So much for Republicans being pro-police…
“Good morning, everyone. I’m Mark Bruley, Police Chief of the City of Brooklyn Park. Behind me is a bunch of amazing police chiefs that are here in support of a very short, but very important message that we want to share with you,” the chief said at a press conference.
“What you won’t hear from any of us today is rhetoric of abolish ICE or that there shouldn’t be immigration enforcement,” he continued. “The truth is, immigration enforcement is necessary for our national security and for local security, but how it’s done is extremely important. In fact, we have a long history of working exceptionally well with our federal partners, including ICE agents, and we have seen the best of them perform their job extremely well in the past.”
We can forgive Bruley for not wanting to abolish ICE (which at this point is an absolute necessity) because of what came next in his speech…
“With that said, recently, as the last two weeks, we, as the law enforcement community, have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from U.S. citizens,” he said. “What we’re hearing is they’re being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off-duty.”
“Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them,” said Bruley. “In Brooklyn Park, one particular officer that shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ICE going down the roadway. When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork, of which she’s a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork.”
“When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands, preventing her from recording it,” said Bruley. “The officers had their guns drawn during this interaction, and after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident and deescalating the incident down.”
“The agents then immediately left after hearing this, making no other comments, no other apologies, just got in their vehicles and left,” he explained. “I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers.”
This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers, but what it did do is we know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted,” said Bruley. “And that’s what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think at how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”
“It has to stop,” he concluded.
ICE’s reign of terror must end.
The American people are furious about the endless string of brutal violations, and now even our police forces are turning against these masked federal agents. It’s time to take away their power and prosecute them for their lawless actions.
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