Local vs. federal jurisdiction

“It’s not the job of local police to enforce immigration law.” How many times have we all heard that over the past few years? Well of course that is not the specific specialty of local police. But, what would local police do if they saw someone spray painting a U.S. mailbox? What if they witnessed a carjacking or bank robbery? Would they call federal postal officials or the FBI? After all, these are federal crimes occurring in a local jurisdiction.

They would of course intervene and try to apprehend the perpetrators even though damaging federal property, carjacking, and robbing banks are federal crimes. In short, federal crimes are those that violate federal laws passed by Congress. State crimes violate state laws as passed by state legislatures.

Most crimes that we often read about or see on the evening news such as murder, rape, theft, and burglary are state crimes. Far fewer are federal in nature. Federal law enforcement specializes in many areas including Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents, FBI, Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Park Police to name but a few.

But the idea that state and local elected officials should work in concert with their police forces to pick and choose which federal laws they want enforced is beyond ridiculous. Just think for a moment if the next time a bank teller called the police to report a robbery, and their response was, “Sorry. We don’t do that. Call the feds.”

The Villages