In the Denver Post’s Friday, Sept 10 front page story “Sanctuary City?…”, Denver Assistant City Attorney David Broadwell is quoted as stating that “I don’t believe there is any empirical evidence to support that [Denver is a sanctuary city].” I suggest that Mr. Broadwell and Mayor Hickenlooper review the empirical evidence provided by the Colorado State Auditor’s “Performance Audit 2009” on the implementation of SB06-090 (or, if that’s too much work, just read on, as I’ve done it for you). Those who ignore the biased spin of the report’s conclusions which try to provide cover for Denver’s sanctuary policies, and dig into the data will find all the empirical evidence they need.
As an actuary, I am familiar with analyzing data. I looked at the audit report (available online) and discovered that the data indicates an extremely high probability that the Denver Police Department is not following the law.
Some jurisdictions, such as Denver, are served by two agencies. There is the Denver City Police and there is also the Denver (County) Sheriff’s Office. In order to keep from stepping on each other, these two entities effectively split their duties with the Denver City Police doing more of the police work and the Sheriff’s Department doing more of the administrative work such as running the jails, etc.
Denver’s apologists like to aggregate their reporting, claiming 2,088 ICE contacts in 2007. The breakdown was that 1,979 (95%) of the ICE contacts came from the Sheriff’s Department (i.e., the jail, which reports anyone who is foreign born to ICE) and only 109 (5%) of the contacts came from the Denver City Police.
Denver’s rationalization for this discrepancy, as reported in a Denver News Channel report on September 5, is that “Broadwell said Denver interprets the law as applying only to situations where someone is taken to jail for a criminal offense, not for minor infractions.” This is in direct violation to SB06-090 according to the state audit report. The state audit clearly demonstrates the responsibility of law enforcement officers to report an arrested suspect to ICE on page 7 of the report.
The 1,561 officers (2007 data) in the Denver Police Department arrest people for many more things other than minor infractions such as traffic offenses (have you ever been arrested, or only ticketed, for a minor traffic offense?) In 2007, Denver Police made 8,347 arrests (CBI crime data). Despite 8,347 arrests for criminal offenses in 2007, the Denver Police Department made only 109 reports to ICE.
The data from the state’s audit report clearly indicate a pattern of consistent violation of SB 06-090 by the Denver Police department. Denver truly is a sanctuary city.