you even begin to explain the rest of it.
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If Democrats were willing to do this, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. Regular criminal enforcement was left by the wayside along with immigration enforcement.
I wish we would just arrest people. Democrats have taught me, very thoroughly, that they don't want that, either.
Are we not arresting people? There have been a few stories lately (the first to come to mind: Decarlos Brown Jr.'s 14 prior arrests) that suggest that the problem is later in the pipeline.
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Perhaps that's not your goal, but you have to agree that that is the goal of many of your counterparts and it's the goal of those in the White House who are implementing the policy directly. Their public statements on the matter are intentionally designed to be both silly and inflammatory
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They're not US citizens, I don't give a fuck. It's extremely sane, and extremely awesome. FAFO, lawbreakers.
Gun people are meticulous about paperwork, and don't have much sympathy for people who don't do their paperwork. FAFO, lawbreakers.
I have already covered this before.
Perfect is the enemy of good. When the GOP fields a "deport all lawbreakers except hotel and farm worker candidate" versus a "deport all lawbreakers" candidate, I'll vote for the latter. But so far, we've only ever been offered the former.
I'm not surprised, I'm indifferent. They are inflamed because I exist. I don't care that they don't like it. No matter what I do, they will be inflamed and continuously encroach on me and mine. It's war now, war to the knife. The time for talking is over.
I write this not to wage the culture war, but to express what (I think) many who support these ICE actions are feeling and thinking. In the context above, supporting ICE makes sense. Your use of caps lock made me think you were genuinely distressed and looking to understand the other side. Maybe my answer is disappointing because there is nothing there for you to relate to (hopefully I'm wrong!), but I really think that many people feel this way and therefore really do not care what ICE does to illegals.
How do you know they’re not US citizens if, as ICE has been doing, the people being detained are not given a chance to prove their citizenship? In May they took a guy’s REAL ID after wrestling him the ground and cuffing him, and just declared on the spot that it was fake. They then kept him detained for a few hours and eventually let him go after he provided his SSN (wtf???), but that doesn’t change the fact that this is retarded. There would be no story here if they simply had not done that, and just arrested the guys who were undocumented. A traffic cop can scan my license and verify it’s real, why can’t ICE? I don’t carry around my passport and as a US citizen I’m not required to. I don’t know what defense I’d have in the moment if ICE decided to detain me after making the determination that a.) I’m undocumented and b.) the license I gave them is fake. Add to that the fact that some of these guys are masked, not in uniform, and refuse to present a badge. It’s pretty close to just plain kidnapping. It’s idiotic and Americans are right to sour on such an astounding lack of professionalism.
| I don’t know what defense I’d have in the moment if ICE decided to detain me after making the determination that a.) I’m undocumented and b.) the license I gave them is fake.
I guess it would go the same way as the guy from your story, you're detained for a couple hours and released when they discover that you aren't the right person. That's supposed to be kidnapping?
Edit: I just realized that your "...Americans are right to sour..." statement might mean that you aren't American and don't know how ICE fits into the deportation flow, so my comment may have been excessively harsh.
From reporting, it may seem reasonable to think that ICE is rounding people up and choosing who to deport based on what they determine about the person's citizenship status. That could produce a situation where someone goes to the grocery store without their passport, gets caught up in a sweep, and finds themselves on the next flight to CECOT.
This is false. ICE does not make deportation determinations. The deportation decision has already been made by an immigration judge and ICE then needs to positively establish a person's identity to know whether they are the correct Jose Gonzalez who has a removal order. If yes, process them for deportation. If no, they can still detain you and refer you to an immigration court, but they can't deport you and you will have the ability to plead your case to the immigration court. (There are some nuances with immigration officers in some situations in border areas where they have more discretion to order an expedited removal, and if you at all claim US citizenship then expedited removal isn't permissible, this is not what's happening with ICE.) It's basically the same as other agencies enforcing different laws - ICE does not have the independent authority to deport in the same way that the police can arrest you for something but they can't make a determination of your guilt or impose a sentence.
I am American and understand how it works, I’m okay with all of that and mostly think the execution has been very bad. Citizens shouldn’t have to worry about being detained for even a few hours by federal agents just because those agents randomly decide your license is fake, especially in a country like this where limiting government overreach was a core value of our constitution. I haven’t liked when Democratic administrations have done stuff like this and now I also don’t like that the Trump administration is doing it.
Then I notice that I'm confused. In your original post you said: "How do you know they’re not US citizens if, as ICE has been doing, the people being detained are not given a chance to prove their citizenship?". But that means you know that ICE can't deprive you of a chance to prove your citizenship because a claim of citizenship (or legal status generally) can only be legally adjudicated by a court. They cannot deprive you of a chance to prove your citizenship. If you know of any cases where it seems they have been doing that I would be extremely interested to learn more - that would be, to me, an actual scandal.
Yes, but also no. Yes because I agree that citizens shouldn't have to worry about that in the same way I think citizens shouldn't have to worry about being the victim of a crime or (if running for office) citizens shouldn't have to worry about how they're going to put food on the table. Ideals we should strive towards but which are not achievable in our current - maybe any - civilization.
I have no idea about the situation you're describing so I'm not making any judgment about the details. I will admit that there have been enough "ICE Agents Did A Bad" stories that turn out to mean "ICE Agents Enforced Immigration Law" or "Complete Fabrication, ICE Agents Not Involved" that my skepticism level of an ICE related story is at the level of Jussie Smollett reporting a new hate crime. But that's my bias talking and it's absolutely possible that it happened exactly as presented, so let's stipulate that this was a Bad Encounter.
Bad Encounters are bad and we should work to minimize them. Bad Encounters are also inevitable and there are feedback mechanisms to do their best to correct the damage - I truly do hope that if this guy has some sort of case against ICE he gets anything he's entitled to - afterwards.
Maybe, though, this type of Bad Encounter is more widespread than I believe and citizens are being routinely detained in large numbers. I have not seen any evidence from reporting that this is true, I haven't personally seen it or known anyone who has despite having friends who have illegal immigrant family members, and given the number of Hispanic citizens and the intensity of press coverage on the issue I'd expect it to be clearer. If in my bias I have missed it or if this happens in the future (because I think it very improbable) I give you permission to say about me "man, what a maroon". This would also be a large scandal to me.
Skepticism towards authority is pro-American and healthy, but like all virtues it can be taken too far. Don't forget that the same George Washington who freedom fought against British tyranny turned around and personally led troops as President during the Whiskey Rebellion - which was partially a dispute over Federal authority.
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Cops, federal or other, dont decide whether your license is fake. They run it through a system, typically known as LEADS. If you pop on the system and are an American citizen without an arrest warrant issued for you, you are in the minority, maybe 0.1% probably less. And in most of those cases it is because you had your identity stolen at one point.
Everything gets checked. Sometimes frustratingly slowly. But the slowness is because of the things that prevent people from being hanged the morning after arrest, not things working in the other direction in 99.99% of cases.
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I agree. Unfortunately we are in a state of exception, because a large proportion of the people within our borders are not supposed to be here, and until very recently they were coming in at a faster rate than we could kick them out. Once there are almost no illegal aliens in our country, I will gladly join you in support of strengthened civil liberties to prevent ICE overreach (coupled with extremely strict and aggressive border controls, of course!).
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The concern is if you have law enforcement doing wack crazy shit, what if they accidentally pick up a US citizen and because they're operating at a level of "wack and stupid" they get shipped off? We should demand more competency from the government.
Again, what if the government makes you a lawbreaker? This is such myopic thinking. These are terrible precedents. This is literally the definition of the "first they came for" quote but you're just super confident it'll only be the first step.
