Recently our state attorney general, and soon likely governor candidate, Bob Ferguson, seemed to be threatening 13 county sheriffs who said they didn’t plan to enforce all of I-1639 until courts have ruled on it. He seemed to suggest they might be liable if something bad happens as a result of their decisions.
He may be right, of course, because whenever something bad happens, we’ve gotten pretty good at blaming whoever has a deep pocket.
Sheriff Rick Scott responded, I thought rather eloquently, pointing out that not enforcing may not mean doing nothing, but could mean not making an enforcement decision based only on probable cause. Say in the case of a burglary to a home, with no children, and thieves stole a gun because it wasn’t in a safe — that’s my example not his. In a case like that, making the victim a criminal hardly seems fair, or just.
Some have forgotten that this initiative was originally determined by a judge to be inadequate to on the ballot at all. Our state Supreme Court overturned it, (no real surprise) but also didn’t rule on the issue because the initiative hadn’t passed yet. So it still may be overturned on those issues as well as others being brought.
But why is the attorney general only speaking about risk on this gun initiative?
In Seattle in 2017, they opened up what they are describing as “safe injection sites.” In a King 5 story I read, and due largely to the overdoses they were seeing, they determined it was better to provide (at taxpayer expense) clean needles to addicts.
This by the way is illegal but I haven’t read where our attorney general has warned Seattle their taxpayers may be on the hook if something goes wrong … and what could possibly go wrong?
And in King County since 2015, they have a charging policy that requires their attorneys look at the immigration status of the person arrested, and use that to determine the charge or whether to charge at all.
So if you are a first time DUI offender and arrested, you could be looking at a night in jail, $5000 fines, and loss of license for 90 days. But if you are an illegal alien, the King County prosecutor’s office must look at a lesser offense to protect you from being deported, KUOW reported in 2017.
In fact they are consulting with immigration attorneys to be sure they don’t trigger deportation and are including some felonies as well.
Their prosecutor Dan Satterberg, says it’s only fair, KUOW reported. In one case, a guy like me gets the book tossed at me and in another, same facts but different status in the U.S., gets preferential treatment. And that’s what he describes as fair?
I wonder if our attorney general has had time between lawsuits against President Trump to caution Mr. Satterberg on this? What happens when someone given preferential treatment goes out and hurts or kills someone and should have been deported? Will he and his taxpayers be on the hook?
Mr. Attorney General, isn’t this risky and perhaps even something other than equal treatment under the law?
Not all prosecutors agree with this nonsense, including Snohomish County who won’t use immigration to make a charging decision, according to the KUOW story.
He said “I would worry about unequally applying the law to people and treating people differently ... There are some people who get convicted of a crime, and it might cause them to get divorced,” KUOW reported in 2017. “But if we exempt people who are in the country illegally from our laws, and treat them differently, I think that’s really a political move. And I try not to make political moves. I make legal moves.”
Thank you, Snohomish County.
The attorney general has said he’d mount a vigorous defense of I-1639 against the lawsuits pending against it.
Well, at least that’s his job, although I hope he loses.
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Please note that my email has changed. Got locked out a while back and have not been able to get access to the old one. My new email is musingsonthemiddlefork@gmail.com. I generally respond to thoughtful discourse and enjoy reading it.
