Wednesday, December 08, 2004

That'll show them there terrorists

New Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos has begun his tenure the right way: by overreacting to a minor threat. Petelos on Tuesday promoted the city's former police chief to be the director of Hoover's brand-new Department of Homeland Security and Immigration, the state's first city-level homeland security agency.

After all, when those wily terrorists give up on New York and D.C. and begin to target over-the-mountain Birmingham suburbs, Hoover doesn't want to be unprepared.

What you'll note in the chief's new job title, which will come with a $7,000 salary increase, is the word immigration. One of the things for which Hoover has been known lately is the large number of Hispanic day laborers who gather on Lorna Road every day looking for work. Many Hoover residents have complained loudly that the laborers' presence is lowering their property value and increasing the risk of violent crime.

The director, for his part, said the department will help the city further reduce its admittedly negligible vulnerability to terrorism. He also asserted that the city likely won't pursue mass deportation of the Hispanic workers on Lorna Road.