NYCLU Seeks Records Regarding the Suffolk County Police Department’s Treatment of Immigrants

For months, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and Police Commissioner Richard Dormer publicly said the police do not ask people to disclose their immigration status when they report a crime. But recent press reports show that forms the department has used since 1999 instruct police officers to identify whether a crime victim is a temporary resident or a foreign national – a practice that could discourage people from reporting crimes. The Freedom of Information Law request seeks to determine whether Suffolk County police have used such policies and practices to target undocumented immigrants.

“Looking Latino and speaking Spanish should not invite police questioning about your immigration status, especially when you’re trying to report a crime,” said Andrea Callan, director of the NYCLU’s Suffolk County Chapter. “The public has a right to know whether police officers are instructed to engage in racial profiling. The police department should be focused on protecting our community, not enforcing federal immigration laws.”

Requested documents include the following:

• Any forms completed by police officers at any time since 1998 when a person makes a complaint that they have witnessed or been a victim of a crime;
• All instructions, guidelines, directives, rules or procedures in effect at any time since 1998 governing the conduct of police officers when they know or have a reasonable suspicion that a person they have come into contact with may be an undocumented immigrant;
• All instructions, guidelines, directives, rules or procedures in effect at any time since 1998 governing when and how a police officer may inquire as to a person’s immigration status; and
• All documents that reflect the number of times the police department has contacted Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), or other local, state or federal immigration authority, when a non-U.S. citizen is in the department’s custody.

The request follows the brutal murder of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue last year. Since that time, the NYCLU has been working with local lawmakers to change the anti-immigrant culture that pervades the county.