Gordon L. Weil
I recently noted that ICE agents are wearing masks and unmarked
clothing to disguise their identity as law enforcement personnel. They seize people off the street who cannot be
sure if they are being accosted by the police or a thug.
The masks are supposed to protect the identity of professional
immigration law enforcers from retaliation by people linked with those they take
into custody. Individuals, often
unarmed and unsuspecting civilians, are forcefully detained, even if they don’t
resist. Anonymity is allowed to replace
discipline in exercising police power.
Part of becoming a soldier or police officer, naturally
dangerous professions, is accepting that the jobs come with risks. Early retirement, often after 20 years, may
be partially compensated them for those risks and enable to purse another
career.
Somewhat kiddingly, I replied to some comments that the
solution to the issue would be to ban everyone from wearing masks, except for law
enforcement officers. That way, the
police could be clearly identified when they carried out their official duties,
while their exact identities would remain unknown.
This proposal was meant to illustrate now inappropriate it
is to keep the identity or even the role of law enforcement personnel secret
from the public. It might discourage
them from treating immigration subjects as if they had been proven guilty and
should be promptly expelled.
Wearing masks and showing no identification may be the
answer used by some law enforcement agencies to counteract the growing use of police
body cameras or video recordings by the general public. Police accountability is lost.
Nassau County, New York, has come close to doing just that. In the Long Island county with a population
greater than many states, the general public is banned from wearing masks. But local police working on immigration cases
may wear masks. Thus, if worked as
designed, a person wearing a mask would obviously be law enforcement.
The new county rule could expose law enforcement agents to being
singled out, the very danger that wearing masks had been designed to reduce.
The Nassau practice is based on the idea that police are
more likely to be targeted by people reacting to threat of deportation than by
people associated with other accused criminals.
No evidence has been offered to back up that distinction about relative
risk. If they haven’t needed masks previously,
why now?
Is there a risk that law enforcement personnel will begin wearing
masks all the time, while average people may not? Sounds like something out of a dystopian
movie.
One possible explanation is that ICE personnel who are nabbing
people are not law enforcement officers at all.
They may be contract employees hired to meet quotas in finding people supposedly
breaking immigration laws. They don’t wear
badges, because they don’t have them, and they are not subject to police discipline.
In Los Angeles, it has happened, and ICE was sued by the
ACLU and others. It agreed not to use
contractors in L.A. and San Francisco area jails and prisons.
It should be obvious that violence solves nothing, and law
enforcement personnel should not be targeted.
Such attacks should not be tolerated and penalties should be
severe.
But allowing cops to be mistaken for criminals, while
avoiding public accountability, is a questionable alternative, and it could
encourage undisciplined policing or worse. The system is defective if it can lead to American
citizens or anyone else, for that matter, being seized like convicted criminals
without the enforcers being held accountable.
