Public Safety, Fear Politics, and the Mayor’s Veto
Bay City is tucked into the curve of Michigan’s Thumb, nestled along the shores of Lake Huron. Its people like to pride themselves on being a welcoming community, a place where neighbors help neighbors and public safety is built on trust, not fear. Its tagline is “A Beautiful View of Life.” But only if you “fit in,” apparently. Recent events at City Hall have tested its identity.
On March 17, the Bay City Commission narrowly passed the Resolution Affirming Bay City’s Commitment to Local Public Safety Priorities and Jurisdictional Integrity—5-4—that sought to reaffirm that local law enforcement should focus on protecting and serving Bay City, not being pulled into federal immigration enforcement that has taken over the nation. It was a simple, straightforward commitment to public safety.
Then came the mayor’s veto.
Mayor Christopher Girard, citing financial uncertainty and the risk of losing federal and state funding, vetoed the resolution less than two days later. His justification? That the resolution might create “operational confusion” and the perception that Bay City was defying federal policies—even though Bay City’s own Director of Public Safety had already stated that it wouldn’t change police operations at all.
The veto wasn’t about safety. It wasn’t even about practicality. It was about fear—fear of political repercussions, fear of imaginary financial threats, and fear of standing up for what is right in the face of rising authoritarian pressure.
What Kind of City Do We Want to Be?
This is the question residents of every city should ask themselves. Public safety in Bay City—and every city—should mean that police resources are directed toward deterring crime, responding to emergencies, and engaging with the community in a positive way. It should not mean officers are acting as an extension of federal immigration agencies.
Unfortunately, trust in Bay City’s law enforcement has already been severely weakened—not because of immigration, but because of their repeated failures to address real and pressing threats in the community.
The crime rate in Bay City is rising—yet local law enforcement continues to fail its residents.
- Between July 2022 and July 2023, crime in Bay City surged by 27.4%.
- First-degree criminal sexual conduct cases skyrocketed by 171.4%.
- Theft from motor vehicles increased by 148.1%.
- In 2023, Bay City’s crime rate was higher than 88.9% of U.S. cities.
Here are links to resources supporting the above statistics: WNEM Report and City-Data Report.
Meanwhile, in early 2025, the Bay City Department of Public Safety reported ongoing violent assaults, drug-related crimes, and vandalism. And one guess who is not committing these crimes? You guessed it. Immigrants.
With crime rising in nearly every major category, it is beyond negligent to suggest that local law enforcement should be spending time assisting federal immigration enforcement when they are already failing to address real crime right within the city vs manufactured crime by a rogue federal government.
I have firsthand experience with Bay City’s finest.
I grew up in Bay City, though I have lived away and out of state for the better part of 30 years. The politics of the city haven’t changed much since I was growing up, nor has the policing. Within the past three years, my mother’s neighborhood was home to a known drug house. There was a lot of chaos always happening around her and a lot of crime and threats. The police were called countless times as the situation escalated. Her life was directly threatened on multiple occasions. And yet, local law enforcement refused to take action. My mother and brother spoke to the head of the drug taskforce on a handful of occasions. But it was only after she escalated the issue to her then Ward 8 Commissioner, Ed Clements, and threatened to go to the media, that anything was done.
Two days after the phone call to the commissioner, a raid was finally conducted.
It should not take public outcry, media exposure, or political pressure for local police to do their jobs and protect residents from real threats. But this is exactly what happens when law enforcement is allowed to decide which laws they feel like enforcing.
We are being told that diverting resources to federal immigration enforcement won’t take away from their ability to keep Bay City safe. But they are already failing to effectively address the crime that is right in front of them.
I have also seen how Bay City’s law enforcement picks and chooses who they protect. When we accurately described a criminal suspect—who happened to be black—we were accused of racism. Meanwhile, real criminals—white criminals since the cops made it about race—were allowed to operate with impunity while residents were left unprotected.
And when I visited my mother in Bay City for the first time in five years, a 5-foot-tall, bald, white cop with a chip on his shoulder the size of my 6’5” son told me that if I didn’t like how things were run here, I could leave.
That is not public service. That is intimidation; an attempt at it anyway.
This is the kind of law enforcement that Mayor Girard is worried about protecting from “operational confusion”?
Falling to Fear, Dog Whistles, and False Equivalencies
Those who opposed this resolution didn’t do so based on logic, facts, or even the Constitution they claim to revere.
They fell to fear.
