Orange Police to Back Off in Area of Alien Sweeps

The city of Orange’s acting police chief announced Wednesday that officers will diminish their presence in the East Chapman Avenue area where hundreds of undocumented day workers have been arrested in the past two months.

“The number of day workers on East Chapman Avenue has decreased significantly and complaints have been substantially eliminated,” Acting Police Chief Dean Richards said in explaining why the department will resume normal patrols in the area, effective immediately.

But in a statement released Wednesday, Richards said his department will continue to “monitor the situation daily.”

The police sweeps of the area began in February, after merchants along the busy street complained that hundreds of day workers congregated in front of their businesses each morning.

Since then, Richards said, the department has spent about $10,000 a month on overtime for police officers to patrol the East Chapman Avenue area. Police Sgt. Timm Browne said the total number of overtime hours was not immediately available, but that between two and four extra officers were paid overtime each day in the past few weeks to patrol the area.

Browne said that about 230 day workers were arrested for small infractions over the past two months, and many of them were later turned over to U.S. Border Patrol agents for deportation. On Tuesday, the Border Patrol detained and deported another 47 illegal aliens from the east Orange area, Browne said.

Richards, noting that crime figures have decreased in the area, said the Police Department will solicit churches and citizen groups for help in starting an information service to make day workers aware of their rights.

Several groups, including the Orange County Coalition for Immigrant Rights, remain critical of the department’s policy of detaining the workers for minor infractions.

Coalition director Robin Blackwell said Wednesday that Richards’ announcement did not change the department’s attitude toward undocumented workers in east Orange.

“They are decreasing the number of police because there has been a decrease in the numbers” of day workers, Blackwell said. “But they are still stopping them. The policy remains intact. They are firmly attached to that policy.”