Dori: By dropping LInX, KC Sheriff’s Office puts deputies, public at risk

You have got to know what’s going on with law enforcement around here. Cops today are more concerned than ever about public safety. In Seattle, the problem is that the city council hates the police and prevents the cops from being able to fully do their jobs. In the King County Sheriff’s Office, as I’ve talked about extensively as of late, there is absolute chaos at the top level.

The King County Sheriff’s Office has always participated in a database that all participating law enforcement agencies share called LInX (Legal Information Network Exchange). It provides information such as suspects’ addresses outside of the county, suspects’ associates, suspects’ contacts with other law enforcement agencies, and an idea of the danger level of suspects. A King County Sheriff’s Office deputy wrote to us that the system also helps officers to find crime victims and return stolen property to them.

But this week, the office announced it will no longer be part of LInX. Undersheriff Scott Somers sent out this letter to deputies.

I would like to apologize for not communicating the termination of our agreement with Northwest LinX internally, before it was terminated yesterday, and why terminating the agreement became necessary … We acknowledge and understand the impact to many of you who use this resource as part of your work on a daily basis.

And so they readily acknowledge that this is a valuable resource for their officers. This database would normally allow them to cross-check with other agencies so they know exactly what criminals they’re facing.

However, because of fears that ICE could access this database — even though no immigration status data is entered into it — they are withdrawing from it. They do not want federal law enforcement to have any access to it.

We worked with LinX and the Western Washington Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge to try to develop firewalls between criminal and civil immigration functions within ICE. We could not reach a solution that insured that the civil immigration functions would not have access, especially when viewed from a national level. We had no alternative other than to terminate our membership and information sharing with LinX. This included the removal of all of our information from their system.

These are pro-criminal radical Leftists who hate federal law enforcement (ICE). They would rather make the job much more dangerous for their deputies, and would rather create a far more dangerous environment for the public. They would rather we be victims of crime, as long as they don’t have to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

I know that this is going to impact our ability to efficiently access information for conducting investigations and support other functions.

The sheriff’s office is clearly admitting here that they are going to put everyone at risk of increased crime. This is what happens when you put radical, incompetent Leftists at the top of a major police agency. They know that this is going to make their constituents less safe, but because of radical ideology, they are willing to literally sacrifice lives. Another deputy wrote to us that people could die because law enforcement doesn’t have access to this database.

This is stomach-churning.

They are willing to risk our lives — all because they want to protect illegal immigrants. Seattle police won’t use this system for the same reason. And LInX shouldn’t even affect illegal immigrants, because the cops don’t even enter immigration data into the system in the first place. Remember, law enforcement is not allowed to ask the citizenship question.

When you have a sheriff who puts illegal immigrants before her constituents and her own deputies, you’ve got a real problem. This to me is conclusive proof that King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht is over her head and incompetent.

Johanknecht and King County Executive Dow Constantine care more about illegal immigrants than about the men and woman who put on the uniform, who put their lives on the line every day. They would rather have a higher risk of their deputies being killed than do anything to cooperate with ICE. And yet these men and women at the sheriff’s office continue to serve bravely, selflessly, and nobly, knowing they have absolutely no leadership at the top.

Our county voted these people in.

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