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MTC and immigration video: The rest of the story
Posted on Jun 13 2017
Ricardo Levins-Morales was returning home on May 14, exhausted from a long trip and eager to get home. On the Blue Line train from the airport, he saw an MTC officer interrogating a fellow passenger. He recalls thinking that “maybe this wasn’t going to be routine,” aware of “how quickly and easily police interactions can escalate.” So he fumbled in his backpack for his phone, turned it on and started filming.
Levins-Morales called out the officer on his questions about immigration status. The officer seemed to back down as a result of his question. Then the train arrived at 38th Street, and everyone had to get off and take a bus, because of weekend work on the line. In the confusion, Levins-Morales lost sight of the young man. He saw one on the two transit officers, now by himself, and “made the mistake of assuming that the young man had gotten free.”
Later in the week, he posted the video, which has gone viral, with millions of views around the world. That led to an investigation by the Pioneer Press, revealing that the Ariel Vences-Lopez had not gotten free, but had been tasered, arrested, and turned over to ICE to be deported.
Though the video did not get Vences-Lopez free, it had far-reaching impact.
“I’ve gotten people responding to me on Facebook, saying, ‘Now I know what to do in a situation like that,” Levins-Morales says. “It’s important that the impulse be to intervene to try to shift the balance of power at the moment, but there’s no template for what’s right in any given moment.
“When I spoke up, the cop first looked at my face and then glanced down and saw the phone — I’m sure that made a difference in his response. So if my phone wasn’t working or had bene out of charge, even that would have helped to give a little more leverage in the moment to try to interrupt what was going on.
“It’s not the tools that are important — it’s the understanding that you need to quickly reach for an appropriate tool, and that might change, depending on circumstances.”
The video also led to action from the Met Council and MTC. As an internal investigation began, the police officer resigned his MTC job. MTC police chief John Harrington strongly reiterated MTC policy against any questions about immigration status.
For more of the story, read Cell phone video caught MTC officer asking immigration status – the rest of the story still unfolding