四 川 铁 FourRiverIron

Arpaio critics urge officials to call for his resignation

Arpaio critics urge officials to call for his resignation

by Michelle Ye Hee Lee - Dec. 15, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is reviewing 400-plus botched sex-crimes investigations to determine whether any might still be brought to justice, but he and other county officials sought to distance themselves Wednesday from calls for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's resignation over them.

About a hundred Arpaio critics converged at a county Board of Supervisors meeting to ask supervisors to push for the sheriff's resignation. Members of Citizens for a Better Arizona asked supervisors to hold a formal discussion and take a stance on the issue in January.

The board deferred any action at least until Montgomery's office completes its review. It is unclear whether the supervisors would act even if the county attorney acted or issued a formal legal opinion.

Democratic state lawmakers last week began calling for Arpaio's resignation over the bungled investigations of the sex-crime cases, including dozens in El Mirage. Local news media had previously reported on the mishandling of cases by Arpaio's office from 2005 to 2007, but recent national coverage catapulted the issue back into the news.

Montgomery said Wednesday that he will review and determine which sex-crime cases could lead to successful prosecution. He indicated his formal opinion likely would not focus on organizational changes within the Sheriff's Office.

"Simply screwing up in your job doesn't create criminal liability," Montgomery said, adding he would not "join the chorus" calling for Arpaio's resignation.

Montgomery said it is not his call to hold Arpaio accountable for the bungled cases, but instead is up to voters in 2012.

The five supervisors, the sheriff and the county attorney are separately elected and cannot oust each other. All are up for re-election next year and have been hesitant to publicly criticize each other, fearing negative headlines in the wake of the years-long political and legal infighting among their agencies that has cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Mismanagement of the sex-crimes cases has thus far been attributed to poor oversight in the Sheriff's Office and to former Chief Deputy David Hendershott's efforts to fend off bad publicity for a key investigator.

Current Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan told Arpaio's critics at Wednesday's board meeting that their request is "based on faulty, inaccurate and downright misleading statements." Sheridan defended his boss, saying the sheriff tasked 30 deputies in "short order" to investigate the hundreds of cases, and the internal investigation has been completed.

"We have never hidden behind anything or tried to cover up the fact that there was an issue," Sheridan told activists. "Police officers make mistakes. It's not unique to the Sheriff's Office. ... One thing the sheriff did was take immediate action once he realized there was a problem."

In an interview, Sheridan added, "I can tell you, the sheriff is not going to resign. And this will only empower the sheriff and bolster him to work harder and fight harder for his re-election next year."

The Sheriff's Office has said 432 sex-crime cases across the Valley have been reactivated, resulting in 19 arrests. The vast majority of the rest have been "exceptionally" cleared without arrest or were deemed unfounded.

An internal investigation into the cases was turned over to the county attorney for further review to ensure it was done properly, Sheridan said.

Montgomery said he has hired two additional attorneys for the sex-crimes unit to help review how sex-crime cases were investigated at various law-enforcement agencies across the Valley, including the Sheriff's Office and Phoenix Police Department. Montgomery said his office has been reviewing sheriff's cases since local media reported on the mishandled investigations in the spring. It has examined at least 150 of 432 cases so far.

In all, there could be up to 2,000 cases involving agencies Valley-wide that have "similar issues" as the botched sheriff's cases, Montgomery said.

Montgomery said he was "optimistic" that charges could be filed if he found further information on individual cases but admitted it would be difficult getting witnesses to come forward because some cases date back a decade.

Montgomery would not speculate on possible repercussions against the Sheriff's Office. When reminded that state statute gives him authority to bring misconduct allegations against public officials for possible removal, he answered: "At this point in time, I am not considering that."

County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, a frequent Arpaio critic, said she wanted the board to examine the sheriff's internal investigation as well.

Board Chairman Andy Kunasek said supervisors would withhold judgment until Montgomery releases his formal opinion. Chiefs of staff for Supervisors Don Stapley and Max Wilson said the supervisors agreed. Supervisor Fulton Brock could not be reached for comment.

"There should not be one uninvestigated crime," Kunasek said. "But we have to wait. And as this process goes through, I know there's parents, fathers, mothers, grandparents. It's a terribly painful item to even have in our community."

Dozens of community activists aired their opinions Wednesday on various issues regarding Arpaio: sex crimes, immigration enforcement, even $103.7 million in funds misspent by the Sheriff's Office since 2004.

Sheriff's supporters and opponents sat on opposite sides of the supervisors' auditorium Wednesday, heckling and booing each other, and coughing loudly over speakers they did not support. Security officers eventually stepped in and warned them to be civil.

Reach the reporter at michelle.lee@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8290.

Feds detail pattern of discrimination by Arpaio

Feds detail pattern of discrimination by Arpaio

by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, JJ Hensley and Michael Kiefer - Dec. 15, 2011 04:53 PM

The Arizona Republic

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday accused the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office of racial profiling in traffic stops and immigration operations and discriminating against Spanish speakers in the county jails.

Later in the day, a defiant Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he will continue to carry out the duties of his office and suggested he won't be changing policies in enforcement.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said at a packed news conference that the findings were not based on isolated incidents and not gleaned solely from statistics but about real people caught up in the sheriff's web of unconstitutional activity.

The problem, Perez said, is rooted in a culture in the Sheriff's Office that breeds a culture of disregard for the constitution.

"MCSO is broken in a number of critical respects," Perez said.

The Justice Department issued an ultimatum: Come to a voluntary court-enforceable agreement to stop the unconstitutional practices, or face a lawsuit under provisions of federal Civil Rights Act.

But the fallout from the report was quickly evident: within two hours of Perez revealing the findings, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the federal government would remove the sheriff's authority to conduct immigration screenings in the jails.

"The Department of Homeland Security is troubled by the Department of Justice's findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office," Napolitano said in a statement. "Discrimination undermines law enforcement and erodes the public trust. DHS will not be a party to such practices. Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO's 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office access to the Secure Communities program."

The agreement allows the Sheriff's Office to conduct immigration screenings on every inmate booked into jail and Arpaio claims it has resulted in the removal of more than 50,000 inmates who were suspected of being in the country illegally.

Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security would continue to enforce immigration laws in Arizona and focus resources on "criminal aliens, recent border crossers, repeat and egregious immigration law violators and employers who knowingly hire illegal labor."

In an afternoon press conference, Arpaio, joined by several staff members, took umbrage with the findings and said Napolitano's actions effectively means that untold numbers of suspected illegal immigrants in the jail system will be freed and "dumped on the streets, in neighborhoods near you."

