If the rule needs to be adjusted so that it isn’t also, ironically, protecting criminals as well that makes sense but such changes need to be made with due consideration for the order’s original intent:

Prior to 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department required officers who came into
contact with a person suspected of being in the United States illegally to determine the person’s
immigration status and notify the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”)
if the person was an undocumented alien. This was required even if the person was not the
subject of a police investigation or a criminal charge. Many in the communities served by the
LAPD believed that this requirement led to widespread abuse, and Latino citizens, legal
immigrants and undocumented persons felt intimidated and threatened by the very officers who
were charged with their protection. In addition, the LAPD itself was concerned that the
immigrant communities would not report crimes or assist the Department in criminal
investigations if individuals were afraid that any contact could lead to deportation.
To address these concerns, the LAPD formed an ad hoc committee to study the issues
and to formulate policies and procedures concerning contacts with undocumented persons -
whether as suspects, crime victims, or witnesses. As a result of the committee’s
recommendations, on November 27, 1979, Chief of Police Darryl Gates issued Special Order
40, which is now codified in the LAPD Manual.

http://www.lacity.org/oig/Special_Order_40_708061_v1.pdf

Check out this
post at Patterico for more info on new changes in the implementation of the order and what I consider a failry reasonable conservative response to the issue.

If you think shifting federal money from urban law enforcement (put a million cops on the street) to border patrol (put a million federal agents on the border) will reduce the number of illegal aliens who are fugitive felons go for it. But I bet you’d see a comensurate rise in regular old domestic crimes because of the reduction in local law enforcement.

Of course maybe if we weren’t wasting billions every week, you know, real money, in Iraq we could do both …

“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you are talkng about real money!”

What is possibly wrong with enforcing our laws, whether by using a fence to protect them from being broken in the first place?

That said, large numbers outside of their context are not a sound basis for social policy.

MacDonald used her statistic as part of an article about an ilegal immigrant “Crime Wave.” That kind of language is highly inflammatory and if it’s put in the service of draconian immigration policies then we’ll only serve to make a manageable problem much, much worse.

Speaking off the top of my head it’s the difference between antagonizing people who might help us by turning the border into a militarized zone and building relationships with them through better cross-border law enforcement cooperation so that we can catch more fugitives.

Getting back the $1.1 billion that illegal immigrants cost the $88 billion health care industy is not going to solve the problems of health care in this country and it won’t stem the tide of illegal immigrants who are coming here for work anyway. What youwill end up with are millions of people in this country who don’t have any access to healtch care at all and that will be even worse for everybody.

At the same, a guest worker program that addressed health care concerns could go along way toward reducing that $1.1 billion.

There are too many people out there trying to demagogue this and other issues with bullshit numbers and reactionary rhetoric. Smart choices begin with smart information.

Same with the medical numbers. As a proportion of the healthcare dollar, it isn’t huge, but what WOULD be an ok number? You complain about the lack of health insurance and care, and I tell you we can reap back millions of dollars of healthcare by preventing illegal immigration…

How can you argue against that, unless you are pro-illegal immigration? If that is the case, I guess the conversation is over…but I for one would rather have my tax dollars spent for needy americans first.

With something like 70% of outstanding felony warrants consisting of illegal aliens in LA, and billions being spent on illegal aliens healthcare…the electorate is going to wise up really quickly.

Only later did you add numbers. Now we know that those numbers are misleading because you give no time frame for them but let’s take them on face value. On its own, 15,000 is indeed a large number of felons. But that’s not what you initially wrote. You wrote:

“Isn’t it significant that a large number of illegal aliens are felons, beyond the lawbreaking they do when they enter this country illegally?”

That’s a totally different claim. For this statement to have any meaning you have to compare the 15,000 to the total population of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles City , County or State, wherever the hell MacDonald says she’s getting her “facts.”

According to the LAPD there were 15,503 aggravated assualts in Los Angeles City in 2005. That sounds like a lot of assaults. But can you use that number alone to assert that “a large number of Angelenos are violent”? Not with any intellectual honesty because the Los Angeles city is home to 3,694,820 people.