Sure, but then you can't complain when I call your guy a retard and his policies terrible. If you want to have low standards that's fine, but I get to point at them and call them terrible. Your standards suck.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I am not very pro-immigration myself. I am mildly distressed I guess, but mainly because I feel kind of like I'm screaming into the void as a centrist.
This administration is retarded, and isn't even doing the thing they say they're doing, and it kind of feels like this (normally quite smart) community is content to clap like seals instead of going "wait why aren't they actually doing things that would solve immigration permanently, and instead going for maximum heat and chaos?"
Polling shows trump getting steadily less popular on immigration all year. Down and to the right. So while you're right, that group is shrinking due to his shitty execution.
Cost of doing business. I don't care. As a normal middle class person with a job who isn't tatted up or dressed like a thug, ICE is literally a 0% threat to me or any people I know or care about.
It's not myopic it all, in fact the liberal scales have fallen from my eyes and I see clearly. The Left is going to eventually come for me anyway, and in fact they have already been boiling the frog for decades. No matter how hard the Right contorts itself to please the Left, it will never be enough. A lot of Leftists would already like to declare me a lawbreaker for my gun ownership, political and religious beliefs, and educational choices for my own children. They just haven't gotten the right tyrant in the power yet. They have a religious view of Progress and a Manichaean worldview that divides people into Decent Human Beings and chuds. Chuds deserved to be silenced, disarmed, barred from employment separated from their own children (who will be forcibly converted into Decent Human Beings by state education)..
I'm not sure what you're trying to convey here. He's a "retard" because... he's doing what he was elected to do less than perfectly? Does "retard" here just mean "MAGA shitlord" or is there a more specific meaning you intended? To me, a retard (here I mean "foolish or naive person") would be trying to deport people with the best possible optics in attempt to please both sides while failing to accomplish anything of note because he'd be using a bureaucratic state full of hostile partisans. Under this definition, Trump is clearly not a "retard." Optics and decorum have been effectively weaponized by the Left, and only a retard would allow his supporters' agenda to be stymied by accusations of "racism" or "14 heartbreaking photos"-style manipulation.
You know, I am actually sympathetic to distressed centrists. I never wanted to be an angry partisan, and I am in fact weary and a little ashamed of my partisan thoughts and feelings. At heart I am a disappointed liberal. My world was more pleasant when I thought my fellow countrymen and I just had the same fundamental conceptions of goodness and justice, and we merely disagreed over the best ways to realize both. But it seems undeniable that the worldview of a large segment of the Left and the majority of the Right are actually incompatible and irreconcilable, and the Left believes in their political position with religious fervor. And so, in a great irony, the descendants of those religious men who laid down their arms and embraced Liberalism in order to end all holy wars must now arm themselves against a fanatical religious movement which is the fruit of that same Liberalism.
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| The concern is if you have law enforcement doing wack crazy shit, what if they accidentally pick up a US citizen and because they're operating at a level of "wack and stupid" they get shipped off? We should demand more competency from the government.
This is a concern, yes. This (very valid and very real) concern is true of all law enforcement. What if we arrest or even convict someone of a crime that they did not commit?
The answer is that we sometimes do.
Barring an even more intrusive surveillance state and its associated concerns, this is absolutely inevitable. Which is why there's a vast amount of legal guidelines around the operation of law enforcement, a robust series of protections and legal avenues for challenging the actions of law enforcement, and a free and really vocal press that will scream to high heaven over even legal but visually distasteful operations. These are all good things, great things even. Not flawless - some amount of errors will always occur and we should remain vigilant for them - but they operate well enough to know that your concern is essentially unfounded. If there were a real risk of citizens getting randomly yanked off the street and shipped overseas it would be occurring and we would know about it. ICE is being aggressive in enforcement, sure, but I'm unaware of anyone who was deported without an actual order of deportation. Even edge cases like Abrego Garcia had deportation orders. The due process has been duly delivered by immigration courts. "They have made their decision, now let ICE enforce it!" The system - it works if you let it.