His staffers accused the Justice Department of having foregone conclusions about allegations against the Sheriff's Office and that federal officials found what they wanted to find. One called the longstanding probe "a witch hunt."

Arpaio and the aides expressed particular anger at how the Justice Department, which flew in a contingent of officials from Washington D.C., chose to trumpet its damning findings in "a dog and pony" fashion with a press conference.

"Don't come here and use me as a whipping post for a national, international problem," the Sheriff said. alluding to the issue of illegal immigration.

Arpaio and his aides also challenged Perez's characterization that the Sheriff's Office has not cooperated on the federal investigation. But they also would not answer the specific findings, saying they have not had time to fully review the 22-page letter.

The Sheriff's Office has until Jan. 4 to decide whether to voluntarily cooperate with federal officials. If so, the Justice Department will work with Arpaio to correct violations in the next 60 days. If the sheriff declines to cooperate or fails to reach agreement, the Justice Department said it would file a civil action to force compliance with federal law.

But Perez also said the Justice Department wants to work with Sheriff's employees to address the problems the investigation identified and find a way to move forward.

"These findings are not meant to impugne your character," Perez said, in remarks directed at Sheriff's employees. "Our goal is to make your job easier and more rewarding and we want to hear your views about how to do just that."

Perez said federal officials want to work with Arpaio and other Sheriff's administrators to address the problems in the office, but that the change has to start at the top of the organization Arpaio has headed for nearly 20 years.

"We have to do a culture change," he said.

The Sheriff's Office received notice of the Justice Department's findings Thursday morning and had not yet had a chance to respond, Perez said.

But Sheriff's Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre, who was denied entry to the news conference, characterized the release of the findings as a surprise and decried the decision of federal officials to share the information with the press before Arpaio's office has a chance to rebut the report.

"Right now, we are stunned by the sneak attack after our cooperation," MacIntyre said.

But the Sheriff's cooperation is a relatively recent development.

The announcement on Thursday follows a 3½-year investigation into the Sheriff's Office, one that the agency chiefs initially resisted by refusing to turn over documents or allow federal investigators into county jails until they were sued by the Department of Justice in September 2010. Nonetheless, federal investigators reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and conducted more than 200 interviews with sheriff's personnel and former jail inmates.

Arpaio and his attorneys were notified of the findings Thursday morning. A letter from Perez detailed systemic discriminatory practices and policies and steps that must be taken to avoid further legal action.

According to Perez's letter, investigators accused Arpaio and his staff of a widespread pattern or practice of discriminating against Latinos. That treatment, he wrote, flows from the top echelons of the Sheriff's Office and has compromised its ability to provide quality law enforcement to county residents.

Investigators believe the Sheriff's Office followed a pattern or practice of unconstitutional treatment of Hispanics both inside the jails and in traffic stops, especially by the Sheriff's human smuggling and work-site enforcement units.

Among the alleged Civil Rights violations:

Hispanics were routinely targeted for traffic stops without reasonable cause, and subsequently charged with immigration-related crimes. Legal residents were sometimes treated as if they were illegal immigrants and even jailed.

Latino inmates with poor or no English proficiency were frequently punished for not understanding English, were required to fill out forms in a language they did not understand or were denied critical services available to English-speaking inmates.

Community activists and critics who spoke out against the Sheriff's Office's treatment of Hispanics were themselves targeted for retaliation.

The Justice Department also found that the Sheriff's Office did not adequately train or supervise its personnel to avoid civil rights violations and, in fact, permitted the specialized units to engage in unconstitutional behavior.

Also, the department found three additional areas of concern that require further review. Investigators allege some sheriff's deputies use excessive force against Latinos; the agency's immigration enforcement programs have caused distrust within the Latino community; and that certain types of criminal cases have been improperly investigated.

"It is clear to me that this community is divided and it is time to heal," Perez said.

A Sheriff's deputy described the divide between the Arpaio's agency and Latino residents as a "wall of distrust," Perez said, and breaking down that wall will require the Sheriff's Office to concede that deputies do not have to make a choice between public safety and the civil rights.

The distrust that exists "makes the job of policing that much harder," Perez said.

"If you don't have the respect of the community you're trying to assist, it's next to impossible to do your job effectively."

The department has asked the Sheriff's Office to voluntarily come to a court-approved and legally enforceable agreement to rectify the unconstitutional practices and reform office policies.

The Justice Department began its civil rights investigation of the Sheriff's Office in 2008 and publicly disclosed the probe in March 2009 after months of complaints alleging that sheriff's deputies targeted Latino residents.

The probe was stalled for 18 months after sheriff's officials refused to turn over records to investigators and provide access to facilities and staff.

Federal officials filed an unprecedented suit against Arpaio in September 2010, claiming the Sheriff's Office was violating federal law by refusing to cooperate with the investigation. The lawsuit threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from Maricopa County if Arpaio did not turn over extensive records related to booking procedures, inmate language and interpretation services, arrests, and to allow access to personnel and jails.

Within weeks of the Justice Department's lawsuit, accusations of mismanagement forced Arpaio to place three top aides on administrative leave, among them former Chief Deputy David Hendershott. Until then, Hendershott had spearheaded the sheriff's response to federal investigators' requests.

The change in top administrators brought a change in attorneys, and Arpaio's agency began releasing documents to federal investigators. The lawsuit over the records was subsequently dismissed earlier this year.

The federal investigation continued, however.

Arpaio and his administrators have consistently denied that the office's ongoing immigration-enforcement measures target Latino residents. Throughout the investigation, Arpaio continued his immigration enforcement tactics. Just last week, his office conducted a raid at a Chandler restaurant.

The federal civil-rights probe is unrelated to a separate Justice Department criminal investigation into abuse of power by the Sheriff's Office and the County Attorney's Office under former County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

That investigation continues, and is connected to long-running disputes among county politicians, administrators and the judiciary.

The Department of Justice ultimatum comes at a time when multiple issues regarding Arpaio and Arizona immigration policy are converging. Within the last two weeks, activists and some politicians have been demanding Arpaio's resignation or removal because of more than 400 sex-crime cases that were inadequately investigated by Sheriff's detectives.

Perez's letter said the Justice Department has expanded its civil-rights investigation to encompass a review of whether Arpaio failed to properly investigate those sex crimes cases.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's immigration law, which Arpaio has defended.

