MS NOW Host Asks State Attorney General If Cops Should Be ‘Arresting’ ICE Agents Using ‘Excessive Force’
MS NOW’s Eugene Daniels asked Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison if there is a reality where state police are arresting ICE officers for “excessive force.”
Ellison joined MS NOW’s The Weekend on Saturday and Daniels brought up Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara warning officers they will lose their jobs if they do not intervene if they see ICE going outside the law.
“If unlawful force is being used by any law enforcement officer against any person in this city and one of our officers is there, absolutely, I expect them to intervene, or they’ll be fired,” he said when asked how police should respond to excessive force by federal agents.
“What does that actually look like? I guess I’m just having a hard time picturing, and I think a lot of people will have a hard time picturing what that looks like for a police officer to intervene in with federal, you know, immigration enforcement and what that would entail, what it would look like,” Daniels said on Saturday after reading O’Hara’s comment.
Ellison, who said ICE agents are already operating in the state, said:
Well, the chief of police is just bravely trying to maintain law and order. All he’s doing is saying that in in Minnesota, and really around the country, all officers have a duty to lend medical assistance and to intervene when they see unlawful conduct. That’s not a new thing when it comes to policing. If an officer sees somebody, a colleague, take some money or something and then not put it in the evidence locker or sees somebody using excessive force, they have a duty and obligation to say, I cannot stand by and witness you engage in unlawful conduct.
“So should the police officers be, I guess, arresting ICE folks who they feel are doing it using excessive force?” Daniels asked.
Ellison argued O’Hara’s comment was meant to prevent such incidents from taking place.
“I think what he’s hoping is to prevent. This is why he’s making the comment now, so that it doesn’t ever come to that,” he said. “So that when I so that, one, ICE agents will observe the requirements of the law and that they will know that we’re not gonna stand by and let them break the law.”
Watch above via MS NOW.
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