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En Pocas Palabras IV: Local Police, the INS, and "Churning Bad Public Opinion"
- University of Texas Press
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En Pocas Palabras IV Local Police, the INS, and “Churning Bad Public Opinion” Ken R. Crane Officer Frank of Wheelerton, Indiana, takes a large manila envelope and pours the contents onto his desk in front of me. It is a mass of fake resident alien cards, Social Security cards, and driver’s licenses. He shows me which ones are obviously fake; I pick one up and feel where a photo had been cut out and pasted onto a card and then laminated. He tells me, “The alien cards can be purchased in San Bernardino [California] for $200, or in Brownsville [Texas}, they buy a temporary ID used by residents in border towns to cross daily. Here I’ve noticed people using that kind for the last seven years.” The county prosecutor asks them to keep a file whenever they charge someone suspected of being illegal. Frank goes on to say that once they had seven male suspects held for some misdemeanor charges. They called the INS [U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service] to report the suspicion that they were “illegal.” The INS finally responded and said to call them only to deport a person who had committed a felony, had been convicted as a felon, and had been sentenced to at least one year and a day in jail. Officer Frank concluded, “Otherwise they don’t want to hear from us.” Crane, field notes Officer Frank is chief of police in Wheelerton; he is in his mid-thirties with close-cropped hair. We met in his office, along with a plainclothes police officer. During this study, confiscation of ID cards from Latinos by various authorities , such as the police and emergency room staff in various communities , was common. There was little evidence that they were concerned about the illegality of confiscating legitimate ID cards. Toward the end of this study, the Mexican consul in South Bend, Indiana, was preparing a visit to some towns in the region to explain that the authorities are breaking the law when they make such confiscations. 99 04-T3109 99 04-T3109 99 9/29/04 6:53:16 AM 9/29/04 6:53:16 AM Frank, in describing the biggest challenges regarding the Latino population , stated, “They don’t understand our ordinances. You try to explain them to people, and you encounter a language problem.” According to Officer Frank, this problem worsened about seven or eight years earlier when, in his opinion, large numbers of “Mexicans” coming to Wheelerton were in the country illegally. On warm summer nights, they would gather in the parking lots behind the “slum areas” downtown. He could not approach them to deal with violation of ordinances like public drunkenness or loitering at night without drawing a large and threatening crowd, and he would need backup or dog units. Once, he and his partner stopped a suspected DUI (someone driving under the influence of alcohol) in the downtown area. They had the suspect out of the car doing a test when young men, many drinking, came into the street to see what was happening. Things then got out of hand; a man actually got into the passenger side of the patrol car; Frank forced him out, and people started throwing things—shoes and beer cans. Frank had to get in his car and leave the area until backup units showed up. Later someone called the state police to complain about civil rights violations; the state police investigated and the local police were cleared. To overcome the language problem, the police have hired interpreters. There used to be several Latino officers, but they transferred to other departments in bigger neighboring towns. The police also are taking Spanish courses and some have received cultural diversity training. The previous year, the police had a problem with Paco’s Cantina. Paco’s was a notorious bar frequented by Latinos until it was shut down. The father and son operators were longtime residents, and the general consensus in the town, among both Latinos and Anglos, was that they were a “bad element .” The father was arrested on a cocaine charge and the son narrowly escaped jail. Paco’s was the scene of numerous fights. In June 1998, a man was shot and seriously wounded there. For a while there were nightly raids, and the local police teamed up with the state police to carry out raids for suspected drug dealing. Officer Frank...