And to the point that ICE is being unnecessarily inflammatory through their actions: I submit that being less invasive did not result in better cooperation or lower rhetoric. When people were (and are) legally detained by ICE after showing up to their hearings there was no end of whining that it was terribly unjust and fascist - why, those people thought they were just going in for a check-up, how dare you then arrest them? It truly does not matter how ICE operates if the other side thinks that (effectively) no person should be deported.
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‘Trump isn’t going after the problematic illegals’ is a reasoned criticism. The guys in a Home Depot parking lot are probably not people I want my kids hanging around with once they’re done with work(I mean, they’re roustabouts), but that doesn’t make them the worst people. The worst ones are outside of employment, making their money off of other illegals or crime.
Now farm and slaughterhouse workers are probably the least problematic ones, when native citizens have the choice between doing those jobs and jail they choose jail. Somebody has to pick the crops and slaughter the chickens and thats a very reasonable principled exception.
I will gladly pay twice as much for strawberries or steak in the U.S. if it means Americans get those jobs. I currently live in Japan, and so I'm already essentially doing that. It's really not that bad.
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I heard an NPR show in which they interviewed chicken slaughterhouse workers. White Americans worked those jobs. They were displaced by illegals.
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Without really wanting to weigh in on whether this statement is true or not, it's at least possible to note that Congress in its wisdom created visa categories (H-2A, H-2B) for these sorts of jobs. Is it completely crazy to think "maybe we should actually use (or expand/modify as necessary) the existing visa program, rather than allow 'anything goes' under the table"?
Although there's probably an interesting tangent on using AI and robotics in slaughterhouses.
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???????
That’s not principled at all.
If your “principle” is “no illegals, except for these specific jobs that natives shouldn’t sully themselves with” then that’s just a comedic farce and the left would absolutely have every right to spit in ICE’s face in that case.
I'm reminded of an ironic line someone posted in a comment back on slatestarcodex or perhaps the subreddit, well before TheMotte was a thing:
I'm also reminded of a discussion I had on the SlateStarCodex subreddit with someone probably around 2020, when they were arguing that Twitter was being perfectly principled in selectively censoring Trump, since they were following the principle of "I don't want Trump to speak" (it might have been some different public figure on some different platform - my memory is fuzzy).
If you make principles sufficiently absolute or sufficiently bespoke, then you can make any behavior principled. Which, sort of like "everything is political," is really just word games, since the entire point of words having meaning is to discriminate between things that match that word and things that don't, and this destroys this ability to discriminate between "principled" and "unprincipled."
Either that, or perhaps it forces people to explicitly declare which principles are involved, forcing people to recognize different principles that each other have that were only implicit until then.
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I'm so confused what your view on immigration is. "I'm fine with immigrants if they do shitty jobs"
So then you're fine with the status quo? What % of illegal immigrants are gang bangers?
My view of immigration is that there is no market clearing price for first world citizens doing a variety of shitty jobs- you can reallocate the limited supply by offering more money, but you cannot get them fully staffed.
Ideally we would let Hondurans come, make lots of money(for them) and then go home and enjoy the purchasing power advantage. But at a certain point it’s on us for being lazy and incompetent.
This is, frankly, absurd. It must misunderstand both components, supply and demand. How is this supposed to work? Does demand for such workers not slope downward? (I would think that as the price of such labor increases, the quantity demanded would go down, as the price of the ultimate products would have to go up, reducing the consumer demand, in turn.) Does supply for such workers not slope upward? How would this work? Are you somehow going to entice fewer workers to take those jobs by offering $X+1 instead of $X?
It's not really a lack of a market clearing price, but if the supply curve is very flat, behavior that looks like that can happen. Suppose there are 10000 people willing to do a job from any price from $10/hr to $100/hr. And there are 3 employers willing to hire a 3333 people for any price between $10/hour and $50/hour. Market clearing price is $10/hour and one person is unemployed. Now another employer pops up, also willing to hire 3333 people for between $10 and $50. At first they offer $11, and they fill all their positions while the other 3 employers end up understaffed. Those employers offer $12 to fill their positions. The new employer offers $13, and so on -- the market clearing price eventually reaches $50 and a bunch of positions go unfilled. And if any of those employers decide they can pay more than $50 (but less than $100), all they do is move the people around and end up at a higher equilibrium price.