Arpaio critics react to U.S. Justice Department's findings

Arpaio critics react to U.S. Justice Department's findings

Dec. 15, 2011 02:59 PM

The Arizona Republic

Initial reactions to the Justice Department's report came from Arpaio foes who felt validated by the results of the investigation:

"Like everyone else, the Governor is seeing the federal complaint against MCSO for the first time today. She believes strongly that no Arizonan should have his/her civil rights violated. That said, Sheriff Arpaio will have an opportunity to respond to these allegations. The Governor has no further comment at this time."

-- Gov. Jan Brewer's spokesman, Matt Benson

"For a lot of people, particularly the people who've been raising these issues on Sheriff Arpaio for a long time, there is a certain level of validation to what they're saying.

"There's so much politically at stake here, even if you support Arpaio you should support public safety first and look at this objectively. If you do that, regardless of where you fall on the issue of immigration, which has been his national profile, we're talking about public safety in his community, Maricopa County, that it is not happening the way it should be."

-- U.S. Rep.Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.

Arpaio should resign because "I truly think that is the only way to resolve this. The findings vindicate what the community has been saying was going on. When you terrorize this community - and cavalierly do it - and put yourself above the rule of law, the United States of America will not stand for it."

-- Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox

"For far too long, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has created a culture of fear by declaring open season on Latinos throughout Maricopa County. His agency embodies everything that could and does go wrong when local police waste law enforcement resources targeting people solely because of their race and skin color...We're hopeful that the DOJ's actions and existing litigation will finally bring some justice for the racial profiling victims and result in substantive, meaningful changes to these racist MCSO practices and policies that have torn our communities apart. "

-- Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona of Arizona

"House Democrats appreciate the U.S. Department of Justice's hard work and diligence in authoritatively bringing some of these issues to light and showing that grave injustice has been done by our state's largest county public safety agency. The damage that people in Arizona have endured is truly reprehensible, embarrassing and wrong. This is not the principle on which our nation or our state was founded, and according to the findings, Sheriff Arpaio has not done his job of serving and protecting families, but did just the opposite of instilling fear and harming families, much like corrupt police of a third-world country."

-- House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix (District 14)

"The DOJ report scratches the surface, and there is still much more work to be done. But by far the most work involves building the trust of the members of our own community who have been frightened and abused. We need to make amends and finally move in the right direction of protecting our communities and families, no matter what their race, so they can feel safe in Arizona."

-- House Minority Whip Anna Tovar, D-Tolleson (District 13)

"The Department of Justice has confirmed what we have known for years about the unconstitutional practices of Joe Arpaio. The federal government has taken a step to giving Arizona help in correcting almost 19 years of criminal behavior by Arpaio. However, we cannot rely solely on the federal government to provide relief. We must continue to use the democratic process to remove Arpaio from office."

-- Maricopa County Sheriff candidate Mike Stauffer

"In two months, the two most anti-immigrant politicians in America are reaping the rewards of their hate-filled politics. Last month, Arizona recalled state Sen. Russell Pearce, the author of the viciously anti-immigrant 'show me your papers' legislation. Now, the Justice Department has decided to rebuke Arpaio, another lawmaker with an anti-immigrant streak. Promise Arizona in Action believes today's actions against Arpaio are greatly justified."

-- Petra Falcon, executive director, Promise Arizona in Action

The findings by the U.S. Department of Justice on Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his goons

Here is my copy of the document which lists the charges and complaints that Uncle Sam has with Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Arizona Sheriff’s Office Targeted Latinos, Justice Department Says

Arizona Sheriff’s Office Targeted Latinos, Justice Department Says

By MARC LACEY

Published: December 15, 2011

PHOENIX — In a strongly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department on Thursday accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detention and arrest and retaliating against those who complain.

After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the Maricopa County sheriff’s office, which Mr. Arpaio leads, had “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” The department interfered with the inquiry, the government said, prompting a lawsuit that eventually led Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.

“We have peeled the onion to its core,” said Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, noting during a conference call with reporters on Thursday morning that more than 400 inmates, deputies and others had been interviewed as part of the review, including Sheriff Arpaio and his command staff. Mr. Perez said the inquiry, which included jail visits and reviews of thousands of pages of internal documents, raised the question of whether Latinos were receiving “second-class policing services” in Maricopa County.

Mr. Perez said he hoped Sheriff Arpaio would cooperate with the federal government in turning the department around. Should he refuse to enter into a court-approved settlement agreement, Mr. Perez said, the government will file a lawsuit and the department could lose millions of dollars in federal money.

A separate federal grand jury investigation of Sheriff Arpaio’s office is continuing, focusing on accusations of abuse of power by the department’s public corruption squad.

Sheriff Arpaio was singled out for criticism in the report, which said that he had used racially charged letters he had received and that he helped nurture the department’s “culture of bias.”

Asked at a news conference about Sheriff Arpaio’s role in the department’s problems, Mr. Perez said, “We have to do cultural change and culture change starts with people at the top.” Mr. Perez made a point of reaching out to Sheriff Arpaio’s underlings. “These findings are not meant to impugn your character,” he said to the department’s deputies.

Sheriff Arpaio, 79, who calls himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” brushed off the criticism in a news conference as politically motivated.

“This is a sad day for America as a whole,” he said, suggesting that the federal government’s action was tantamount to setting up a neon welcome sign for illegal immigrants. “We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration.”

Long a lightning rod for controversy, Sheriff Arpaio looms large over Arizona and beyond. His turf, Maricopa County, with 3.8 million residents, is one of the country’s largest counties in terms of both area and population. Republican candidates at all levels clamor for his backing, aware that he has become a potent symbol of the antipathy many Americans feel about illegal immigration.

Before he endorsed Gov. Rick Perry of Texas for president last month, Sheriff Arpaio was courted by much of the Republican field, including Representative Michele Bachmann, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Herman Cain, a businessman who has since suspended his campaign.

The inquiry’s findings paint a picture of a department staffed by poorly trained deputies who target Latino drivers on the roadways and detain innocent Latinos in the community in their searches for illegal immigrants. The mistreatment, the government said, extends to the jails the department oversees, where Latino inmates who do not speak English are mistreated.

“The absence of clear policies and procedures to ensure effective and constitutional policing,” the report said, “along with the deviations from widely accepted policing and correctional practices, and the failure to implement meaningful oversight and accountability structures, have contributed to a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations.”

The report said Latino drivers were four to nine times more likely to be stopped in the sprawling county, which includes Phoenix and its environs, than non-Latino drivers. The expert who conducted the study called it the most egregious racial profiling he has ever seen in this country, said Mr. Perez, the prosecutor, without naming the expert.

