“Denver mayor threatens to deploy cops, 50K residents in ‘Tiananmen Square moment’ to stop Trump’s mass deportations” New York Post, November 22, 2024.
This is not a blog about the merits of immigration, or deportation. Those are complicated arguments that are part law, part politics and part looking past the rhetoric at how real human beings are affected. What we are here to discuss, for about the tenth time, is why I wrote a book, published in 2017, about the dilemma police officers face when confronted with lawful orders that may be distasteful, or worse.
The recent statement made by Denver’s mayor is just the last in a series of such events in law enforcement’s recent experience. During COVID, officers were sent out to enforce, among other things, mask mandates, social-distancing rules, closure orders (beaches, playgrounds, businesses) and other pandemic-specific commands of various governmental entities. While it has become fashionable to label those efforts as “unconstitutional” at the point most were undertaken it was far from clear to legal scholars, let alone police managers, what was permitted and what was not.
This leads to substantial tension among officers who find themselves ordered to enforce orders from their superiors where the law is unsettled. This is especially true in Colorado, where the Colorado Legislature, in what they laughingly described as reform, deprived officers of state protections even when they act in good faith in circumstances where the law is unclear.
This was the premise of A More Perfect Union. Cici Onofrio, a relatively new sheriff’s deputy working a rural beat in eastern Colorado, becomes entangled in the results of unrest and eventually martial law. Her legal responsibilities are no more clear than the moral obligations that attend them. She receives lawful orders, but the cost of following them quickly surpasses the feeling that they are wise, or just.
So imagine my… I don’t want to write “delight” and then have to walk that back. Imagine the interest I took at the above headline. The Denver mayor was suggesting he would deploy city police officers to forcefully interfere with Federal law enforcement’s efforts to detain deportable individuals in anticipation of removing them from the United States. How many DPD employees would refuse, in one form or another? How many would pretend to comply? How many would obey? What would that look like?
It would be a mess.
Just like it was for Cici.