Leaders Have Cold Feet on a Hot Topic

I didn’t need a cop to tell me, but just to make it official, I reached a gracious Garden Grove Police Lt. Mike Handfield on his day off. I already knew what I knew -- cops hate being in the middle of the illegal immigration issue. The thrust of Handfield’s response to me: You are correct, sir.

It could be because it was fresh in his mind. Last Wednesday night, police had to handle a skirmish at the Garden Grove Women’s Club arising from people protesting an appearance by a Minuteman citizen patrol leader. If you thought those guys disbanded after the Revolutionary War, you’re wrong.

The incident occurred when another opponent of illegal immigration couldn’t navigate his van through the protesters and struck some with the vehicle, police said. No one, apparently, sustained serious injuries, and police didn’t arrest the driver. Several protesters could face charges of assault and disorderly conduct, sparking charges that the police, in effect, sided with the Minuteman faction.

My game plan today isn’t to pass judgment on something that I didn’t witness. Suffice it to say that Handfield says police will let the district attorney decide if charges are warranted.

No, my intention is to chastise the unknown powers-that-be for continuing to let the illegal immigration issue fester. Until they quit dancing around the subject, we’ll face the potential for ugly local fights.

I ask Handfield if this chore ranks in the top 10 things cops don’t want to deal with. “Definitely in the top 10,” he says. “We as a city and Police Department, yeah, we want to steer clear of this. It’s no-win for us.”

This time it was Garden Grove. Next time it could be another city. The leader of the Minuteman movement, James Gilchrist of Aliso Viejo, has said he has plans for other speaking engagements in the coming months. His group is among those that think it’s a good idea for private citizens to patrol the Mexico-U.S. border as a way of helping curb illegal immigration.

Anyone living in California knows how heated the illegal immigration issue is. It hits multiple sensitive nerves -- lawbreaking, the need of poor people to find jobs in the United States, the effects on local populations. And always at or near the surface, of course, is the constant potential for ethnicity-based enmity.

It’s a bubbling caldron. Too hot for responsible leaders to touch, I guess.

Of course, Minuteman members have a right to speak and the protesters have a right to protest.

The problem is: They’re not the people who are going to solve the problem. If any Minuteman meeting ever produces helpful dialogue, it’d be a major upset. Anyone willing to march around in the desert probably has formed all the opinions he wants to on the subject. Likewise for people showing up to protest a Minuteman gathering.

The answers -- how about just some rational rhetoric? -- must come from government. Would it kill President Bush to give a fireside chat on the subject? Would it burden Gov. Schwarzenegger to fully inform us on his views? Does either of them really care about the potential for ongoing hostility and the near-certainty of additional violent confrontations?

My conclusion: They don’t. How could either of them not grasp the crying need for cool leadership on the subject? Is it too quaint a notion to suggest that it’s precisely the kind of problem that elected officials are supposed to solve?

Into the void step the Minuteman supporters and street protesters.

Give them this: Both groups are airing gripes that lots of people have. But I think by now we all pretty much realize we’ve got a problem on our hands.

Ready for a solution, anyone?

I am, and so is Lt. Handfield, but he frets that the issue is so heated already that he’s not sure what kind of resolution could satisfy all sides.

I don’t either. I just know it’s the feds who ought to be separating the combatants, not local police departments.

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.