Muir will succeed Sheriff LaJoye-Young with the same racist practices and ongoing collaboration with ICE to detain immigrants at the jail

In mid-July when the local news was reporting that Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young announced that she was retiring, most news sources stated that Undersheriff Bryan Muir would be her successor.

It is no surprise that this is what has come to pass. It is also not surprising that the local news has not provided any context for the appointment of Muir, meaning they gave the undersheriff a free pass.

What is omitted in the coverage and what the public generally doesn’t know about Muir are some of the following:

• He resided as UnderSheriff over the ongoing racially driven jail population in Kent County. Based on a data from a report by LincUp, most people in the Kent County Jail are there for non-violent offenses, most of those in the jail have not been found guilty of a crime, and there is a disproportionate number of Black and Brown people in the Kent County Jail. For instance, in Kent County Black people make up 10% of the population, but they make up 47% of the incarcerated population.

Additionally, as a result of UnderSheriff Muir’s testimony during a recent trial of four people that were contesting the Kent County Jail’s policy of collaborating with ICE by holding immigrants for ICE, Muir stated the following:

• First, when asked by defense attorneys if what he said to the defendants at the time of the arrest was caught on his body camera Muir said no because his body camera “wasn’t working or wasn’t charged.”
• A second interesting comment from Muir was while he was being cross examined by defense attorneys about whether or not the Sheriff’s Office shares Flock camera information with ICE. Muir said they share Flock camera images with all federal agencies that request them for a criminal investigation. Muir would not name ICE as being a federal agency, even when pressed on the matter, but by saying all federal agencies he admitted that includes ICE.
• Third, the Under Sheriff also revealed that their department has what he called the Real Time Intelligence Center, which essentially monitors everything happening at the buildings the Sheriff’s Office is in charge of (which includes the Kent County Jail), along with any interaction Sheriff’s officers have with the public and drone footage when drones are used. Muir shared this bit of information because he said that his officers were also monitoring Movimiento Cosecha’s livestream from inside the lobby of the Sheriff’s Office on the day of the action/arrest on January 5th and the post arrest video they did in the lobby of the jail with the defendants. Under Sheriff Muir essentially admitted that the Sheriff’s Office engages in surveillance of Cosecha, which means they likely do this to any organized efforts to challenge systems of power in Kent County.

Under Muir’s leadership as Sheriff we can expect the same business as usual approach, where a disproportionate number of BIPOC people will be incarcerated, where the Sheriff’s Office will be monitoring the public without their knowledge, and where the Kent County Sheriff’s Office will collaborate with ICE by sharing Flock camera images and engaging in ICE holds at the Kent County Jail. Remember this in the November Election with a ballot initiative to ask taxpayer for more money for the jail!