The report said that roughly one-fifth of the traffic-related incident reports generated by the department’s human smuggling unit contained information indicating the stops may have been conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures.

The report also suggested that Sheriff Arpaio’s well-publicized raids aimed at arresting illegal immigrants were sometimes prompted by complaints that described no criminal activity but referred to people with “dark skin” or to Spanish speakers congregating in an area. “The use of these types of bias-infected indicators as a basis for conducting enforcement activity contributes to the high number of stops and detentions lacking in legal justification,” the report said.

Sheriff Arpaio has insisted that he is just enforcing the law and has mentioned in previous interviews that he has an adopted grandchild who is of Mexican descent. He has responded defiantly to past criticisms, with more raids. In the last three years, he has sent deputies into 56 Phoenix-area businesses, resulting in several hundred arrests for identity theft.

Asked a the news conference on Thursday whether he cared about the Latino community, the sheriff said, “I do have compassion, but enforcing the law overrides my compassion.”

The report is likely to increase calls for the resignation of Sheriff Arpaio, whose fifth term ends next year. He has vowed to run again. The sheriff, who has won election by wide margins even while frustrating his critics, has seen opposition to his leadership increase in recent months with reports that his department misspent county money and failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sexual-abuse cases, many involving illegal immigrants.

On Wednesday, Sheriff Arpaio’s critics took their case to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which controls the sheriff office’s purse strings. The board heard a heavy dose of criticism of the sheriff, but also present were some of his backers, who praise his no-tolerance approach toward illegal immigrants. “Police officers make mistakes,” Jerry Sheridan, Sheriff Arpaio’s chief deputy, said at the meeting, in defense of the department.

The Justice Department report quotes from some people characterized as victims of the department’s overzealous ways. It cites the case of a Latino driver who won a $600,000 legal settlement after a deputy intentionally struck him with his patrol car during a traffic stop.

In another case, an inmate was not allowed to use another inmate as an interpreter to tell a detention officer that her sheets were soiled. She was told she had to make the request herself in English, even though she did not speak the language well.

After Sheriff Arpaio received a letter complaining that employees of a McDonald’s in Sun City, a retirement community, did not speak English, the sheriff forwarded the letter to a top aide, who mounted an immigration raid in the area.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio hit with scathing civil rights report by Justice Department

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, December 15, 5:13 PM

PHOENIX — A scathing U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday found that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office carried out a blatant pattern of discrimination against Latinos and held a “systematic disregard” for the Constitution amid a series of immigration crackdowns that have turned the lawman into a prominent national political figure.

Arpaio struck a defiant tone in response to the report, calling it a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration that will make Arizona unsafe by keeping illegal immigrants on the street. “Don’t come here and use me the whipping boy for a national and international problem,” he said at a news conference.

The government found that Arpaio’s office committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including unjust immigration patrols and jail policies that deprive prisoners of basic Constitutional rights.

The Justice Department’s expert on measuring racial profiling said it is the most egregious case of profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature, said Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

“We found discriminatory policing that was deeply rooted in the culture of the department, a culture that breeds a systematic disregard for basic constitutional protections,” said Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

The findings will force Arpaio’s department to make major changes to carry out new policies against discrimination and improve training of staff and officers. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement to make the changes. If not, the federal government will sue him, possibly putting in jeopardy millions of dollars in federal funding for Maricopa County.

The fallout from the report was swift. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it is severing its ties with Arpaio, stripping his jail officers of their federal power to check whether inmates in county jails are in the county illegally, a move that was meant to speed up deportation.

Homeland security officials also are restricting Arpaio’s office from using a program that uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify illegal immigrants.

He has long denied the racial profiling allegations, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of them are illegal immigrants. He called the report “a sad day for America as a whole.”

“We are going to cooperate the best we can. And if they are not happy, I guess they can carry out their threat and go to federal court,” Arpaio said.

He said the decision by Homeland Security to sever ties will result in illegal immigrants being released from jail and large numbers. They will go undetected and be “dumped on a street near you. For that, you can thank the federal government,” the sheriff said.

The Justice Department’s conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government’s harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field. Arpaio ultimately decided to endorse Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who denounced the findings Thursday as politically motivated.

Arpaio has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration. He began aggressive sweeps in immigrant neighborhoods long before the state Legislature passed a 2010 law that cracks down on illegal immigrants and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

While widely popular among conservatives nationwide, Arpaio faces numerous problems at home that have him facing almost-daily calls to step down.

Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio’s office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff’s anti-public corruption squad. The squad launched investigations of officials, lawyers and judges who ran afoul of Arpaio, and the cases all collapsed.

Arpaio has also been under pressure from his opponents to resign in the last week after an Associated Press article brought new attention to his office’s bungling of sex crime and molestation cases in a predominantly Hispanic Phoenix suburb. His office said more than 400 sex-crimes investigations had to be reopened after the department learned of cases that hadn’t been investigated adequately or weren’t examined at all.

Officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 years old — where the sheriff’s office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases. The cases were originally reported by The Arizona Republic and other local media and received national attention in the last week.

Thursday’s report said federal authorities will continue to investigate whether the sex crimes are being properly looked at; complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos; and whether the sheriff’s office failed to provide adequate police services in Hispanic communities.

The report took the sheriff’s office to task for launching immigration patrols, known as “sweeps,” based on complaints that Latinos were merely gathering near a business without committing crimes.

Federal authorities single out Arpaio himself and said his office has no clear policies to guard against the violations, even after he changed some of his top aides earlier this year.

The report also said he and some top staffers tried to silence people who have spoken out against the sheriff’s office by arresting people without cause, filing meritless lawsuits against opponents and starting investigations of critics.

One example cited by the Justice Department is former top Arpaio aide David Hendershott, who filed bar complaints against attorneys critical of the agency along with bringing judicial complaints against judges who were at odds with the sheriff. All complaints were dismissed.

The anti-corruption squad’s cases against two county officials and a judge collapsed in court before going to trial and have been criticized by politicians at odds with the sheriff as trumped-up. Arpaio has defended the investigations as a valid attempt at rooting out corruption in county government.

The civil rights report said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos and that the agency’s immigration policies treat Latinos as if they are all in the country illegally. Deputies on the immigrant-smuggling squad stop and arrest Latino drivers without good cause, the investigation found.

