According to The Cato Institute, effective policing is a two-sided process that requires victims to contact the police and place their trust in the hands of law enforcement. The Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has prompted a decrease in Latino crime reporting across the country.
According to the “Peelian Principles” of effective policing, written in London and adopted in the states, public approval and trust are necessary conditions for effective policing, and without them, the law enforcement system is broken.
“Data from [Denver, Philadelphia, and Houston] is consistent with the idea that immigrants have become less likely to report crimes. In both Denver and Philadelphia, crime reports among Latinos — who make up 45 percent of all immigrants nationally and a majority of undocumented immigrants, specifically — fell relative to non-Latinos in the first three months of the year,” according to FiveThirtyEight.
The drop in Latino engagement with law enforcement is not just limited to immigrants. In a survey conducted in 2012, 28 percent of U.S.-born Latinos agreed with the statement that, “I am less likely to contact police officers if I have been a victim of a crime for fear they will ask me or other people I know about our immigration status.”
In light of the fear in crime reporting among immigrants, police departments have opted to create “sanctuary” policies such as not asking people for immigration status and not honoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers. With the continued rhetoric of a president that has campaigned against legal and illegal immigration, it is no surprise that President Trump’s immigration policies will continue to make police officers’ jobs that much harder.
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