How many of those people are illegal immigrants? According to the Rand Corporation, illegal immigrants make up 12 percent of Los Angeles’ population (you can find that stat
here, in an interesting article about the low impact of immigrants on Los Angeles’s health care system). That’s 443,378 adult illegal immigrants.

Now if we take your 15,000 felons number and compare it to this total, that means that’s just 3 percent of the population have outstanding felonies. Is that a high percentage?

Last year there were 2.1 million people in the US prison system. The US population just topped 300 million. That puts the percentage of US citizens in jail last year around .8 percent. That would make the 3 percent figure for the illegal alien felons seem really high wouldn’t it?

But then again, the number of US prisoners is for a single year and we don’t know who many years the 15,000 felons you cite covers. It could be comprised of outstanding warrants going back 30 years.

What if we compared the total number of prisoners in the US prison system over the last 30 years to the current population. What do you think the precentage of jailed Americans would be? Probably a hell of a lot higher than .7 percent.

The piont being pedro is that the numbers you are throwing out are next to meainingless without supporting context. And yet you blindly charge off declating that larger numbers of illegal aliens are felons without a shred of valid evidence to support your claim. None whatsoever.

But you also claimed that “billions” are spent in health care costs on illegal aliens. But here’s what the Rand Corporation (in the article above) actually found:

“The major message is that the health-care cost of the foreign-born population in general is lower than you would expect. We are not spending a lot of taxpayer dollars on health care for undocumented migrants,” said James P. Smith, a Rand economist and one of three co-authors of the study.

“There are a lot of anecdotes and stories but if you add it up, this is not where the big money is.”

The study was conducted in 2000, based on a survey of about 2,500 Los Angeles residents, ages 18-64. Based on their findings, the researchers estimated that national health-care costs for illegal immigrant adults totaled $1.1 billion, or about 1.2 percent of the $88 billion spent annually on taxpayer-funded health care.

You see pedro, when you add it up, and your numbers aren’t total bullshit, all your left with is a bunch of empty, race baiting rhetoric. You’re a total moron.

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in the first half of 2004 (which totaled 1,200 to 1,500) targeted illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens

1200 murderers and 15000 felons seems like a lot to me…

Now answer my question paul…

Do you hate illegal immigration?

While you’re at it, please explain the logical reasoning behind your conclusion that a large number of illegal aliens are felons based on MacDonald’s stat.

Answer me one question..

Do you hate illegal immigration?

In 2005 there were 487 homicides in Los Angeles city and 464 arrests for homicide. That leaves 23 outstanding homicide suspects. In 2004 there were 518 homicdes and 474 arrests for homicde. That leaves 44 outstanding homicide suspects. In 2003 there were 517 homicdes and 439 homicide arrests leaving 78 outstanding suspects.

Granted these numbers are a little off because a suspect might have more than one victim but just taking these three years we can estimate that the LAPD probably avergae 50 or so outstanding homicides every year. Now if that’s true then MacDonald’s outside number 1500, woudl have to represent 30 years worht of outstanding homicides warrants, that’s assuming that in every homicide without an arrest there is also a suspect, which is unlikely.

Pedro brings in County murder numbers but MacDonald told Chavez that she got her number from the “LAPD fugitive warrants section.” LAPD doesn’t patrol the County, the Sheriff’s department does.

Does MacDonald expect us to believe that someone in the LAPD is giving out county numbers that not even the County keeps?

And Pedro, even if you want to use County numbers, it’s still a hugely distorted and misleading stat. There were 1,038 homicides in LA County 2004 according to the LA coroner. If there were 1500 outstanding warrants in just the first half of 2004 that means her number must include previous years to make any sense. But if that’s the case how many years back does she go? 3, 5, 10, 15?

The statistic gets less and less shocking the more years included which is probably why MacDonald neither 1) sourced her statistic 2) explained how she derived it.

You yourself totally misread the statistic as meaning that “a large number of illegal aliens are felons.” You did this because 1) your an idiot and 2) because MacDonald designed the presentation of her numbers, wherever she got them, to appeal to idiots who hate illegal aliens.