A review done as part of the investigation found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio’s immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops — almost all involving Latino drivers — that were done without reasonable suspicion. The squad’s stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.

Deputies are encouraged to make high-volume traffic stops in targeted locations. Latinos who were in the U.S. legally were arrested or detained without cause during the sweeps, according to the report.

During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases, heavily Latino areas — over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio’s office.

Police supervisors, including at least one smuggling-squad supervisor, often used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos to fellow sheriff’s managers, deputies and volunteers in his posse. One such email had a photo of a mock driver’s license for a fictional state called “Mexifornia.”

The report said that the sheriff’s office launched an immigration operation two weeks after the sheriff received a letter in August 2009 about a person’s dismay over employees of a McDonald’s in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City who didn’t speak English. The tip laid out no criminal allegations. The sheriff wrote back to thank the writer “for the info,” said he would look into it and forwarded it to a top aide with a note of “for our operation.”

Federal investigators focused heavily on the language barriers in Arpaio’s jails.

Latino inmates with limited English skills were punished for failing to understand commands in English by being put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day or keeping prisoners locked down in their jail pods for as long as 72 hours without a trip to the canteen area or making nonlegal phone calls.

The report said some jail officers used racial slurs for Latinos when talking among themselves and speaking to inmates.

Detention officers refused to accept forms requesting basic daily services and reporting mistreatment when the documents were completed in Spanish and pressured Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms that implicate their legal rights without language assistance.

The Justice Department said it hadn’t yet established a pattern of alleged wrongdoing by the sheriff’s office in the three areas where they will continue to investigation: complaints of excessive force against Latinos, botched sex-crimes cases and immigration efforts that have hurt the agency’s trust with the Hispanic community.

___

Associated Press Writer Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu sticks up for Sheriff Joe???

Sheriff Paul Babeu seems to be the same police state thug that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is, but Sheriff Paul Babeu seems to be much smarter and less abrasive.

In this article Sheriff Babeu seems to be sticking up for his crooked friend! For those of you not from the Phoenix area, Pinal County is just south and west of Maricopa County, which is where Phoenix is.

Source

Babeu: MCSO findings distraction for border patrol murder anniversary

by KTAR Newsroom (December 15th, 2011 @ 4:07pm)

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said the Department of Justice findings on Maricopa County Sheriff's Office are intended to remove the spotlight from Washington on the anniversary of a border agent's murder.

"The fact [the Department of Justice] chose today to release their findings was only done to take the attention away from themselves. Today marks the one year anniversary since the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry," said Babeu in a press release.

According to Babeu, Terry's family are demanding the federal government take responsibility and arrest those who were involved with the crime. The gun that killed Terry was found to be apart of the botched "Operation Fast and Furious" program that attempted to track weapons trafficking across the border.

"I have little faith and trust in the U.S. Department of Justice after the actions, subsequent cover up and failure to accept responsibility regarding Operation Fast and Furious," said Babeu in the release.

Operation Fast and Furious sent about 2,000 guns, including assault rifles, across the border. Those are now in use by Mexican cartels.

"Within 12 hours of the Terry family has announcing they want justice against all of those responsible for Operation Fast and Furious, the U.S. Department of Justice decides to release their findings from a 3 ½ year old investigation on MCSO? The timing of the release of the MCSO investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice was only done today in an attempt to take away the negative attention from their responsibilities for Brian's murder and the murders of hundreds of people in Mexico," said Babeu in the release.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints, according to a report obtained by the Associated Press. Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.

The civil rights report said federal authorities will continue to investigate complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos, whether the sheriff's office failed to provide adequately police services in Hispanic communities and a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to the agency but weren't followed up on or investigated at all.

US Sheriff Joe Arpaio 'discriminated against Hispanics'

US Sheriff Joe Arpaio 'discriminated against Hispanics'

A lawman known for his tough stance on immigration has routinely discriminated against Hispanics, according to a federal investigation.

A US Department of Justice report found Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office had flouted US civil rights laws by racially profiling Hispanics.

Violations included unlawful arrest and detention, discriminatory jail practices and denial of services.

It comes as the Supreme Court reviews Arizona's tough immigration law.

Sheriff Arpaio has styled himself as America's toughest sheriff, and has been known to jail inmates in tents and dress them in pink underwear.

The justice department investigation into the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) was launched during the administration of President George W Bush.

The sheriff has until 4 January to say whether he will comply, or the federal government says it will sue him.

The justice department report says that in Maricopa County, Hispanics are four to nine times more likely to be pulled over by the police.

The sheriff's office also treats all Hispanics as though they are in the country illegally, says the report.

It highlights how language barriers have been exploited by the sheriff's deputies in the county jail.

Inmates with limited English were put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours per day.

They were also locked in their jail cells for up to 72 hours for failing to understand commands in English.

The report cited a wide use by officers of racial slurs in emails and when speaking to inmates.

The justice department has said it is still investigating complaints of use of excessive force against Hispanics; sexual assault cases that were not properly investigated; and whether a "culture of bias" has deterred residents from reporting crimes.

The report links the malpractice to the sheriff himself.

"Arpaio's own actions have helped nurture MCSO's culture of bias," Thomas Perez, head of the justice department's civil rights division said.

"We found discriminatory policing that was deeply rooted in the culture of the department - a culture that breeds a systemic disregard for basic constitutional protections."

He added that the justice department's expert on racial profiling said this was the most serious case he had come across.

Republican presidential candidates have sought Sheriff Arpaio's endorsement to boost their campaigns.

This year, the lawman backed Texas Governor Rick Perry, who denounced Thursday's findings as politically motivated.

A federal grand jury has also, separately, been investigating abuse-of-power allegations at the sheriff's office and especially within his anti-public corruption squad.

Meanwhile, legislation from Arizona that aims to crack down on illegal immigration is pending before the Supreme Court.

The law would enable police to demand proof of citizenship from those they stop or detain, and to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant.

Feds Kicks Joe Arpaio Out of Immigration Enforcement Program

Feds Kicks Joe Arpaio Out of Immigration Enforcement Program

Published December 15, 2011

Hours after the release of a Justice Department report that said that Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio fueled a culture of anti-Latino bias in his office, the Department of Homeland Security said it was kicking him out of an immigration enforcement program.

Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday the department is ending an agreement with the Maricopa County sheriff's office that allowed trained deputies to enforce immigration laws.

It's also restricting the office's use of the Secure Communities program, which uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify undocumented immigrants.

Napolitano's announcement came shortly after the Justice Department released a scathing report accusing Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office of committing a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos.

The report, which includes findings from a three-year investigation by the federal agency, says the Arizona sheriff's office engaged in a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination, and carried out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints

The Justice Department's conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government's harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field.

Arpaio has prided himself on being as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration. He has been a hero to conservatives who prefer a tough approach to illegal immigration, and a worst-case scenario symbol for immigration advocates who oppose the trend of local officials enforcing immigration laws.

“Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s blatant disregard for the rule of law is nothing short of appalling,” said Dan Werner, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Sadly, though, the Department of Justice’s findings of serious constitutional violations are not surprising given his celebrity status among those who have been peddling and successfully passing unconstitutional anti-immigrant laws in several states.”

Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.

The civil rights report said federal authorities will continue to investigate complaints of deputies using excessive force against Latinos, whether the sheriff's immigration efforts damage trust with the Hispanic community and a large number of sex-crimes cases that were assigned to the agency but weren't followed up on or investigated at all.

The civil rights said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos and that the agency's immigration policies treat Latinos as if they are all in the country illegally.

Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America, has long denied the racial profiling allegation, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of them are undocumented immigrants.

A review done as part of the investigation found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio's immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops -- almost all involving Latino drivers -- that were done without reasonable suspicion. The squad's stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.

Meanwhile, calls for Arpaio's removal from office have grown louder in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, roughly 100 opponents of Arpaio turned out at a meeting of Maricopa County officials to urge the officials to call for his resignation amid reports of botched sex-crime investigations and other problems in his department.

Critics of Arpaio say he must be forced out for failing to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crimes cases in the county, inappropriately spending $103 million from two jail funds over an eight-year period for other operations and leading failed corruption investigations against county officials who were at odds with the sheriff.

The Board of Supervisors didn't act on the request to put a resolution calling for Arpaio's resignation on its January agenda. The board has budgetary authority over the sheriff, but doesn't have the power to fire Arpaio, who has refused recent calls for him to quit and still plans to seek a sixth term next year.

The board's lack of power to fire Arpaio didn't stop the sheriff's critics from heaping on the criticism, nor did it stop a smaller number of Arpaio supporters from speaking up for him.

"What is your threshold for injustice?" asked Chad Snow, chairman of Citizens for a Better Arizona, a group that led the recall effort against former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce and recently launched a campaign to get other elected officials to voice their opposition to the sheriff.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Jerry Sheridan said the Arpaio critics are seeking his resignation based on misleading information about the sex-crimes cases and that the sheriff acted immediately to have 30 detectives investigate the cases after the problems surfaced.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva and two Democratic state legislators have called for Arpaio's resignation. Arpaio's re-election committee has said the calls for the sheriff's resignation are Democrats who are opposed the sheriff's immigration enforcement tactics.

Last week, U.S. Sen. John McCain and Jon Kyl said they were concerned about reports of the botched cases, though they didn't ask for the sheriff to quit. Arizona's two U.S. senators are Republicans, like Arpaio.

Linda Herrera, one of the Arpaio critics who called for his resignation, said the sheriff has been allowed to commit his abuses because elected officials haven't been able to stop him or decided to ignore him.

"We are all responsible for what is going on in Maricopa County," Herrera said.

Anna Gaines, an Arpaio supporter who launched an unsuccessful 2008 recall effort against Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, said the sheriff is responding to crimes committed by some undocumented immigrants when they come to the United States. She said undocumented immigrants steal people's identities so they can work in the United States, don't pay their share of taxes and use government benefits that are meant for U.S. citizens.

"It's not the sheriff's fault they came here illegally," Gaines said.

Napolitano, Homeland Security cut ties with Arpaio

Ex-Ariz. Gov. Napolitano, Homeland Security cut ties with Arpaio

Posted: Thursday, December 15, 2011 2:17 pm | Updated: 2:34 pm, Thu Dec 15, 2011.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is cutting ties with an Arizona sheriff accused of a wide range of civil right violations.

Secretary Janet Napolitano, said Thursday the department is ending an agreement with the Maricopa County sheriff's office that allowed trained deputies to enforce immigration laws. It's also restricting the office's use of the Secure Communities program, which uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify illegal immigrants.

Napolitano's announcement came shortly after the Justice Department released a scathing report accusing Sheriff Joe Arpaio (ar-PEYE'-oh) and his office of committing a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos. Justice Department investigators said the abuses included a pattern of racial profiling.

Napolitano was governor of Arizona prior to being tabbed for the Homeland Secuirty post by then-President-elect Barack Obama in late 2008.

Arizona weighs feds' report on possible MCSO civil-rights violations

Arizona weighs feds' report on possible MCSO civil-rights violations

by Michael Kiefer, and Ginger Rough - Dec. 16, 2011 10:24 PM

The Arizona Republic

The day after federal officials accused the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office of a sweeping pattern of civil-rights violations, the sheriff remained defiant as two top elected officials said they would reserve judgment on the findings.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the Justice Department conclusions made public this week focused on "isolated incidents." He said he is willing to enter talks with federal officials but will not allow them to monitor his office.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said he wanted to read the investigative report before coming to any conclusions.

He blasted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for its immediate decision to revoke Arpaio's authority to check the immigration status of people in his jails.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday stopped short of defending or condemning Arpaio, saying she would wait for further response from the sheriff.

"I think everybody's concern is that we don't want anyone's civil rights violated," she said.

On Thursday, the Justice Department announced the findings of a three-year investigation in which it analyzed public records and statistics and interviewed more than 400 people. It concluded that the Sheriff's Office engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against Latinos and retaliation against critics and that a culture of bias reached to the top levels of the agency.

In a letter to the county, Justice officials gave Arpaio a Jan. 4 deadline to decide whether to cooperate in reforming the agency. It also set a 60-day deadline for an agreement on a reform plan.

If Arpaio does not comply, officials said, the department plans to seek a court order to force reform and could revoke hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

On Friday, Arpaio characterized incidents of racial profiling and discrimination detailed in the 22-page letter as "a couple of bumps."

"We had some isolated incidents, and they make it look like it's systemic," Arpaio told The Republic's E.J. Montini. "We thought we almost had this thing resolved. We gave them more files. Then, we wake up in the morning and they do a press conference."

Arpaio said he will work with Justice officials.

"But one thing I'm not going to agree to is to be controlled by some federal monitor or something," he said. "I'm the elected sheriff here, and I report to the 4 million voters in the county."