A very flat supply curve would, by convention, be nearly perfectly elastic, with the value of elasticity very close to infinity. In contrast, what you go on to describe is a perfectly inelastic supply, with the value of elasticity very close to zero.
This is in pretty sharp contrast to actual measurements of the elasticity of labor supply, which are more like 0.7-1.8. Do you have any sort of empirical support for this claim of (I believe) perfectly inelastic supply (as opposed to your description of the supply curve, which would be perfectly elastic)?
Maybe I'll put off dealing with the demand side until we see if we can make some progress on the supply side. TBH, I've got a bad feeling about this one.
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This has been my position since the Regan amnesty.
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An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Unlike Judges and Prosecutors which are a small, relatively cloistered group if need be, ICE is the law enforcement front line. And there is an active threat to dox and murder them. Sure you can prosecute the people who do, but it doesn't un-murder the husbands and fathers.
Cops manage just fine for centuries and they're front line. Also very unpopular in blue areas and yet aren't being murdered in their sleep.
Cops are liked in blue areas,
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You actually see a lot of cop ambushes. Because you don't need to murder them in their sleep when you can literally call them out to you.
Police officers across U.S. face crisis as ambush shootings rise: "It just happened out of nowhere"
Fact of the matter is, policing in Democrat controlled areas is fucked. When they aren't being ambushed and murdered, politicians are throwing them under the bus, or to the wolves, and recruitment has completely collapsed. Nobody wants to police Democrat controlled areas with politicians literally putting targets on their back. I wouldn't pretend everything is all hunky dory in the land of policing.
TLDR: recruitment in one local Democrat city police department does seem to be suffering from poor candidates but the department itself makes recruitment difficult and is likely to make it harder.
Personal story time. I live in a very blue city in a very blue state. You have seen my city in the news many a time regarding its police.
I am also in about month six of the hiring process for my city's police department. The below is only applicable to my experiences with a single department but from what I've heard it's broadly similar to other comparable departments*.
It's not fair to say that the process is broken necessarily because I think it's heavily constrained by the stakeholders as explained below, but it is awful. As I said, I'm in month six. Month six of how many? Haha haha, there is absolutely no way to know but I'd guess at least three more months before I would start the academy (if selected). This means that with the academy and field training it's around 18-24 months from application to a usable police officer.
This department is also about 10% below its previously approved staffing targets. One would assume that with the current numbers and the known recruitment issues, the department would at least keep standards the same if not be forced to lower them. Haha, haha. The physical standards - already way, way beyond the state's requirements - are changing to remove age/gender norming and adding another upper body event. They fully expect that the change will cause large numbers of candidates - I'd guess around 50% - who are currently well above passing to fail in the new system.
My interaction with the other candidates comes via boot camp style workouts that are technically optional but anyone not attending regularly (1-3 times a week for all those months you're in the process) will not have their application moved forward when it hits a certain point. They're better about communicating this now, previously they just silently let you wait. And wait. In a part where it's normal to wait two+ months before you're contacted to start the processing. There are probably people still expecting a call that is never going to come**.
Some of these are relatively relaxed. Others are extremely militaristic and difficult, much worse than anything I remember from actual boot camp from my prior service. 4-6 mile runs with other exercises sprinkled in are not uncommon.
But they do allow a good opportunity to meet and evaluate the other candidates. Now, I'm not a great one myself so I do not brag when I say that I'm probably in the top 25%. I don't know the quality of the people who applied in the past. I would not rate the average highly now.
