ICE agents confer after a “fender bender” in a Shoreline neighborhood. (David Mendez/The Osprey)
by David Mendez
King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall told the Shoreline City Council last week that she believes the community “has unrealistic expectations about what law enforcement can or should do related to ICE” — and that her office has effectively no ability to deal with federal immigration agents, even when they’re unidentified in the field.
The sheriff’s meeting with the council occurred during Shoreline’s “dinner meeting” workshops, which typically take place before regular council meetings. Most of the meeting focused on agency staffing — the King County Sheriff’s Office runs the Shoreline Police Department through a contract agreement — but KCSO’s policies regarding ICE were the elephant in the room.
Federal immigration officials have been very active in the city, leading to chases through residential streets, arrests along Aurora Avenue and confrontations in neighborhoods.
Federal immigration agents talking after a “fender bender” with a man in a Shoreline neighborhood. (David Mendez/The Osprey)
Upon being told of ongoing resident concerns regarding ICE, Cole-Tindall told council that she doesn’t believe it’s KCSO’s job to “track ICE incidents.”
“My responsibility is to respond to 911 calls. And that could be an ICE agent calling, or it could be the community calling,” Cole-Tindall said. “What I don’t want is any of my officers to be charged with obstructing, or somehow we’re doing something that is obstructing the federal government from doing what they need to do.”
Shoreline’s leaders have taken a public stance against ICE activity over the last year, spurred in part by public action. Earlier this year, the city passed an ordinance banning the agency from staging on city-controlled land. Officials have also asked residents to call the city’s police department to help document ICE activity, and on one occasion city council members accompanied a resident to the police station, offering support as she reported an attempted arrest by ICE.
“Do you have a sense of how many times our King County Sheriff’s [Deputies] from across the region are responding to someone calling about an incident,” asked Councilmember Chris Roberts. “What’s the sort of universe in terms of how infrequently the sheriffs respond to these kinds of things?”
“We just don’t have that much interaction with ICE. They’re out there, we know it, but we don’t have a lot of interactions,” Cole-Tindall said. “People don’t really call that much. And certainly, just to be clear, [ICE doesn’t] let us know when they’re coming into our area.”
One councilmember then asked Cole-Tindall if deputies would respond to a call reporting an arrest by an unidentified person claiming to be an ICE agent.
“Yes, and all we could do, we could go out and we could say, ‘Hello, I’m Deputy So-and-So. Can I see your credentials?’ And they could say ‘pound sand,’ and that’s what we would do,” Cole-Tindall replied. “We would ask, and that’s on camera, so that’s what the deputy is required to do — to ask and document, yeah. But they don’t have to give it.”
“We could go out and say ‘can I see your credentials?’ and they could say ‘pound sand,’ and that’s what we would do.”
King County Sheriff’s Office policy states that deputies will prioritize responding to a call when it is “unclear people claiming to be immigration officers are officers,” if there are “concerns that a crime is being committed” or if ICE activities “may be occurring on property where they are not allowed.”
On-scene policy states that deputies will turn on their body-worn camera, speak with the person who called 911, “verify law enforcement credentials, if appropriate” and document their attempts to check the identity of officers on the scene.
When asked for comment on the sheriff’s statements, a KCSO spokesperson referred The Osprey to the department’s General Orders Manual and emphasized the orders that deputies must follow.
According to KCSO policy, deputies “shall not compel federal personnel to provide information or obstruct their operations.” Rather, they must attempt to deescalate on the scene, then file a report with superiors, which will then be sent to county prosecutors for possible further action.
Three ICE agents in Shoreline wearing facial coverings despite the state’s ban against masks worn during law enforcement activities. (David Mendez/The Osprey)
In March, Governor Bob Ferguson signed into law Senate Bill 5855 and House Bill 2165, a legislative package intended to prevent law enforcement from hiding under masks and added penalties to police impersonation laws.
But the state’s mask law, as Cole-Tindall and Councilmember Keith Scully both noted, is a civil matter. Further, sheriff’s deputies will not enforce the ban, the KCSO spokesperson told The Osprey.
“The person who feels they’ve been aggrieved can go to court, I guess,” Cole-Tindall told the Shoreline City Council.
Whether or not a city has tested the limits of the law by suing the federal government hasn’t been reported. “Somebody’s going to have to test that at some point,” Scully mused.
“I mean, it’s an ineffective law because you have to bring a motion for an injunction saying ‘don’t do it again.’ And they do it again, and you go back and you say, ‘now you have to pay a fine because you did it again,’ and they can ultimately drag it out forever,” Scully said, drawing out the string on his hypothetical.
“But it’s all we’ve got, right?”
King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall. (via KCSO)
Similarly, a ban on ICE assembly on prohibited properties — like King County-owned land, or City of Shoreline-controlled land — is untested. A spokesperson for the King County Prosecutor’s Office was uncertain what charges could be filed should federal agents ignore official warnings to leave.
A Shoreline’s municipal code says only that the city attorney “shall have the ability to enforce this chapter by any legal mechanism of enforcement available under the law.” Per a staff report, that means the city might sue the federal government to gain “injunctive relief, temporary restraint, or some other type of legal remedy.”