Asked about the Justice Department findings during a Scottsdale news conference on tourism, Gov. Brewer, a Republican, would not say whether she thought the report had merit or was, as Arpaio has asserted, politically motivated.

"That is something we need to look at very carefully, and then you have to take that report and listen to the other side of the story," Brewer said. "And that's where Sheriff Arpaio will step up and respond. ... And then, we'll have a better handle on it."

The same day the federal findings were made public, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton sent a letter to Montgomery in his role as the county's top lawyer, saying Morton had terminated the sheriff's participation in a federal immigration program.

ICE will withdraw immigration detainees from Maricopa County jails, stop responding to sheriff's traffic stops and other minor arrests involving immigrants, and cut off the Sheriff's Office's access to federal technology used to verify immigration status.

Curtailing the program, Montgomery said Friday, "has an immediate and harmful effect on carrying out my duties."

He said it also would be a threat to public safety.

"I'm asking the president to direct the Department of Homeland Security to reinstate this program now," he said.

Montgomery said federal suspension of the sheriff's screening powers will short-circuit a state law requiring illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes to be held without bail. Because sheriff's personnel will not be able to verify the immigration status of those arrested, prosecutors will not have the evidence they need to prove detainees are in the country illegally.

But a DHS spokesman said that ICE will still check immigration status to comply with its own priorities and that dangerous criminals will not be released wholesale into the community.

ICE will still be informed of immigrant arrests but will then make its own decisions about whom to detain and where, based on its own law-enforcement priorities.

It is the second time that the sheriff's 287(g) authority has been curtailed. In 2009, ICE took away the office's ability to perform federal immigration enforcement on the streets because of the way the office conducted immigration sweeps. The Sheriff's Office retained the ability to use 287(g) technology in the jails. That authority was suspended Thursday.

In 2006, Arizona voters passed a state constitutional amendment, referred to as Proposition 100, denying bond to illegal immigrants who were charged with serious crimes. The Legislature then defined "serious" as Class 4 felonies or higher. Many non-violent crimes frequently charged against immigrants -- identity theft, forgery and conspiracy to commit human smuggling, for example -- were already or subsequently designated as Class 4 felonies.

Those are the defendants who are most likely to slip through the system in the absence of the sheriff's 287(g) powers. Prosecutors will be unable to prove that the defendants are in the country illegally for their initial court appearances, at which release conditions are determined.

Judges will still evaluate defendants as to whether, or how much, bond must be posted, depending on the nature of the crime, the flight risk of the defendant and other issues.

In a letter to Morton,the ICE director, Montgomery wrote that the suspension would allow criminals to flee the country to avoid prosecution. He also wrote that it would make it difficult for his office to communicate with foreign consulates regarding the defendants.

"It appears to be a spiteful action and calls into question the reason for this investigation," Montgomery said.

Montgomery is not the sheriff's attorney of record for the Justice allegations because his office was sidelined as a result of internal county conflicts before his election last year.

Montgomery was noncommittal about the findings.

"I am not going to accept the findings at face value, nor am I going to reject them," he said.

He said he will ask to see the complete Justice report, and he assured reporters that, to his knowledge, no civil-rights violations took place during the investigation of cases his office is prosecuting.

xxx

Judge: MCSO must pay Republic's legal fees

Case involved fight for access to investigative report

Dec. 16, 2011 08:01 PM

The Arizona Republic

A judge this month ordered the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to pay The Arizona Republic and KPNX 12 News nearly $51,000 for its legal fees in obtaining public records.

The Sheriff's Office says it will appeal.

The newspaper and TV station in April filed public-records requests to obtain an investigative report from Arpaio's office.

The Pinal County Sheriff's Office conducted a six-month investigation into allegations of mismanagement and retaliation against employees within the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. The allegations were contained in an internal memo authored by a whistleblower inside the department.

That investigation also found that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crime cases, including dozens in El Mirage, over a two-year period because of poor oversight and because former Chief Deputy David Hendershott hoped to protect a key investigator from bad publicity.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office initially refused to release any records from the report and declined to specify when records could be disclosed. Sheriff Joe Arpaio's refusal prompted a lawsuit by the newspaper and TV station.

After the lawsuit was filed -- and after Hendershott and Deputy Chief Larry Black resigned in the wake of the investigation's findings -- the Sheriff's Office began to release parts of the report.

However, portions of the report relating to the conduct of Capt. Joel Fox were not released, with the office citing confidentiality statutes designed to keep certain information under seal while employees remained under investigatation, as Fox was at the time. Fox was fired and he filed an administrative appeal, but the office continued to withhold records relating to his conduct.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Judge Buttrick ruled in favor of the media partners, ordering the Sheriff's Office to release records relating to Fox after he filed an $8 million notice of claim against the state and Maricopa County.

On Dec. 1, Buttrick ruled that the Sheriff's Office must pay $50,565 to the media partners.

"The court's award recognizes the public's right to prompt access to public records, especially a report involving allegations of high-level corruption inside the Sheriff's Office," said David Bodney, an attorney who represented The Republic and 12 News.

Tom Liddy, an attorney for Arpaio, said The Republic and 12 News are not entitled to attorney fees because the records were released to the public as soon as the law permitted.

"The sheriff clearly recognizes and applauds the public's right to know," Liddy said. [ Well, OK maybe the The sheriff pretends to recognize the public's right to know, but the sheriff doesn't actually recognize the public's right to know ]

NY Times thinks Sheriff Joe Sucks???

The Case Against Sheriff Arpaio

Published: December 16, 2011

After a three-year investigation, the Justice Department has accused Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., and longtime darling of the anti-immigrant crowd, of “unconstitutional policing” and creating a “pervasive culture of bias” against Latinos.

So what did Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, the sheriff’s chosen candidate for president, have to say? “These people are out after Sheriff Joe,” he told Fox News while campaigning in Iowa. He said he hadn’t read the report but vowed that if he was elected he would keep the federal government’s hands off the states, condemning the Justice Department for suing Arizona, Alabama and other states for their extremist anti-immigrant laws.

The Justice Department’s findings are horrible but not surprising. In a letter released Thursday, Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division, said that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office engaged in “unconstitutional policing” at every level, from deputies to the sheriff himself, racially profiled Latinos and made unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos.

It backs up those charges with tens of thousands of pages of evidence and interviews with more than 400 people, including 75 current and former personnel in the sheriff’s office.

