Samira wrote:
No one is saying this wasn't a colossal ****-up. It patently was. But the whole evil conspiracy to keep criminals walking the streets among us? Doesn't scan.
It's possible to intend to do one thing, but do so in a way that creates a predictable unintended consequence. In this case, if your objective is to prevent the deportation of illegals, you might create a policy to do just that. And if that policy includes actively avoiding informing (or even misinforming) ICE when releasing a prisoner regardless of who it is or what crime they were arrested for, occasionally that means someone who is a violent criminal may be detained in SF on a relatively minor charge (drug charge in this case IIRC) and then released instead of deported. It would take someone actively choosing not to follow existing policy for this to have been caught and acted on properly. And even then, I suspect it would be near political suicide for someone in the SFPD to reach out to ICE to have someone detained. This result was inevitable. Just a matter of how long it would take.
It's a bad policy. But it's a bad policy that is predicated on a simplistic narrative of what is a far more complex and nuanced situation. Anyone who tries to simplify things down to be "for/against" immigrants just does not do the issue justice. And outcomes like this become inevitable as a result.
Edited, Jul 20th 2015 4:26pm by gbaji