WSJ: Minneapolis Police Union President speaks out

I think I read somewhere that a Minneapolis police official said they did offer some support to the ICE people but were told it wasn’t needed. This seems to directly contradict that.

Why are the ICE agents involved in these two tragedies still on duty? They should be on leave UPDATE: TWO WERE JUST PLACED ON LEAVE while state and federal officials conduct separate investigations. And why weren’t they required to wear body cams?

Here’s the Union President and sorry for the weird fonts – that is just how it cuts and pastes and I can’t change it.

One can only imagine how the recent tragic events might have been avoided if Minneapolis were not afflicted with reckless politicians who encourage interference with the enforcement of federal law. Now a local police union official is not just imagining, but stating plainly his informed opinion.

Reuven Fenton and Anthony Blair report this morning from Minneapolis for the New York Post:

The head of a major Twin Cities police union slammed local officials for blocking cooperation between local cops and ICE and Border Patrol agents – saying if they had been involved, “there would be no loss of life.”…

St. Paul Police Federation President Mark Ross blamed state and local officials for the anti-ICE protest violence — saying that if highly trained cops were allowed to work with the feds, it likely would have prevented the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti…

“Had we been allowed just a little bit of coordination – not in terms of what ICE is doing, but if they say, ‘Hey, we need to go to this place to serve a warrant, we’re going to be out there a couple hours. We’re nervous that crowds are going to form and give us trouble. Can you come out and help?’ That’s something we can easily coordinate with a little bit of notice, and sometimes with hardly any notice, we can get out there quickly,” Ross said.

This underlines that even if Minnesota’s politicians don’t want their police directly helping to enforce federal immigration law, the pols at least ought to allow local cops to protect federal officers who are lawfully engaged in the enforcement of such laws. The Post report continues:

“Part of it is leadership, because the leadership in our cities doesn’t want us communicating with the federal folks. And that disconnect has created some problems for everybody, and we’re stuck in the middle of it, and public safety is everybody’s responsibility,” he said.

“We want to be out there. We want to be keeping people safe, and it’s been really tough. We really feel like we’re in the middle of this, obviously, not by choice,” Ross added.

Apart from radicals like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, this will strike many people as common sense. Even people like your humble correspondent who favor increasing legal migration should appreciate that defiance of federal law is not the answer.