It is up to a hearing examiner to decide if an initiative to overturn a city council policy related to immigration status should be decided on the ballot in November. The issue led to a tense city council meeting earlier this week, with City Council President Ben Stuckart trying to stop testimony when the crowd became boisterous.
Specifically the council heard from a numerous people upset with a council policy that says police should not be able to ask anyone specifically about their immigration status. Several spoke concerns that the city was opening itself up to an influx of criminals and terrorists.
One who shared that view was Jackie Murray, who said she was helping to organize support for a citizens initiative to overturn the city policy.
Murray: “We citizens were not asked if we wanted to welcome crime into the city. The council had done a poor job of protecting citizens in protecting citizens in the first place. And if you look at the crime stats you’ll know that is true, and inviting more is just insane.”
But Council president Ben Stuckart disagrees with that assessment, saying the policy had actually been instituted by the police department several years before the council brought it up.
Stuckart: “It’s factually untrue, the internal police department (policy) for years has been to not check the immigration status, so if all these bad things were going to happen, it would have had happened years ago when they changed the policy.”
Stuckart also defended the policy by saying some citizens had actually requested the council put that policy in place. He said "their concern was the immigrant community wasn’t reporting crimes, and they didn’t know it wasn’t the internal policy of the police department, so crimes were not getting reported.”
It’s now up to a hearing examiner to decide if a signature gathering campaign can start to put the issue on the ballot.
