Special Order 40
Encyclopedia
Special Order 40 is a police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 mandate implemented in 1979 by the Los Angeles Police Department
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...

 (LAPD), its Police Chief Daryl Gates
Daryl Gates
Daryl Gates was the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1978 to 1992.-Early life:...

 and the Los Angeles City Council
Los Angeles City Council
The Los Angeles City Council is the governing body of the City of Los Angeles.The Council is composed of fifteen members elected from single-member districts for four-year terms. The president of the council and the president pro tempore are chosen by the Council at the first regular meeting after...

 preventing LAPD officers from questioning people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...

 status. The mandate was passed in an effort to encourage residents who are in the country illegally to report crimes without intimidation. The order states:

Controversy

Critics of the measure point out that the mandate also prevents officers from obtaining immigration status from gang
Gang
A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...

 members, violent criminals, and other felon
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...

s. S.O. 40 became a topic of public controversy in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 in the 1980s when Mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...

 declared the city to be a sanctuary city
Sanctuary city
Sanctuary city is a term given to a city in the United States that follows certain practices that protect illegal immigrants. These practices can be by law or they can be by habit...

. The controversy arose again to an even greater magnitude in 2006 when Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa , born Antonio Ramón Villar, Jr., is the 41st and current Mayor of Los Angeles, California, the third Mexican American to have ever held office in the city of Los Angeles and the first in over 130 years. He is also the current president of the United States Conference of...

 essentially made the same sanctuary-city declaration.

2008 incident

In 2008, Special Order 40 came under increased fire from conservative commentators Doug McIntyre
Doug McIntyre
Doug McIntyre is the host of "Talking the News" on 77 WABC New York City , the lead-in morning drive show before "Imus in the Morning." He also hosts the four-hour radio talk show "Doug McIntyre's Red Eye Radio", syndicated across the United States on Cumulus Media Networks, and is the page one...

, Kevin James
Kevin James (broadcaster)
Kevin James , is a Los Angeles CA Mayoral Candidate and former Assistant U.S. Attorney for Southern California. Prior to the Mayoral campaign, James was an American radio host and political commentator, focused on local and national politics. The program aired on KRLA AM 870 in Los Angeles between...

, Walter Moore and various other figures in the public eye for allowing the scenario that resulted in the homicide of Jamiel Shaw II by Pedro Espinoza, an illegal immigrant and gang member. The murder of Shaw was linked to Special Order 40 by its opponents because the alleged assailant had been arrested by Culver City police and then later released by the Los Angeles County Jail, although those two jurisdictions are separate and distinct from the City of Los Angeles
City of Los Angeles
The City of Los Angeles was a streamlined passenger train that ran between Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, via Omaha, Nebraska, and Ogden, Utah. Between Omaha and Los Angeles it ran on the Union Pacific Railroad; east of Omaha it ran on the Chicago and North Western Railway until...

 and therefore were not subject to Special Order 40.

In the wake of the Shaw murder, the Los Angeles City Council considered amending Special Order 40 with language specifying that police notify immigration authorities if that individual was not in the country legally. Then-retired Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates spoke to the council to defend Special Order 40. He mentioned that the order already mandates that when law violators are arrested, the first thing police are supposed to do is notify immigration if they believe they're undocumented. The order was also defended by then Police Chief William J. Bratton
William J. Bratton
William Joseph "Bill" Bratton CBE is an American law enforcement officer who served as the chief of police of the Los Angeles Police Department , New York City Police Commissioner, and Boston Police Commissioner....

. The City Council eventually chose not to amend the order.

External links

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