Protecting Hampton Police

 

At a recent Select Board Meeting, the Select Board voted to not recommend a Warrant Article which would have given the Chief of Police of Hampton the authority/encouragement to not sign a contract of cooperation with ICE.

It was introduced by one of Hampton's representative to the House of Representatives at the State House in Concord, but it would apply only to Hampton.

Hampton Police, Definitely Not ICE

The way this town of 20,000 is governed is somewhat antediluvian, an archaic relic of when New Hampshire was comprised of small, rural towns, and people had town meetings and most towns did not think it necessary to have mayors. But then towns got too big to have the traditional town meetings depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings, so they shifted to a Select Board, where a group of 5 Select Board members (Selectmen, until women started getting elected) who meet weekly and decide on municipal expenses, and the direction in which the town should go.

But then the town of Hampton grew to 20,000 and, during the summer it swells to 150,000, making it the 2nd largest town in New Hampshire between Labor Day and Memorial Day. 

So, to address town issues a day in March is devoted to "Warrant Articles" where if Mrs. Jones wants to plant her petunias across the town sidewalk on the patch of grass running alongside Winnacunnet Road, town property, she needs a Warrant Article to approve of her using town land for flowers she will see from her living room window. Also, spending a million dollars to put a new roof on a town building gets funded through voter approval via a Warrant Article.

There are often as many as 40 warrant article and most town residents know nothing about 39 of them, so the work around has been a line below the article but above the check boxes Yes/No says, "Recommended by the Select Board 5-0." And so most everyone votes for that.

This year the warrant article asking the voters to approve a directive to the Chief of Police to sign no contract with ICE will have "Not Recommended by the Select Board."

Mad Dog listened to comments from townfolk, most of whom do not want ICE coming anywhere near Hampton--not that we have many immigrants, illegal or otherwise, apart from the occasional roofer or gardener or landscaper or painter, but those guys are here today and gone by the end of the day. But watching the ICE murders in Minneapolis, we had to ask ourselves, "How many Hampton mothers have to be murdered by ICE before we'll want them gone?"

McGrath: Beware the Illegal Alien Rapists

Some, however, spoke against excluding ICE, saying they were only here to help the police deal with the illegal immigrants who are gang members, rapists or murderers, and Linda McGrath, who represents Hampton as a Republican in the state House of Representatives, said there were buildings just across the Piscataqua River (the border with Maine) filled with illegal alien gang member rapists just bursting to get over to the New Hampshire Seacoast.

So she tried to sell the ICE presence as an effort to protect our local Hampton police.

Looking at how many local police have been arrested by ICE in Minneapolis, and in fact around the country, most notably in Phoenix, Arizona, Mad Dog could only think, if we want to protect our own police, never mind our mothers and nurses, we should not invite ICE in, and we surely should not contractually obligate our police to  cooperate with ICE,  if they just show up.

Our cops are generally speaking well liked by townspeople and they've built up good will over years. They have to deal with unruly drunken revelers down at the "Hampton Beach" part of town, where most Hampton year rounders never go, but we are happy to have the local police serve and protect us. 

It will be interesting to see how the voting on that Warrant Article goes.