On Friday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston discussed an order he issued on police officers intervening with ICE officers and said that when ICE is in a city, it “does not make it safer, it makes it less safe.”
Johnston said, “I made clear yesterday, our goal here is not to provoke, but it’s to protect. We get questions from residents every day about what will happen if we see the kind of forces of troops descend on Denver that they saw in Minneapolis. I think what our residents want to know is that any law enforcement officer that operates in Denver will be transparent, will be accountable, and that the rule of law still applies. And that’s what we wanted to let people know is that we will have a duty to intervene if someone is injured, we will have a duty to investigate if there is a crime committed, and we’ll have a duty to interfere and step in and take an officer who might be using excessive force out of that situation, whether that’s a Denver police officer or whether that’s an ICE officer. And I think that’s what residents expect from us, in terms of public safety, and that’s what we’re committing to.”
He added, “Officers in Denver, right now, have what’s called a duty to intervene, which is, if you see a fellow officer who’s using excessive force in a way that’s inappropriate, you have an obligation as an officer to step in and remove that officer from the situation. Officers around the country do that every day. What we’re saying is that same expectation extends to federal officers who might be operating on our streets. That’s the way we’ve done it in the past. That’s the way we’ll do it now.”
Johnston further stated, “We also know what we’ve seen in every city is when ICE arrives in that city, it does not make it safer, it makes it less safe.”
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