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Inquiring About Immigration Status: Suffolk’s Policy

Posted March 1, 2010 by Ted Hesson

Amid the precipitation on Thursday afternoon and Friday, I set about the snowy-day task of scanning in some documents related the Suffolk County Police Department’s policy on inquiring about the immigration status of crime victims or complainants.

Since I began blogging for Long Island Wins over the summer, I had heard Det. Sgt. Robert Reecks, the head of Suffolk’s hate crimes unit, reference this policy several times, adamantly stating that it was not the policy of the Suffolk police department to ask crime victims about their immigration status.

On the flip side, I had heard advocates say that the department hadn’t shown them the actual policy. Then at an August forum on hate crime in Wyandanch, our blogger Patrick Young, Esq., said that Suffolk’s Inspector Rios had told him that the policy went into effect after the death of Marcelo Lucero.

To clear things up, I called Det. Sgt. Reecks several months ago, who told me that the policy had been issued as a directive, and that I would need to submit a Freedom of Information Law request to access any related details. Reporters, however, have a way of filing these requests, turning on the Olympics, and forgetting about them (Full disclosure: I have no interest in the Olympics and would be fine with all countries drawing straws to see who is best, or doing a dizzy-bat relay race to a bounce castle. But I digress).

So with the snow falling late last week, I thought it a good time to post the response to my information request, even though it’s not exactly newsy.

Around mid-December 2009, I received a one-page Suffolk police department directive, dated November 20, 2008. The directive referenced a prior memorandum from October 20, 2008, called “Immigration Status and Equal Service to the Public.” Scroll down to see the documents for yourself.

The directive reminded police department members “that immigration status of a crime victim or complainant shall have no bearing on the investigation of said crime or complaint,” reiterating part of what had been stated in the original October 20 memorandum.

Another instruction had been added to the directive, however, that wasn’t included in the original memorandum:

“[Police department] members are prohibited from inquiring as to the immigration status of any crime victim or complainant.”

Det. Sgt. Reecks was absolutely correct. The policy is in place. Whether it is being followed correctly, of course, is a matter that the ongoing Department of Justice investigation will try to sort out.

But the timing of the directive—issued just 12 days after Lucero’s murder—shows a lack of foresight, at the least, and a dangerous ignorance, at the worst. The Suffolk police department had been pressured by local advocates to institute such a policy for years, but hadn’t done so until Lucero’s murder shined a national spotlight on the county.

The documents don’t state whether the murder had anything to do with the police department’s policy change, but even if it didn’t, the timing is tragic.

You should read the original memorandum, “Immigration Status and Equal Service to the Public,” for yourself, and decide how devoted it is to “equal service to the public.”

The 11/20/08 Directive: