What Happens When You Are No Longer A Sanctuary City?

On Friday, Fox News posted an article about what has happened in Phoenix, Arizona, since they have dropped their sanctuary city status.

The article reports:

Bolton (Levi Bolton, executive director to the Arizona Police Association) served with Mark Spencer, who spent 25 years patrolling in Phoenix.

“When we eliminated our sanctuary policy back in 2008, we saw crime, violent and stolen vehicles fall by 25 percent,” he recalled. “We saw a 20-year low crime rate. When we were allowed and had the discretion to contact our federal immigration partners, crime fell drastically.”

According to City-Data.com, which collects data from various government agencies, from 2008 to 2009 Phoenix’s murder rate fell 27 percent, robberies by 23 percent, assault by 13 percent, burglaries by 14 percent and theft by 19 percent. The numbers for each category fell the following year as well – albeit by smaller margins.

One has to wonder why there is opposition to ending sanctuary cities when statistics show that they are more dangerous than cities where immigration laws are enforced. It also needs to be pointed out that ending sanctuary cities simply means enforcing the laws that are already on the books. One of the biggest problems with the Obama Administration was that they chose to pick and choose which laws they would enforce. We need to get back to the concept of enforcing our laws as they are written or changing them. There really is not another option.