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When I joined Justice Matters, it was the first time that the Douglas County Commission tried to steamroll us on the idea that a huge jail expansion was a foregone conclusion. The sheriff back then was all on board for that, possibly because it meant a bigger staff and budget for him to oversee. The current sheriff, Jay Armbrister, has just embarked upon his second four-year term in office.
Now that all of that is in our rearview mirror, we have at last been able to turn to addressing the real cause of those misbegotten jail expansion efforts by keeping people out of the jail who don’t absolutely need to be in there.
Fast forward to the recent Jan. 27 article here in The Lawrence Times, “Douglas County Sheriff’s Office will not seek people for ICE, will follow law,” which started off humanely enough:
Although other sheriffs across the country have pledged support of Trump’s plans, Sheriff Jay Armbrister said the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office disagrees with mass deportation of families and children. But he said his office won’t protect people who are jailed for alleged crimes if Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a valid warrant for them.
“The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is not here to try to deport anybody,” Armbrister said. “We’re not here to try to rat anybody out to the federal government. We’re here to simply enforce the laws and help the people who need help.”
But then at the very end, the sheriff put his proverbial foot in his mouth (emphasis is mine):
“The biggest problem, really, is that we don’t want to take up housing space within our jail facility for federal holds when they’re not in any hurry to come and get them,” Armbrister said. “Because they’ll let people sit for months at a time if they’re just not super excited about coming to get somebody.”
Almost makes it sound as if the jail were just another Habitat for Humanity project, not the facility for incarcerating and penalizing people that we all thought it was! Maybe that’s not how he meant it, but to some of us who have been in this battle for nearly 10 years, it comes across as his trying to protect the jail from overcrowding rather than protecting people from being incarcerated there capriciously and needlessly.
Mixed messages can have consequences!
— Ralph Planthold (he/him), Lawrence
Ad Hoc Committee on Bail Reform
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