CLAY COUNTY, Fla. – The town of Orange Park invited residents to attend a council meeting to make their voices heard about concerns affecting their community.
One topic of discussion was how the Orange Park Police Department should handle immigration, funding matters and officers becoming certified to execute immigration warrants.
Currently, the OPPD doesn’t have any officers with the certification to hold people with federal immigration warrants.
A resident who spoke against the partnership said the agreement would take officers away from addressing other issues.
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"They’ve got enough problems to deal with. We ask them to be social workers on the street, dealing with our unhoused community members," Will Williams said. “There’s a lot that we already ask our police to do.”
Police Chief Randy Case spoke to the residents to quell their concerns.
“Our police department’s not going to be involved in door-to-door searches for illegal immigrants or something along that nature. And that’s my directive. I can say, we’re not doing that,” Case said.
The federal government has indicated it can fund training for the designated officers, but there are still some questions the town council must work through before anything is finalized.