Is there a problem with illegal aliens fleeing justice back to Mexico? I’m sure it happens a lot but is it an epidemic? MacDonald wants you to think so but her statistic is practically meaningless without any more information than MacDonald provides. But the stat, as she presented is, served it’s purpose, it went viral in right wing idiot circles with dipshits likes Pedro reading it and concluding that “large numbers of illegal aliens are felons.”

You have yet to explain how you arrived at that conclusion with all your “logical reasoning.”

Can I also add that MacDonald didn’t present the fact as derived from “logical reasoning” based on her research. She presented it to Chavez as a specific fact supplied to her by the LAPD. A fact that the LAPD couldn’t possibly have because it doesn’t record the data required to derive it.

So the “fact” itself is unverifiable and, at best, totally misleading based on the other information available. That, however, won’t stop pedro from going on and on and on like Dugger unable to accept the truth about crime rates. It’s just classic right wing idiocy in all its glory.

So, what do you make of this number:

Of the 1,070 reported homicides in Los Angeles County in 2000, 448 were gang-related. The percentage of gang-related homicides more than doubled from 1980 to 2000.
- Scott Carrier, Coroner’s Office; Wes McBride, LA County Sheriff’s Department

That being the case, and since McDonald DID’NT specify the number of years those warrants were collected…(what IS the statute of limitations on murder kiddies?), the 1500 number doesn’t look quite as unreasonable.

And Professor Ruben gives us some other CONFIRMATORY numbers to work with, by using the same twisted lefty logic: There are less illegal aliens in prison BECAUSE THEY SKIP TOWN BACK TO MEXICO! Leading to huge numbers of WARRANTS for their arrests.

Kiddies, that is called “logical reasoning”, look it up…

QED

That alone is enough to make me wonder about her numbers. How on earth do you match up “outstanding warrants” with a half-year?

Warrants outstanding would be a discrete number as of a fixed date, not an accumulation over time. Warrants issued is a number you can accumulate.

On the mark, frame.

You know, I didn’t even notice this. Pedro, you moron, I couldn’t find any separate, independent source that CONFIRMS/PROVES her numbers. The only place that stat shows up is in her article or in references to her article.

But I did find independent information that CONTRADICTS/DISPROVES her assertion: the total number of homicides in 2004 was only 518. But she claims there were upwards of 1500 outstanding warrants for homicide in just the first half of 2004. That’s a huge fucking discrepancy if MacDonald’s warrant figure refers to 2004 warrants and 2004 warrants alone.

Of course she referring a cumulative total of outstanding homicide warrants, how many years is she referencing? If LA averages 518 homicides a year, that means at a minimum MacDonald is talking about the three years previous to 2004, but only if EVERY murder suspect skipped town three years running. Even if its six years, that would mean 50 percent of all murder suspects skipped town in Los Angeles. The LAPD has its problems but it isn’t that bad a police force, and murder suspects aren’t generally that smart. If 50 percent of all murder suspects escaped justice don’t you think that’d make the news at some point? Of course it would.

Naturally, the only reason it didn’t is because of the vast left wing media conspiracy out to hide the role of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles homicides. What a joke.

And you say you don’t use media bias as an excuse. You are truly an idiot, pedro.

Jesus, pedro, don’t you think a senior fellow at a think tank has an obligation to source her facts? At the same time, her stat flies in the face of other stats that the LAPD does keep, like the number of actual homicides in 2004. Her number for outstanding homicide warrants in 2004 is up to three times higher than the total number of homicides in that year. MacDonald offers no explanation for the discrepancy. Why didn’t MacDonald either source her “fact” or explain how it was derived?

And it’s not just me who can’t find the stat. Kinda Chavez couldn’t find it and she called the LAPD to confirm it. They told her they couldn’t because they don’t keep that information.

It is not circular logic to point out that the LAPD does not record the immigration status of felons. If the LAPD does not keep those statistics, for what ever reason, how could they give it to MacDonald with any hope of accuracy?

It is, however, circular logic to argue that the lack of such information proves your claim. That’s what you’re arguing.

