Chuck Wexler [Email him] is the Executive Director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF),  and he has an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times to again spread the lie that sanctuary cities don't exist, and when they protect illegal alien criminal from deportation, they help reduce crime.  All part of the hivemind Deep State campaign against immigration enforcement by the Trump Administration.

With an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States, talk of a crackdown on illegal immigration has created tension in cities across the country.

For America’s police chiefs, calls for enhanced enforcement of federal immigration laws bring a particular concern. Chiefs are afraid that such efforts will have the unintended consequence of actually increasing crime and making their communities less safe. The reasons for this can be found in recent incidents from some of the country’s so-called sanctuary cities.

Police Chiefs Across The Country Support Sanctuary Cities Because They Keep Crime Down, by Chuck Wexler, LAT, March 6, 2017

As proof that sanctuary cities protection of illegal aliens reduces crime, Wexler cites two anecdotes about illegal aliens involvement in stopping two crimes and a story about illegal aliens reporting crime not to the police, but to a third party.

That, as they say, is not evidence.  But the real evidence is in, and sanctuary city policies do not reduce crime, but correlate to increased crime.

One of the most common reasons offered for non-cooperation policies is that they are needed to enable immigrants to feel comfortable reporting crimes. This frequently-heard claim has never been substantiated, and in fact has been refuted by a number of reputable studies. No evidence of a "chilling effect" from local police cooperation with ICE exists in federal or local government data or independent academic research...

In addition, data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics show no meaningful differences among ethnic groups in crime reporting.

[Sanctuary Cities: A Threat to Public Safety, by Jessica Vaughn, CIS, July 2015]

Even worse for Wexler, his own organization, PERF, conducted a study showing that cooperation with immigration law enforcement does not reduce crime reporting:

A multitude of other studies refute the notion that local-federal cooperation in immigration enforcement causes immigrants to refrain from reporting crimes:

A major study completed in 2009 by researchers from the University of Virginia and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) found no decline in crime reporting by Hispanics after the implementation of a local police program to screen offenders for immigration status and to refer illegals to ICE for removal. This examination of Prince William County, Virginia’s 287(g) program is the most comprehensive study to refute the "chilling effect" theory. The study also found that the county's tough immigration policies likely resulted in a decline in certain violent crimes.

The most reputable academic survey of immigrants on crime reporting found that by far the most commonly mentioned reason for not reporting a crime was a language barrier (47 percent), followed by cultural differences (22 percent), and a lack of understanding of the U.S. criminal justice system (15 percent) — not fear of being turned over to immigration authorities. (Davis, Erez, and Avitable, 2001).

And Wexler's example of Los Angeles' sanctuary city policies reducing crime fails:

Using recent statistics from Los Angeles, another sanctuary city, Landry asserted, “Los Angeles saw all crime rise in 2015: violent crime up 19.9 percent, homicides up 10.2 percent, shooting victims up 12.6 percent, rapes up 8.6 percent, robberies up 12.3 percent, and aggravated assault up 27.5 percent … (sanctuary cities) encourage further illegal immigration and promote an underground economy that sabotages the tax base."

[Report: Crime Spikes In Sanctuary Cities, by Hank Berrien, The Daily Wire, undated]

It takes a special kind of chutzpah to claim sanctuary city policies of not cooperating with immigration enforcement reduce crime when your own organization says differently in a peer reviewed study.  But that is what the response of politically appointed law enforcement bureaucrats is to the facts, denial.  And because appointed Chiefs of Police, like Margo Bennett, are political animals rather than law enforcement professionals.  Facts about illegal alien crime don't matter to politically motivated bureaucrats.  Hacks like Wexler and Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department live in a fantasy world devoid of data about crime and criminals.

Moreover, Wexler claims that Police Chiefs are concerned about crime and want to arrest illegal aliens who commit crime, but reports from their subordinates show that protecting illegal aliens is not about witnesses and victims, but about protecting the criminals themselves:

Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should a cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is he who will be treated as a criminal, for violating the LAPD’s rule against enforcing immigration law...

“We can’t even talk about it,” says a frustrated LAPD captain. “People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics.” Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: “I would get a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals].” Neither captain would speak for attribution.

[The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave, by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, Winter 2004]

There is no lie more persistent that a hands-off approach to illegal aliens by local police will reduce crime.  And that lie from the Deep State is again at the forefront as a crackdown on illegal aliens and sanctuary cities looms.

And why the LAT published Wexler's claims when 2016 was another year of increased crime in Los Angeles is a mystery.  It is almost as if the truth is of no interest to the Deep State.

The jump in overall crime comes at a crucial moment. Residents across the city are both frustrated and alarmed by the uptick. Police and others are keeping a wary eye on the weeks ahead, worried that August will be as bloody as it was last year.

The difficulty driving down crime presents a potential political challenge to Garcetti as well, coming as the mayor seeks another term in office and continues his rise on the national stage. Next week, he is scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention.

[Overall Crime Is Up In L.A. For The Second Straight Year, LAPD Reports, by Ben Posten and Kate Mather, LAT, July 22, 2016]

It is as if  politically motivated happy talk from the Cultural Marxists about immigrant crime was #FakeNews.