Dear Menlo Park City Councilmembers - In light of widespread criminal acts by ICE/CBT agents in Minneapolis, the ICE presence at the 2/8 Superbowl, and the possibility that ICE/CBT may at some point conduct a surge in the Bay Area, please adopt a Civil Rights Defense Plan to protect the lives, safety, and civil rights of your community members. I have posted a template plan for use by any city and county at https://bit.ly/city-county-civil-rights . I will continuously update the template plan as I identify potential cost-effective improvements.
Below are the portions of the plan that are specifically relevant to city leadership.
Thank you for your efforts to keep our communities safe!
Eric Krock
Sunnyvale, CA
mobile 408-836-5230
erichasblueeyes@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krock/
Executive summary
Photo and video evidence proves that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBT) agents are now routinely: violating the law; using excessive force; violating the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment civil rights of residents of the cities in which they are operating; and even blinding and murdering people who pose no threat. To protect the lives, health, and civil rights of their residents, cities and counties nationwide and their police departments, County Sheriff’s Offices, local district attorneys, and school boards must prepare plans today for how they will use legal means to deter, document, and reverse illegal acts and civil rights violations by ICE and CBT agents such as those that Minneapolis-St. Paul and other places are now experiencing. Cities and counties should educate residents and local businesses about their First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights so residents know how to act in ways that protect their rights against violation. Local law enforcement officers must be trained on when and how to deter, interrupt, document, and report illegal acts by ICE/CBT agents and on how to arrest ICE/CBT agents who are violating or have violated the law. District Attorneys must be ready to prosecute ICE/CBT agents who violate the law, preferably under state law, and to aggressively protect their right to prosecute against inevitable federal efforts to move the cases to federal court. School districts must be prepared to offer remote learning to students who no longer feel they can safely go to school. Mayors must be ready to call on governors for deployment of the National Guard and/or State Guard if necessary to provide the manpower necessary to monitor ICE/CBT activity and prevent violations of civil rights. Residents should be ready to monitor ICE/CBT activity to deter and document violations of the law, to deliver food to people who no longer feel they can safely go out, and to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and protest against illegal actions by the government. And private businesses (including medical facilities) and places of worship should post notices on their doors prohibiting ICE/CBT agents from entering their property without a warrant and enforce the prohibition against law enforcement access to nonpublic areas of a business without a warrant.
Recommended actions
City Council, City Staff, and County Board
City Council and County Board should, as the City of San Jose, California has already done, pass an emergency ordinance prohibiting ICE/CBT from using all city- and county-owned property as assembly, logistics, or support areas or for any other purpose.
The City and County should post signs barring ICE/CBT agents from all of their workplaces and prohibit entry into nonpublic areas.
The City and County should proactively educate their residents about their First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, the difference between a judicial and administrative warrant, the right not to open their car door or home’s door if they have not been presented with a signed judicial warrant, effective use of the questions “Am I under arrest? Am I free to go?,” the importance of not speaking to law enforcement officers when detained without an attorney present, and so on using every educational channel we have, including statements at City Council meetings, prominent posts on the City web site, outbound emails, and posts on social media. An educated citizenry is best able to participate in protecting its civil rights.
The City and County should establish official written policies that the police department and Sheriff’s Office will enforce the legal requirement that law enforcement officers have a signed judicial warrant before they can search a person’s home or car without consent, and local law enforcement should treat violations of these legal requirements as criminal acts and arrest those responsible.
The City and County should pass ordinances prohibiting police officers and Sheriff’s deputies (respectively) from moonlighting for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol.
City Attorney should review Automatic License Plate Reader policies and contracts
Given the evidence that ICE is misusing Automatic License Plate Reader data to identify and intimidate legal observers, the City should evaluate how it can reduce the ability of ICE to misuse data from ALPRs in any way. The City Attorney should meet immediately with the vendor the City uses for Automatic License Plate Readers, to assess how contracts, ALPR configurations, and ALPR data retention policies can be revised to provide the maximum possible assurance that federal authorities will not be able to obtain ALPR data without City prior knowledge and consent. Options such as retaining data for a limited time, storing data on servers under City control without contractor or federal access, and encrypting data with encryption keys that only City staff possess should be considered. If acceptable legal and technical measures to protect the civil rights of City residents cannot be put in place, the City should cancel its ALPR contract as the City of Santa Cruz, California has already done.
City Attorney and Police Department
The hardest, most physically dangerous challenge is that police officers must be ready to intervene as necessary to stop armed, masked federal agents from violating the law just as they would intervene to stop anyone else who is violating the law. Federal agents should not be above the law, but only local and state law enforcement willingness to enforce the laws without special treatment of anyone will make sure that federal agents aren’t above the law in practice.
Intervention does not necessarily mean arrest. In the best case, if police officers show up at a scene and inform the federal agents that the federal agents are violating state law and are subject to immediate arrest and prosecution under state law if they do not cease their violations immediately, the federal agents, wanting to avoid state-level prosecution and time in state prison for which federal pardons do not apply, may back down and leave.
Police officers should of course make maximum possible use of their de-escalation training to try to prevent a situation in which federal agents are breaking the law from escalating into an arrest or (worse) use of force.
However, it is clear that at least some ICE/CBT agents have no regard for the law, insufficient training, poor impulse control, and no reluctance to use unnecessary violence in violation of the law and federal guidelines. Unfortunately, some ICE/CBT agents likely won’t cease breaking the law unless they realize that the result may be arrest by local law enforcement and prosecution under state law. Some may not stop until they are in fact arrested.
Historically, local police forces have not normally found themselves in a situation where federal law enforcement agents are violating federal and state laws or the provisions of the federal and/or state constitutions. Therefore, local police forces have generally deferred to federal law enforcement officers on the assumption that the federal law enforcement officers will be acting in good faith in compliance with federal and state law, and that if not, federal law enforcement agency internal disciplinary procedures will be the applicable remedy. All of those assumptions are now invalid. Federal agents are routinely violating the law without consequence, and no federal investigations of violations are being performed.
Local police officers may understandably be reluctant to perform an arrest of an armed federal agent who is violating the law, who feels entitled to compliance with their wishes, and who may use force when challenged. The huge imbalance of forces when the federal government deploys five times as many immigration enforcement agents as a city has police officers (as has happened in Minneapolis - St. Paul) poses an additional challenge. Unfortunately, events in Minneapolis indicate that such situations may become commonplace nationwide if the Trump Administration doesn’t change its policies. Therefore, city and county residents can only be assured of continuing to have their federal and state civil rights if police officers and sheriff’s deputies are ready and willing to arrest federal agents who are violating those rights.
Being ready and willing requires that the the police department and county sheriff have established a policy specifying when its officers will and will not arrest federal agents who are violating federal or state law and given the officers training on specific policies and procedures on how to demand compliance with the law, how to de-escalate where possible, how to call for backup, and, when unavoidably necessary, how to use legally allowed force to arrest federal agents who do not comply with instructions and who persist in violating the law.
In situations where the federal agent’s illegal actions are not threatening to cause permanent disability (e.g. via blinding) or death, seeking an arrest warrant and arresting the federal agent after the fact may be a course of action providing lower situational risk to arresting officers.
Therefore, the police department should establish specific policies and procedures regarding use of force against federal agents who are violating the law so that officers are trained and ready to do what is legal, right, and necessary if the situation presents itself with the lowest risk to themselves and federal agents possible.