Can I give you stat that is sourced and which you can verify by independent means? Here it is:

University of California professor Ruben Rumbaut, an expert on immigration and crime, looked at 2000 Census data on the institutionalized population in the United States, most of whom are in prisons, and came up with these astonishing facts. Immigrants are far less likely to be in jail or prison than other U.S. residents (the database covers federal, state, county and local prisons and jails). Of the U.S. population of 45.2 million men ages 18-39 (those most likely to be in the criminal population), 3 percent were incarcerated, or about 1.3 million at the time of the 2000 Census. But of these, blacks, whites and U.S.-born Hispanics had incarceration rates that dwarfed those of immigrants. Only .7 percent of Mexican-born males were in prison or jail, compared with 3.51 percent of all U.S.-born males, which includes 1.71 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 11.6 percent of blacks and 5.9 percent of Mexican Americans. Indeed, for all foreign-born groups, immigrants have lower incarceration rates than all U.S.-born racial and ethnic groups do, including whites.

The link is in my comment above.

Go look up the date in the 200 census pedro. It’s there. You won’t find MacDonald’s “stat” anywhere but in MacDonal’s article.

Of course you are now completely ignoring the fact that you totally misread the meaning of the stat by asserting that it was evidence that “a large number of illegal aliens are felons.” It shows no such thing. Idiot.

Because YOU couldn’t find any documents disproving the numbers, doesn’t mean the numbers are bad.

In medicine, we have a saying…”if you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever”…and in classic leftist fashion you can’t see that.

The lefties won’t ALLOW anyone to keep statistics on illegal alien felons, cause they KNOW what that data will show. You then use that as an argument that the current data, taken from other sources, is somehow invalid.

Go look up “Circular logic” somewhere and you will see how arguing that you “don’t have data” from people who WON’T ALLOW IT TO BE COLLECTED will fit that description…

Dr. Pee, busted again. I think it should be a “felony” to quote ANYTHING from Heritage, AEI, and any other right-wing “think-tank”.

As many debates here have shown us, the SOP for these is to get a mission from a right-wing hack to support a particular agenda, and the busy worker “scholars” begin to pull a case together. Then they feed the news releases to our wiling MSM and PRESTO!

Quotable “statistics”, at your service.

Works great as kool-aid for the base, don’t it?

What a joke.

“Isn’t it significant that a large number of illegal aliens are felons, beyond the lawbreaking they do when they enter this country illegally?”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that that statistic doesn’t suggest in any way shape or form the total number of illegal immigrants who commit felonies. Apparently, it does take a conservative hack to suggest that it does.

I also find it interesting that MacDonald does not source her statistics. Indeed, she writes
here:

Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis.”

And a simple google search for the stat just brings up references to MacDonald’s article.

And
here, apparently, is why:

The problem is, the Los Angeles Police Department doesn’t collect information on the immigration status of criminals, much less suspects, so there is no database of how many illegal aliens are wanted on outstanding homicide warrants. When I asked Mac Donald to provide her source, she said, “The LAPD fugitive warrants section gave me that figure.” I don’t doubt Mac Donald’s word — she is an old friend. Someone, Mac Donald won’t say who, undoubtedly gave her this misinformation. But several calls to the LAPD elicited the same response: We don’t collect such information — which was borne out by searching all available databases and talking to respected criminologists.

This particular factoid has been debunked by several sources, including the Los Angeles Times and Snopes.com, but it just won’t die. And other factors make the statistic highly suspicious. In all of 2004, there were only 518 homicides in Los Angeles, suggesting that the number of outstanding warrants (no matter whom they are for) must date back over many years, unless we are to assume that all murders in 2004 were committed by at least two illegal aliens and that no one was ever been arrested for any recent homicide.

How exactly, pedro, if there were only 518 homicides in Los Angeles in 2004 could there have been 1,200-1500 outstanding felony warrants for homicide? And if MacDonald was adding up all previous years, why did she not state that in her article? Maybe it’s because she’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Hmmm, a study from a conservative think tank is full of shit? No wonder no real reporter would ever cite such a stat. Just leave it to another alum from a conservative think tank to claim that as “liberal bias.”

So to recap, Pedro, not only did you read the meaning of the statistic wrong, the statistic itself is highyl suspect.

Just how much of a hack idiot do you have to be, pedro?