Friday was spent in Storm Lake with Public Safety Director and Chief of Police Mark Prosser, and Storm Lake City Councilor Jose Ibarra. The meeting with the Chief of Police had some very interesting info in it. The way Chief Prosser directs the police reminds me of a lot of my home town, which is not surprising because both have an immigrant population. They both try to get their officers to create a connection with the community so there is no tension between the community and police. One point that Chief Prosser made that I had never considered before is that these immigrants are not used to how the police here work or things they can and cannot do within the city limits and the officers have to take care of it. Another issue they face is the language barrier. Storm lake has a diverse immigrant population so there are around 30 languages spoken in the community. This becomes a challenge because they need to find a translator which can be hard at times.
Later that day when we talked to City Councilor Ibarra, we got the perspective of an immigrant who has gotten involved within his community. He said the reason he got involved was that there was no diversity within the leadership and it did not mimic the community. Councilman Ibarra said he was so surprised by how much he won by but thanks to his job he knew a lot of people which helped him out a lot. He said that a lot of the presidential candidates want to meet with him to secure his assistance with the immigrant vote. He says his biggest issue is trying to fix the city’s image because it is seen as a town of immigrants, so when there is a crime it will get blown out of proportion. The things that he wants to see changed is the immigrant population more active in the community and that everyone needs to take more pride in the place they live. Councilman Ibarra also found that a lot of voters are one-issue voters, and they vote for the candidate who is pro-life or pro-gun and that consideration overrides all other issues.