14 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: SEPTEMBER 2017 I n Oakland, Califor- nia, the city coun- cil recently passed a resolution that ended that city’s agreement with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The vote was unani- mous. “I think this is a good start,” Councilman Abel Guillén said just before the unanimous vote according to Courthouse News. “While the work is beginning here, I want to be clear that the work has not ended.” The resolution termi- nates an agreement the city recently signed with ICE that allows the Oak- land Police Department to participate on ICE task forces. Critics of these arrange- ments claim local law en- forcement working with ICE has a negative impact on crime reporting and related investigations, par- ticularly with respect to sex crimes. According to a June 5 letter to the Public Safety Committee from Brian Hofer, chairman of Oak- land’s Privacy Advisory Commission, the Houston Police Department is see- ing the impact of these kinds of agreements be- tween federal and local law enforcement agen- cies. The Houston PD has reported a 43 percent drop in the number of Latinos reporting rape and sexual assault compared to last year, and a 12 percent drop in reports of aggravated as- sault and robberies. There were similar drops in reporting of crimes to the Los Angeles Police Department. Pratheepan Gulasek- aram, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said this in an email: “If the goal is public safety and com- munity wellbeing, then ICE’s presence and local agreements to maintain that presence do not make sense.” A previous partnership between the police depart- ment and ICE also failed to produce any dividends as far as public safety issues were concerned. “Stated simply, this is an agreement that provides no benefit to Oakland,” Hofer wrote. Some have suggested that this will impede local law enforcement’s ability to deal with issues like illegal immigration and human trafficking. Bill Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, disagrees. He says ending the agree- ment would not hurt Oak- land PD’s efforts. “ICE and other federal agencies, when they have information like that in the local jurisdiction, they’ll still pass that on to the local police,” said Hing, who is also a member of San Fran- cisco’s Police Commission. “Drug smuggling, all those trans-border things, there’s nothing that requires a for- mal partnership, because agencies always cooper- ate with each other. San Francisco cooperates with Oakland, Nevada with California, and the federal government, when they have information, will con- tinue to pass it on to local law enforcement.” Like a lot of stuff, Hing says these programs and arrangements sound great in theory but generally fail to deliver the intended results. “In theory, it’s about efficiency and coordina- tion,” Hing said. “But the cost is too big because you’re going to turn off the immigrant community. It doesn’t help anyone in terms of crime fighting.” On 2nd thought . . . Some agencies are getting ahead of the ball on all the lawsuits Pentagon study declares the American empire is ‘collapsing’ By 2017 the F-35 fighter program was expected over its lifetime (until 2070) to cost $406.5 trillion for acquisition of the jets and $1.1 trillion for operations and maintenance. Irony defined According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs – this combat is being financed with borrowed money.