So the obvious question: why? Why is it like this? Again, some of this is may be specific to my city but my impression is that it's because it benefits no one to fix it. The ACAB / Defund the Police chatter has quieted down nationally but is still very strong at the local level and they fight to reduce the budget for officers - and even previously budgeted spots that aren't filled represent money that can eventually be clawed back. The existing officers aren't really impacted yet outside of opportunities for additional overtime. Why not push for the highest standards possible? Don't we want the best of the best? The city has limited upside but massive downside possibilities when hiring. The benefits of a supercop are real but diffuse and difficult to measure. The price of a bad cop can be calculated in lawsuits - and this is a very litigant friendly state. Plus the more combustible risks. A couple of cops who set their mind to it could probably bankrupt the city and get part of it burned down in riots. Be as methodical and restrictive as you possibly can because the pain felt by residents through underpolicing is also more diffuse and the public will at least partially blame the cops anyway. Win/win.
My prediction is that things will not change unless there's a sufficiently horrifying event that gets recorded and can be directly blamed on understaffing (unlikely) or enough of a crime wave to elect a city government focused on the issue (possible but ACAB).
** Each step is like dealing with the DMV if the DMV was able to tell you to go away and they'll get back to you whenever. One regular at the workouts was rejected near the very end of his process and filed an appeal. In January. The appeal contains all the necessary information because all the relevant investigations have been completed, it's just waiting on yes/no.
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Recruitment collapse is in large part due to the decline in working class human capital. Cops have high standards(reasonably so) and human capital has gotten worse.
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But not, notably, targeted ambushes. A 2014 report claimed somewhat lazily that about a quarter of all ambushes had an assailant that had a prior relationship (broadly and vaguely defined) with the officer. Two thirds were spontaneous. Reading between the lines, the reasonable assumption is that it’s probably more like 1 in 8 ambushes that loosely fits your profile (ambushes themselves seem to be maybe a quarter of all “officers get shot at”). And I suspect ambushes where a very specific officer is the actual and only target is small, even there I’m not convinced their name being public is moving the margins much.
Dont get me wrong policing in general is “fucked”. I wouldn’t want to be one. In the general sense though, we do trade cop deaths for other benefits, much like we trade other deaths for other benefits all the time. It’s normal in a society. Cold as it may sound, it seems the marginal drawbacks to no-mask policy are worth the non-marginal gains in trust. And for that matter, at least naively my first assumption is that ICE agents are more, not less, safe from targeted retribution (presumably mostly gangs and cartels) because they know escalation doesn’t benefit them (stateside).
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No, not in their sleep.
This is a shooting based on anti police sentiment. There’s no strong connection between that and the debate here, which is about anonymity.
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Oh no an almost 10 year old mass shooting in America.
Better let the government get away with whatever they want!
Back then the police was the target of a mass freakout the same way ICE is now, when the Blues stop using their media apparatus to drive a moral panic about ICE the shootings will also stop. It has nothing to do with organic unpopularity.
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The second part does not appear to be true. Or rather, it is true that "most" people agree with it, but there's a significant number opposing it both rhetorically (including here) and physically who do not, and that should not be ignored.
This is pretty much unproven. There's lots of stories, but most of them describe pretty ordinary law enforcement stuff (which I often object to, but applying such complaints only to ICE is not valid) and often use overwrought words like "kidnapping".
Democratic talking points like "if you're not enforcing the law in the way we would prefer you enforce it, you're not serious" are themselves not serious.
This is my thesis. People want action on immigration, but hate how they see ICE doing it. ICE is being run poorly and the administration is fucking this up.
They've done enough dumb/weird/unpleasant looking things that it's safe to say they're not operating at a super high level of discipline or care.
Breaking a dude's leg and holding him in a hospital for 37 days with no charges under a fake name so he's harder to find isn't "ordinary law enforcement". Shipping people to prisons in different countries isn't ordinary either. Even if those people are illegal, it leaves a bad taste in their mouths, and eventually at this level of sloppy chaos, they will do something stupid and fucked up to an American citizen who isn't illegal (if they haven't already).
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