How very PC of you….once again, the Fairfax County Police play politics instead of working at policing

 

 

Fairfax County Police Remove Arrest Blotter Over ICE Data Sharing Concerns

 Colleen Grablick

 

Community advocates said the list violated a new law that limits local law enforcement’s interactions with immigration enforcement agencies.

Michael Pope / WAMU

Fairfax County’s police department will no longer publish the names and personal information of people arrested for crimes, heeding concerns from advocates that the list endangered immigrant residents.

Earlier this year, the county’s Board of Supervisors passed a Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy, cutting off all voluntary cooperation and information sharing between local agencies and federal immigration authorities. But advocates said the arrest blotter, which lived on the police department’s website and included information like names and last known addresses, continued to violate the law, commonly known as the Trust Policy, by allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to target immigrant residents.

“We believe that [the arrest blotter] violated the Trust Policy, because it’s not necessary to release that personal information,” says Diane Alejandro, a lead advocate with ACLU People Power Fairfax. “It just is, more than anything, a shaming list.”

According to Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for Fairfax County police, the county originally began publishing that type of information online in 2016 in order to limit the amount of calls the department received from residents seeking information about arrests in their neighborhood.

The arrest blotter came down last Friday, after a review of the practice by ACLU People Power Fairfax found the blotter to be non-compliant with the Trust Policy, Guglielmi said. The Washington Post first reported the decision.

The county will still be running a weekly crime roundup on the department’s website, but will withhold names and any other information regarding the individuals arrested.

“Important information will continue to be shared with the community, and arrest data remains easily accessible via FOIA to residents and reporters,” County Supervisor Dalia Palchik, one of the nine supervisors that voted in favor of the Trust Policy policy, wrote in a statement to DCist/WAMU.

Alejandro, who advocated for the passage of the Trust Policy, say ACLU People Power Fairfax supports the continuation of a crime roundup, without the names and personal information of individuals arrested. If someone is truly interested in gathering that information, she says, there are plenty of ways to dig for it on the internet — instead of the police proactively offering it.

“It’s not like folks are being left in the dark,” Alejandro says, adding that arrest information will still be available to members of the public upon a FOIA request. “I think that honestly smacks of racism to suggest that the interests of people who just want to know the name of every person arrested to satisfy their curiosity should take precedence over the lives of immigrants.”

Unlike in D.C. or Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, where the police force is overseen by the top elected official, the Fairfax County Police Department is under the purview of the Board of Supervisors. The Trust Policy, which passed the Board of Supervisors by a 9-1 vote in January, applies to all agencies across Fairfax County’s government. While the provisions of the new law allow cooperation with ICE officials if it is required or requested, the policy bars willful or voluntary local information sharing that would help immigration enforcement track down individuals.

Alejandro says she does not know of any residents that were targeted directly as a result of the arrest blotter, but that she and other advocates “know it happens.”

“We don’t need to hand [the information] to them on a silver platter,” Alejandro says. “We’re not going to volunteer information to ICE, and this is what the police were doing.”

A spokesperson for ICE denied that the agency used the Fairfax County’s arrest information to locate or apprehend any residents.

“ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations does not use police blotter data to identify immigration enforcement targets in Fairfax County, Virginia,” the spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement to DCist/WAMU. “ICE ERO officers use intelligence-driven leads to identify specific individuals for arrest.”

The removal of the arrest list marks the latest step in Fairfax County’s efforts to limit the county’s interactions with federal immigration agencies. In 2020, the county codified a policy that prevents police officers from asking or disclosing a person’s immigration status, or using immigration status as a determining factor when considering to take a person into custody on a misdemeanor charge.

Regionally, Arlington County officials are also considering ways to decrease local law enforcement’s engagement with ICE — last week, the Arlington County Board released the draft of a framework to increase protection of immigrant residents, including proposals to decrease the local police’s contact with immigration agencies.