Mark Bruley, The police chief of Brooklyn Park, Minn., spoke to the media on Tuesday and detailed how a group of ICE agents violated the civil rights of one of his officers, including knocking her phone out of her hands to prevent her from recording the encounter.
“Behind me is an incredible group of police chiefs who are here to support a very brief but very important message that we want to share with you,” Burley began, adding:
You won’t hear “abolish ICE” or that there should be no immigration enforcement from any of us today. The fact is, immigration enforcement is necessary for both national security and local security. But how you do this is extremely important. In fact, we have a long history of working with our federal partners, including ICE agents, and we’ve seen the best of them do a great job in the past.
That being said, lately – just like the past two weeks – we as a law enforcement community have been receiving complaints from American citizens about civil rights violations on our streets. What we hear is that they are stopped at traffic stops or on the street for no reason and forced to produce documents to determine if they are here legally. As this continued over the past two weeks, we started hearing the same complaints from police officers about feeling victimized while off duty. Every single one of these people is a person of color and has been through this.
Bruley then recounted the female officer’s disturbing experience, “In Brooklyn Park, one of the officers who shared her story with me was stopped while walking down the road past ICE. When they cornered her, they asked her for documents, and she was a U.S. citizen and obviously wouldn’t have any.” He continued:
When she became concerned about the comments and the way she was treated, she pulled out her phone and tried to record the incident. The phone fell from her hand, preventing her from recording. During this interaction, the officers drew their guns. After the officer became so concerned, she was forced to identify herself as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing down the incident and de-escalating the situation. The agents left immediately without comment or apology, just got in their cars and left.
I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident. In fact, many of the chiefs behind me have had similar incidents with off-duty officers. Not only is this important because it happens to off-duty police officers. But what it does do is we know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what is right and wrong, and they know when people are being targeted. That’s how they are. If this happened to one of our officers, it pains me to think about how many of our community members fall victim to this every day. It must stop.
Braley’s comments quickly went viral on social media and sparked an outcry from viewers who were concerned about what they were hearing: