Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been pulling guns on off-duty officers of color while illegally demanding their citizenship papers.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Bruley said he opposed abolishing ICE but disagreed with how federal officers were carrying out immigration enforcement.
"Recently, as the last two weeks, we as law enforcement community have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from US citizens," he said. "What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to show paperwork to determine if they are here legally."
"As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty," he continued. "Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them."
Bruley said ICE "boxed in" one officer on a roadway.
"They demanded her paperwork, of which she's a US citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork," he said. "When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands, prevented her from recording it."
"The officer had their gun drawn during this interaction," he added. "And after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident and de-escalating the incident down."
"The agents then immediately left after hearing this, making no other comments, no other apologies, just got in their vehicles and left."
Bruley said the anecdote was not an isolated incident.
"In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers," he remarked. "This isn't just important because it happened to off-duty police officers, but what it did do is we know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that's what they were."
"If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop."
