Cops in a 200-person Indiana town are buying their own patrol gear after county officials froze $122,500 in federal funding to punish the department for cooperating with ICE — and the state attorney general says the freeze may be illegal.
Stinesville Police Chief Shane Pittman told the Daily Caller that the Monroe County commissioners are holding $122,500 in Department of Homeland Security money hostage because his department entered a 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February. That agreement lets local officers check immigration status and detain illegal aliens during routine police work. The frozen funding was earmarked for two patrol vehicles, officer training reimbursements, and essential equipment. Now it sits with the Stinesville Town Board, which faces pressure from county officials to kill the ICE deal.
Pittman said the 287(g) agreement was a response to local leaders' failure to properly fund his department in the first place. Officers already supply their own equipment. Pittman personally outfitted a patrol vehicle and leases it to the town for $1 per year.
"If there's another funding source, I'm 100 percent open to it, but there's not. There's nothing available for us," Pittman said. "Help us fix the money issue, and we wouldn't necessarily have to participate in this."
Forty-five state agencies and local law enforcement departments in Indiana have struck similar 287(g) deals, but Pittman says Monroe County singled out Stinesville to advance its opposition to ICE. The point was driven home at a September 26 parade, when a Monroe County snowplow rolled through town plastered with a sign reading "ARE YOU READY FOR THE ICE STORM?" — a double meaning that County Commissioner Jody Madeira confirmed was intended to "make a point about process."
"A local parade is a place where we've always had some fun with our neighbors, and the snowplow is our usual entry, so a little wordplay on a snowplow felt harmless," Madeira said. She claimed commissioners simply want the town to "hold a public vote" on the agreement, insisting they don't care how the vote turns out.
Town board President Scott McGlocklin wasn't buying it. "I want to make it perfectly clear: The Monroe County Commissioners will not tell this town how it will run," he said at an October 6 meeting.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita backed Stinesville. In an October 6 opinion, Rokita argued the police department had authority to enter the 287(g) agreement without town board approval and that the Interlocal Cooperation Act does not apply. He warned that any attempt by county commissioners to discourage Stinesville from continuing the agreement — including withholding funding — would violate state law.
The Daily Caller framed the standoff as county officials weaponizing funding to obstruct federal immigration enforcement. The second outlet assigned to this story, 9to5Toys, had nothing to say about it — they covered a Pokémon-branded speaker instead.
The question now is whether Rokita's opinion carries enough force to unlock the money, or whether Monroe County will keep squeezing a two-hundred-person town until it drops the ICE deal.
