Photo by fourbyfourblazer | CC BY 2.0
Standing stiffly in overly-starched police blues it was obvious, even before he admitted so himself, that Officer Sean Dinse wished he wasn’t addressing the congregation of the Community Church in Woodland Hills, California.
But, in the tremulous wake of President Donald Trump’s xenophobic and terrifyingly aggressive immigration policies, Officer Dinse said it was important as a matter of both public and police safety for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to “put the word out” that local police do not – and they will not – enforce federal immigration laws. Dinse said that beginning in January the department began reaching out to religious and other community-based organizations to schedule speaking engagements where they could communicate this message directly to the people.
Stressing the difference between LAPD and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Dinse said: “We are all human. We have to respect the law. But we also have to respect people who are just trying to survive.”
Notably, over fifty-six years earlier, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached a similar message of unity and inclusion at Woodland Hills Community Church. Invited to Southern California by a persistent white pastor named Fred Doty who revered King and wouldn’t let the extremely busy and over-extended civil rights leader refuse, King addressed the congregation on his birthday, on January 15, 1961, saying: “Love your neighbor…