On Thursday, the president signed an Executive Order making the Task Force a reality.
The Task Force on 21st Century Policing was conceived by the White House following the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri. It will include law enforcement representatives and community leaders.
It is unknown if the incident in which one of his own officers made national news after he roughed up several University of Arizona students after the school’s basketball team lost in last year’s March Madness, will inform his input on the task force.
The irony of the chief being named to the task force is not lost on many in Tucson.
The task force’s job over the next 90 days is to find ways to “strengthen the relationship between police and the public, and to submit a written report to the president with its recommendations.”
The Task Force is chaired by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and George Mason University Professor Laurie Robinson. It will operate in collaboration with the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office.
Chief Villaseñor oversees a police department composed of nearly 1,300 members. He joined the Tucson Police Department in 1980, becoming Chief of Police in May 2009. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Park University and a Master’s Degree from Northern Arizona University.
As the leader of the 36th largest municipal police agency in the United States, operating within 50 miles of an international border, Villaseñor rarely misses an opportunity to present the requirements of Arizona’s immigration law as an inconvenient obstacle to community policing.
Just this week, he claimed that the president’s Executive Order on immigration allowed his officers to serve on the Tucson Unified School District campuses because the Order removed the necessity to inquire as to a suspect’s citizenship. The District had refused to allow police on the campuses to serve as School Resource officers as long as they were required to ask a students suspected of committing a crime where they came from.
The president did not sign an Executive Order on immigration, however, the DHS has issued memos that allow suspected criminals who are in the country illegally to be released rather than referred to ICE for processing.