Emotions erupted at Tuesday night’s Santa Barbara City Council meeting during a discussion about ICE and their aggressive tactics on the South Coast.
Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse and councilmember Wendy Santamaria clashed, spurring councilman Mike Jordan to get up and abruptly walk out of the meeting.
Mayor Rowse disagreed with Santamaria’s concerns that Santa Barbara Police Department officers aren’t doing enough to block ICE agents and protect the community during arrests and raids.
“The comments Ms. Santamaria made about [how] we’re protecting ICE’s property and lives more than we are protecting our community, or the assertion, that’s disgusting,” Rowse said. “That’s not true.”
Rowse said he was getting “frosty,” over criticisms of the police department.
“Let’s stand together as a team,” Rowse said. “Let’s not pick each other apart from the inside. That’s the part that’s kind of got me frosted right now.” He also said that some of his colleagues were putting on a show for the audience.
Santamaria fired back. She said that the mayor was getting “defensive” and took a word he used and gave it right back to him.
“If we are getting frosty or flustered up here then maybe leadership isn’t for you,” Santamaria said.
Rowse has spent much of his adult life in public service, including two terms as a councilman, nearly four years as mayor, and prior to that multiple terms on the downtown parking committee.
The exchange toward the end of the meeting capped a tension-filled discussion over a proposed resolution re-affirming the city’s stance against ICE and its tactics in the community. The City Council could not agree on the language Tuesday night, but voted 6-0 to direct city staff to return with a more specific statement condemning ICE agents, and other actions the city can take to protect residents. Jordan did not vote because he left.
Police Chief Kelly Gordon repeatedly criticized ICE agents, but said that police officers cannot intervene because immigration is within the jurisdiction of the federal government. She said that the police department does not assist federal immigration authorities. In fact, she said, the city is receiving fewer alerts from federal authorities that ICE is even present.
She said police officers aim to de-escalate the situation if called to it, but that they have no authority to intervene with a federal agent that pepper sprays or uses excessive force on a person.
Gordon and others said that the ICE agents are not trained properly, but that they are still federal agents and have jurisdiction over the police department.
Rowse said the federal agents don’t know what they are doing, but that is vastly different from the skills and abilities of Santa Barbara Police Department officers.
“ICE is sending us a bunch of wannabe mall cops that haven’t been trained,” he said. “They don’t know how to de-escalate. They do not know how to handle crowds. We do.”
Rowse said the police are getting criticized for not being more “Rambo-esque.”
“I don’t know what people want,” Rowse said.
Several of the council members expressed grief over what is happening in the community with raids and deportations. Some members of the public who called into the meeting said that a man released from the Santa Barbara County jail Tuesday was beaten badly by ICE agents and law enforcement did not help him.
“This moment that we are in calls all of us and calls the city as an institution to respond with moral clarity,” said councilwoman Meagan Harmon. “The tactics, the undermining of our constitutional due process, the trauma that is inflicted on our community, this moment requires of us that we respond.”
Harmon expressed concern about the city using license plate readers and collecting other data on people, suggesting that it was violating people’s privacy rights. Earlier in the meeting Santamaria requested that the city cancel its contract with Flock Safety, which collects data through cameras around town for the purpose of public safety. Harmon said the city needs to consider whether collecting any surveillance data at all on residents is worth it anymore if it gets in the hands of federal authorities.
The city staff plans to audit the data to see if any of that information has been leaked to ICE agents.
Sneddon too criticized the abilities of ICE agents.
“They are untrained, unvetted, they are escalating their tactics regularly,” Sneddon said. “Their tactics are the threat. The community that is responding to this escalation is not the problem. The community that is responding is unarmed, unprotected, unfunded.”
Sneddon, a teacher at Santa Barbara City College said her students have had family members who have been deported.
“The federal agents are injuring, terrorizing, endangering our community members and they are using excessive force,” Sneddon said. “They choke people, they push people, they bear spray people and they take people, no due process, no cause, no rights.”
Eric Friedman also praised the work of the police officers and said the problem is with federal agents. He said he worries about what would happen if an ICE agent and a police officer battled each other at an event.
“The last thing we want is for an incident to happen that gets elevated to the federal government and they send even more resources into Santa Barbara to send a message to us,” Friedman said.
