MINNEAPOLIS — The Minneapolis city operations officer emailed staff in January instructing them to clearly identify themselves verbally and, when appropriate, with official city identification when interacting with community members, according to internal emails. The email was sent a day after the killing of Renee Good.

Local authorities in Minnesota and Washington state took measures in January and February to distinguish their cities' officers and public safety personnel from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The files were obtained through public records requests by Property of the People.

Minneapolis city officials assembled photos and social media posts to share with the public showing how to distinguish city police officers, EMT vehicles and other municipal workers from ICE agents. City communications leaders discussed talking points saying officials should reiterate that Minneapolis officers will not hide their identity, always provide identification when asked, and tell residents their name and badge number upon request. The city also created a badge for its community safety workers, who are contracted by the city to do unarmed patrols.

Media relations manager Jess Olstad said community members felt very unsafe. "We wanted to recognize our city employees, what they do and quite literally what they look like, how they sound and what they drive," Olstad said.

An assistant fire chief expressed concern that the city's behavioral crisis response unit used vehicles that look similar to ICE vans. An internal city memo warned there was a substantial increase in community members declining to let fire inspectors into their homes, and that the inspection services division would have to adjust its procedures. Minneapolis authorities also fielded 911 calls about potential ICE sightings and communicated whether or not officers were federal agents.

In February, a Bellingham resident emailed city officials expressing concern that the public might not be able to distinguish local police from ICE. The Bellingham mayor forwarded the email to police officials and urged the department to prioritize social media messaging about how to recognize police officers.

A January memo from the Idaho Criminal Intelligence Center, titled "Local or federal? ICE or not? The potential dangers to all law enforcement," was disseminated to local and national law enforcement officials. The memo stated that reports locally and nationally indicated anti-ICE groups had mistakenly identified local law enforcement operations as ICE activities due to unmarked vehicles and plainclothes officers, which led to doxxing, harassment, and in some cases, attacks on local law enforcement personnel. A local Idaho police investigator forwarded the memo to patrol officers, saying misidentification could be a particular problem for personnel driving unmarked vehicles.

"The chaos is an obvious outcome of ICE running rampant through the country – people will confuse other police with them," said Spencer Reynolds, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "This confusion is heightened because federal agents are so openly and aggressively out in the streets in a constant way."