RE: CRIME Kudos to Acting Police Chief Andrew Kirkland

From: webb1973 (webb1973@private)
Date: Fri Nov 23 2001 - 17:17:04 PST

  • Next message: Andy Schroder: "RE: CRIME Kudos to Acting Police Chief Andrew Kirkland"

    The INS is a large bureaucracy that makes lots of mistakes. Their employees
    and special agents will readily admit that unfortunate events happen.
    Remember that the Portland papers have covered these events in the past and
    Portland has even been referred to on occassion as "DE-Portland" because of
    thes events. INS is a huge government agency. It makes mistakes. These
    mistakes should be admitted and measures taken to correct the mistakes. But,
    I would be stunned if anyone from INS would ever make the bald statement
    that INS can arrest, detain or hold anyone, alien or otherwise, valid visa
    or not, without proper due process. It is not sanctioned procedure. People
    can be held and detained only for cause, ie., false ID; lying on
    applications; smuggling; entering the US illegally; being out of status;
    etc. There has to be a reason. Even when the Chinese businesswoman was held
    last year on suspicion of a false passport, in what turned out to be a
    valid, though weatherbeaten, passport, the detention was procedurally
    correct and based upon a proper reason. Even though it rightfully offended
    everyone's sensibilities that she was treated the way she was, and was a
    very bad decision made by an INS employee, it was not arbitrary. Even though
    procedurally correct, the decision was terrible. OK. Mistake. Apologise, do
    whatever is necessary to make amends. Re-educate, reassign, re-train, or
    even fire the employee if that's the solution. But these things happen in
    all types of situations, private businesss as well as law enforcement. Is
    this evidence of an evil empire? Of course not. And by the way. arbitrary
    detention is actionable if done under color of law and without legal
    justification. It is considered outside the scope of employment and
    penalties will attach. There are remedies for such conduct. 18 USC 1983.
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: owner-crime@/var/spool/majordomo/lists/crime
    [mailto:owner-crime@/var/spool/majordomo/lists/crime]On Behalf Of
    Crispin Cowan
    Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 3:15 PM
    To: JACKSON Di M
    Cc: BAIRD Dion E * DAS DOIT; Toby Kohlenberg; webb1973; crime@private
    Subject: Re: CRIME Kudos to Acting Police Chief Andrew Kirkland
    
    
    JACKSON Di M wrote:
    
    >Do we have any INS folks in this group .... My understanding is, and don't
    >quote me, but any person who enters USA on a work permit, visa and/or green
    >card are advised that they can be detained and/or held for no reason by the
    >INS.
    >
    For *any* reason? Or for suspicion of immigration violations? The former
    would be rather horrifying, and makes "legal resident" a fairly
    meaningless status if you can be arbitrarily detained by the state. I
    went through the INS procedures, and while I do remember the FBI
    background check, I do not recall being told about arbitrary detention.
    But there was a lot of paperwork, and I could easily have forgotten it.
    
    >As for your law enforcement comments - I was just like you, till I did a
    >ride-along. Quiet frankly. Law enforcement is a thankless job, they deal
    >with all the undesirables and they are "dammed if they do and dammed if
    they
    >don't". Everybody deserves credit and/or praise for doing there job. A
    >Deputy I went on a ride-along with saved a boy at Multnomah Falls. He took
    a
    >rope from his patrol car and scaled down a rock face to save this boys
    life.
    >There was nothing in the newspaper about it ... pretty sad.
    >
    I agree with all of that, and I am quite sure that most law officers
    don't get half the credit they deserve. The problem is that law officers
    have a great deal of authority, creating opportunity for abuse by a few
    bad apples in the batch. The treatment for that abuse opportunity is
    oversight, which is (in part) what the Bill of Rights (things like
    Miranda) are about. My issue is not with hard-working law officers, it
    is with the Federal administration seeking to strip away oversight
    protections.
    
    Crispin
    
    --
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    



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