I sat at the first commission meeting regarding this resolution on March 3, and listened as white residents—one after the other—regurgitated racist dog whistles, the same tired sound bites designed to incite panic: Immigrants are criminals. Immigrants are rapists. Immigrants are violent.
They ignored reality. They ignored data. They ignored the fact that studies consistently show immigrants—documented and undocumented—commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens. As of the latest data (2022) they also contribute over $96B annually to state, local and federal taxes. They contribute over $25B of that to social security they will never see, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and, $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes. For every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the United States, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue. And if provided a path to citizenship, would contribute nearly $2T a decade to our national economy.
Instead, they leaned (and continue to do so in public forums) on racist false equivalencies, reducing entire populations to the worst possible stereotypes, as if every immigrant is a violent offender. As if being born somewhere else makes a person inherently dangerous.
We’ve seen this all before—Japanese internment camps during WWII, the discrimination against Irish and Italian immigrants in the 1920s, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
They clung to fear tactics rather than focusing on facts. They allowed manufactured hysteria to take priority over the constitutional rights of every single person who sets foot on U.S. soil—rights that are guaranteed under the 5th and 14th Amendments: due process and equal protection.
But here’s what the opposition won’t tell you:
Their objections were never about crime.
They were never about public safety.
They were about political theater—about performing loyalty to a fear-based agenda that has nothing to do with protecting Bay City.
Meanwhile, the commissioners who supported the resolution did so because they actually care about the people of this city—about public safety, community trust, and ensuring that local law enforcement serves all residents fairly and effectively.
The Laken Riley Act: A Direct Attack on Due Process
The Laken Riley Act is one of the most harmful pieces of legislation ever signed into law, and it should concern everyone. It blatantly violates the 5th Amendment’s Due Process Clause and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Trump signed it into law on January 29, nine days after taking office for his second term.
The unconstitutional act was supported by 12 Senate Democrats and 46 House Democrats, and all Republicans. Both of Michigan’s senators, Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin (both Democrats) voted for the act. Bay City’s Congresswoman and Bay City resident and past city commissioner, Kristen McDonald-Rivet (a Democrat), also voted for the unconstitutional act. That should tell you something about how both parties feel about our Constitution – it only matters when it’s convenient.
The Laken Riley Act strips people of their rights not based on what they’ve done, but based on who they are. It is one of the most extreme examples of how fear-based policies are overriding the fundamental protections that should apply to every person in this country—citizen or not.
Recent cases highlight this alarming trend:
- Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian, anti-genocide activist and Columbia University graduate student, was detained by ICE agents despite being a legal permanent resident. His arrest, linked to his political activism, is a direct violation of his First Amendment rights.
- Fabian Schmidt, a German green-card holder, was detained and harshly interrogated at Logan Airport due to a past minor drug-related charge, despite his legal residency status.
- Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese doctor at Brown University on an H-1B visa, was deported despite a court order against it, based on alleged “sympathies” inferred from deleted photos and videos found on her phone.
- Immigrants and asylum seekers were sent to Guantanamo Bay for detention, a drastic and alarming shift in U.S. policy. Under the Trump administration’s new directive (The Laken Riley Act), migrants were transferred to the U.S. naval base in Cuba, where they faced harsh conditions and no legal representation. The legal pushback against this has forced Trump to bring the detainees back on U.S. soil. Jhoan Bastidas, a 25-year-old Venezuelan with no criminal record, was among those held at Guantanamo Bay before being deported. This move has drawn widespread condemnation from human rights organizations and legal experts, and rightly so.
These incidents are not isolated, they are examples that represent a broader pattern in which individuals are targeted not for their actions, but for their identity or beliefs, undermining the very principles of due process, equal protection, and the First Amendment—which, I remind you, applies to every person who sets foot on U.S. soil.
The Spineless Politics of Fear
The mayor’s veto is part of a larger problem—unqualified politicians who lack the backbone to stand against fascist fear tactics.
Bay City’s vetoed resolution was never a radical idea. It was basic governance—a simple statement that our local police should focus on our local needs in the face of a nation that has gone rogue, abandoning our own Constitution.
So, the question for Bay City—and every other community facing these decisions—is this:
Do we want to be a city that leads with fear, or a city that leads with integrity?
The people of Bay City deserve leadership that chooses integrity. The resolution should have stood. And if the commissioners truly care about public safety, financial stability, and the Constitution, they will find the courage to override the veto and make it clear:
We are a city that does what is right, not what is easy. And we will not let fear—or racism and bigotry—dictate our policies.