Sanctuary City Fight

Chief McMannus

San Antonio Police Chief, Bill McMannus, is joining law enforcement officials across the state of Texas in protest of the proposed Sanctuary City Ban Legislation slated to be debated during the upcoming special session of the Texas Legislature.  He cites his objection for many reasons, but primarily that it will consume too much time, sacrificing resources and officers' time better used for legitimate emergency duties.

A couple of thoughts come to mind:

Isn't a law to be enforced no matter the time constraints?  The sanctuary city law would only more specifically mandate enforcement of standing immigration law.


Why enforce DWI laws?

As far as time consumption:

Why enforce DWI laws?  The typical DWI stop consumes from 25 minutes to over an hour of the officers' time.  It could be argued that this time could be better spent addressing emergency calls.

He states that it would hurt the popularity and perceived likeability of the police force.  He claims that it would encourage racial profiling.

Pre-qualification of a suspect is necessarily profiling on every level

Racial profiling is an integral part of crime detection as a rule.  Pre-qualification of a suspect is necessarily profiling on every level.  If popularity and likeability of the individual officer is an issue, then perhaps the officers should refrain from sitting beside the highway clocking drivers and entrapping them in order to give traffic tickets.  Why not have them make arrests less frequent?

My point is that cops are not in the popularity business.  They are in the business of enforcing the laws as they have been voted upon and signed into law by our legislators.  McMannus is not in the business of deciding what law is inconvenient or not economically viable to enforce.  The call to arms of the liberals trying to protect illegal immigrants from the law is reprehensible.  Illegal immigration is exactly that.  Why not amnesty for traffic tickets and DWI's?  These people are Americans at least.

I am dismayed at the temerity of people in public positions feeling free to impose personal opinion and political leanings to the  execution of their public service duties.  In private business, we get to decide with whom we do business but the market dictates how we do it.  Our personal likes or proclivities are an impact on those decisions only in so much as we want to stay in business.  Government funded concerns, staffed by government payed employees, necessarily restricts their activities to established governmental policy.  Their druthers don't play in that process.

firefighters ... would not have to extinguish church fires

If McMannus and friends are valid in their pursuit then firefighters who practice the Jehovah Witness religion would not have to extinguish church fires.  In case you did not know, Witness' will not build, attend nor participate in any way in church activities - only Kingdom Halls!  Personal views don't matter once you take the job.

That's all I have to say about that!