Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force held its third Synergy meeting last night in a continuing effort to open up lines of communication between local law enforcement and residents.
In stark contrast to the large crowd that attended the previous meeting held in Greenport three months ago, only a handful of citizens showed up at the Human Resource Center in Mattituck last night.
The meeting, which was moderated by Jim Banks, Suffolk County Community College’s coordinator for multicultural affairs and chairman of Southampton’s anti-bias task force, centered heavily around the recent rewrite of Southold Town Police Department’s policy with regard to undocumented people.
The rewrite comes from the New York State attorney general’s office and has been distributed to all New York State law enforcement.
Southold Town Police Chief Martin Flatley described the basics of the policy, calling it a “how-to-do” for his officers when it comes to general interaction with people who might be in the country illegally.
“Some very basic facts of the policy are that we are not going to enter into any agreements with the federal government to do immigration work. They are still out here doing work and we will share information when it’s appropriate,” he said.
Banks and ABTF’s Chris North. Photo: Katharine Schroeder
Contrary to what many people think, he said, it’s not a crime to be undocumented in this country, so it’s not treated as a crime anymore.
“If we have somebody under arrest, unless they have committed another crime we are not going to be holding them on ICE detainers unless there’s a certain set of circumstances,” he said.
If there’s a judicial warrant, for example, Southold Police Department will hold a person. They will also hold someone on a detainer if the person has been removed from the country once and illegally reentered the country, if they’ve been convicted of certain crimes or if they pose a threat to national security, he said.
He reminded everyone that it is federal law which requires his department to share information about certain people in the community.
“The federal law says you have to do that,” said Flatley. “The cities and the entities considering themselves sanctuary cities don’t do that, but they’re in violation of federal law.”
Loretta Hatzel-Geraci, director of the North Fork Parish Outreach and a member of the ABTF, asked Chief Flatley how he thought the community would react to the new policy and how the town would defend its position.
“To be perfectly honest, you’re not going to see a lot different on your end. This is mostly internal,” said Flatley. It consists of guidelines for his officers, he said.
Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell said that there is a misunderstanding of what the town’s policy is.
“What the policy is is essentially ‘stay the course.’ We have no interest in declaring ourselves a sanctuary city. What we have was very carefully crafted based on our understanding of the law. I think there was a misunderstanding among some people that we were a quasi-sanctuary city, which is not the case.”
In addition to the discussion about the rewrite of the town’s immigration policy, several other topics arose during the meeting.
One man asked how police handle someone who is arrested but has no identification. Chief Flatley explained the procedure the department follows for such cases, describing their use of the Livescan system for identifying people who have been previously fingerprinted.
A woman asked how police would deal with a situation where a citizen called with a noise complaint and mentioned that the offenders might be in the country illegally.
“We’d treat it as a complaint about a disturbance or noise or whatever the root of the problem is,” replied Flatley. “We’re not going to go there and check on their immigration status. We’re not going to go there and say well, ‘You’re not from this country, we’re going to blow the whistle on you.’ We’re not going to initiate any conversation based on their immigration status.”
Midway through the meeting, Supervisor Russell shifted the discussion and addressed the issue of diversity in the police department and in the town’s workforce.
“There’s a couple of myths out there that the town sits there and singularly picks all these white males,” he said. “The workforce is generally dominated by white males, but I don’t think people understand the civil service process. We follow a very strict civil service process and it’s not who you know, it’s what you know. We’re required to hire based on test scores whether it’s a police officer or a clerk typist.”
Southold Town Councilman Jim Dinizio addressed the immigration issue from a different perspective, encouraging people to see both sides of the story and using his own family’s experiences as an example.
“A lot of people, my family included, were put out of business because they wouldn’t hire people illegally,” he said. “It’s breaking the law to hire someone that’s here illegally. Understand the other side of the story. There were people who had businesses, who made very good money, employed people with good wages. A lot of those businesses are gone now because of less expensive labor that a lot of people just could not hire because they didn’t want to break the law.”
“Try to see the other side of the story, because that side of the story is real.”
As the discussion continued, topics such as getting the word out about the rights of immigrants, encouraging a more diverse group of people to enter law enforcement and working to correct misinformation were tackled.
Southold Town police officers work directly with local schools on educational programs including D.A.R.E., a job shadowing program and ongoing conversations about drug use and identifying gangs. He praised Officer Alex Chenche and Officer Bill Brewer for their work with local students.
As the meeting drew to a close, Anti-Bias Task Force co-chair Sonia Spar said that holding conversations such as this one was a very important step “so the community at large feels protected by the police department; that they know what the status of the police department and the town are.”
