Community Power meets with the Mayor of Suffern

Thursday April 17, 2008, Community Power met with the Mayor of Suffern, with a surprise visit by his Deputy Mayor. The meeting with the Mayor represented the next step to a journey intended to build a bridge between the community and the Mayor. In this case, a group representing Latinos in Suffern discussing concerns and offering solutions to the 287G Amendment.

Community Power was represented by a small group of Latino business owners, citizens and one religious leader from Suffern. The meeting was cordial and relaxed. Our intention was to further build the bridge with the Mayor and convey current issues and concerns, aligned with a set of solutions that Community Power wanted to offer based on its meetings with Suffern Police. We learned quite a bit from the meeting.

1. When we asked about the status of 287G in Suffern, the Mayor replied that they had NOT applied for 287G and was attending the 287G summit in NJ to understand the feasibility of moving ahead with 287G.

2. We learned that the Mayor is pursuing 287G because he feels that his voting base demands it. He personally does not have an opinion either way.

3. We learned that the Mayor has NOT put together a cost analysis of implementing 287G.

4. From the Police meeting, we learned that Suffern Police acquired $60K from a drug seizure that allowed them to purchase a state-of -the-art fingerprint scanner. When we asked the Mayor about the scanner and how it would be used for immigration issues, he stated that the new budget would afford the new fingerprint machine. What we recently learned is that this scanning machine may be necessary for 287G to be implemented.

5. We learned that the first installment of $20K has been allocated for the lawyer investigating the implementation of 287G inside of the Suffern Police force.

6. We received a commitment that Sgt. Alvarez (Latino) would be one of the officers certified under 287G should it come to Suffern. And although Alvarez was positioned at the Community Power/Police meeting as his "right hand man", we have received several light-hearted responses from the police force indicating that this is not the case. That's OK, we connected to him anyway, and he was there.

7. We did not receive a commitment that Sgt. Alvarez, who our community has connected to at our meeting with the Suffern Police, would be a dedicated liason between Community Power and the police department. We will be following up.

8. We learned that the only expenses covered by ICE is the training. No travel, incidentals, coverage of shifts, etc.

9. We requested a public meeting with the Suffern building Code Enforcers and resident/businesses in an effort to positively move ahead more informed together. We argued that this would be attractive to businesses on the fence with coming to Suffern. We have not received any word back from the Mayor as to when this will happen. We will be following up.

10. Also, the Mayor offered to meet with our legal team to address allegations of incorrect due process by the current code enforcement personnel.

11. We gave the Mayor several of our new Poder de Communidad (community power) t-shirts. He said that we should have put the text in English instead of Spanish so that people wouldn't think we were saying something "nasty" or counter productive. We appreciate the advice.

12. Community Power offered to help minimize sidewalk congestion, bike riding and bike parking on the sidewalks. We requested bike racks. For everyone to use, of course, as there are not places to lock up a bike other than the trees. We also showed up for the community clean up the following Saturday.

13. The Mayor committed to building a soccer field in the current baseball diamonds in the West Ward. There is discussion about engaging our Latino youth inside of a Latino Youth soccer league. CP has offered to help build and sponsor the league. Also, it will be open for public usage by Latinos. No word back from the Mayor, the Chief or the Mayor's brother-in-law. We will be following up.

The Mayor assures us that there is nothing to fear. We look forward to experiencing this first hand through the direct commitment by his office to enact solutions that will ensure Latinos are welcome here. We have made the first gesture by providing several solutions including helping community police and clean up efforts.