The letter said Latino drivers were four to nine times more likely than non-Latinos to be stopped on Maricopa County roads. It noted many examples of arbitrary and unlawful immigration crackdowns, of crime sweeps initiated not because of crime, but because the office had received reports of people with “dark skin” or speaking Spanish. (One such raid was conducted in Sun City, a retirement community, two weeks after Sheriff Arpaio received a letter complaining that employees at a McDonald’s there did not speak English.)

It found that the department used excessive force against Latinos and abused Latino inmates in its jails. That it failed to investigate more than 400 reported sex crimes. And that it unlawfully retaliated against people who complained about or criticized the department and it obstructed the Justice Department investigation.

Mr. Arpaio hasn’t just been a favorite of the Republicans. The Department of Homeland Security has long been an ally and enabler of Mr. Arpaio through its local-policing programs: 287(g) and Secure Communities. On Thursday, hours after the Perez letter was released, it finally ended the sheriff’s 287(g) jail-monitoring program and denied him access to Secure Communities data. It should have done this long ago; it’s hard to imagine that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could have been blind for so long to the oppression in Maricopa County.

It should not have taken a three-year investigation for the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, to sever ties with Sheriff Arpaio. If that is what is required for action, then we fear for those living in other jurisdictions that may be just as heedless of immigrants’ rights and the Constitution — just quieter about it.

Arpaio now faces difficult options

Arpaio now faces difficult options

by Dennis Wagner - Dec. 17, 2011 11:17 PM

The Arizona Republic

Accused by the Justice Department of running an agency rife with civil-rights violations, Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces a difficult choice: agree to a long and possibly contentious process of federal monitoring or enter an unprecedented legal battle for control of his office.

Arpaio, who has until Jan. 4 to announce whether he'll even discuss a reform program with the Justice Department, appears to be in a standoff. He has denounced the investigation as political, denied allegations of racial profiling and rejected findings of retaliation against critics.

Yet, in an interview Saturday, Arpaio said he will talk with the Justice Department to see if a compromise can be reached rather than open a legal drama that could ultimately put the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office under judicial supervision.

"We're going to see what they want -- what they're going to throw at us with a threat of going to federal court," he said. "And then if we have to go to federal court, OK. ... If I have to fight for the people of Maricopa County, I'll do it."

Experts said that the Justice Department has targeted more than 20 U.S. law-enforcement agencies with similar probes in the past 20 years that and not one had fought the allegations in court.

"There's a hurdle there, and it's a big untested hurdle," said Sam Walker, professor emeritus of criminal justice with the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "The question is, if a community or police department really fights it, what will happen? ... This could be a frontier case."

The Justice Department's findings were based on a three-year investigation that included analysis of public records and statistics as well as interviews with more than 400 people.

Arpaio repeatedly denied that MCSO engages in unconstitutional policing. He said that despite the Justice Department's 22-page report spelling out repeated examples of civil-rights violations, there is no culture of discrimination in his agency, and therefore no policies or practices that need to be reformed.

Arpaio would not say point-blank whether he will accede to Justice Department reform demands.

Asked if he would accept court oversight of MCSO, the sheriff answered, "I don't intend to do anything until we evaluate what they (Justice officials) say. ... Let's see what happens in the next 60 days."

If the sheriff refuses to back down, experts on law-enforcement practices said, the result is likely to be a courtroom battle and a takeover of his agency.

"If he remains combative, he's highly likely to end his career with the department under federal oversight," said Scott Greenwood, an attorney who handled a similar case in Cincinnati.

"Reasonable lawyers would not allow clients to take that step," Greenwood said. "The Department of Justice does not file a lawsuit until it has all of the evidence to prove these cases." Arpaio responds

The Justice Department gave Arpaio two months to reach a voluntary settlement. For such an agreement to succeed, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said it should include reforms to internal affairs and training, as well as an independent-monitoring process.

Arpaio said Friday that he will not agree to be "controlled by some federal monitor or something."

Yet on Saturday he talked of cooperating with the Justice Department and said he has done so throughout the investigation, even though federal lawyers sued MCSO for withholding records during the probe.

At the same time, the sheriff rejected as false all of the allegations concerning systemic civil-rights violations. He acknowledged isolated incidents of misconduct by deputies or detention officers, but he said those occurred during arrests of 7,000 suspected illegal immigrants and jail contact with 40,000 others.

"You're bound, with 50,000, to get a few complaints," Arpaio said.

Likewise, the sheriff denied unlawfully targeting critics for arrest during political protests. "We don't go after anybody," he said. "Actually, they go after me. They're demonstrating in front of my building, calling me every kind of name. If you want to talk about civil-rights violations, what about that?"

Arpaio accused the Justice Department of targeting him and timing its critical report for political reasons, but he did not mention that the investigation, which was launched during President George W. Bush's administration, could have been completed much sooner if MCSO had cooperated and not forced the department to go to court for records.

He said Attorney General Eric Holder sought a distraction because he is "on the hot seat" over a scandal involving firearms trafficking in Arizona. He said Democrats are trying to discredit him because of what he says is his influential role in Republican presidential campaigning. He has endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who polls show is in fifth place among the seven major candidates.

"All of this is coincidental?" Arpaio said of the Justice Department inquiry. "Come on. Even Obama is concerned about me."

Greenwood, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Arpaio's obstinance, his 19-year tenure as sheriff and the fact that he is an elected official rather than an appointee create unique circumstances. "This is the one most likely to end up with a court-appointed monitor and DOJ running the department," he said.

Walker, who served as a Justice Department consultant in two other civil-rights investigations, agreed. "Sheriff Joe has been belligerent and recalcitrant from the very beginning, so I don't expect him to implement reforms voluntarily," he said. "He's really kind of a cartoon character in American law enforcement." Past cases

At least during the past 15 years, U.S. law-enforcement agencies under similar pressure have elected, sometimes grudgingly, to sign memorandums or court-enforced consent decrees rather than fight.

More than 20 such settlements have occurred -- from Los Angeles to Miami to New York -- with varying outcomes. In each case, police agreed to work with the Department of Justice and community groups to hammer out detailed policies and practices aimed at eliminating racial profiling, unwarranted use of force, unlawful searches and other civil-rights violations.

Those compacts are the first step in a process that may go on for years -- a sort of probation for police agencies. The objective is not just to impose new policies but to alter police cultures that the Justice Department believes have gone rogue.

Experts said the cure can be costly and time-consuming, but the alternative -- federal litigation and injunctions -- may be even more expensive and protracted.

In its letter to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, the Justice Department advised that Arpaio has 60 days to take "clear steps" toward reaching an agreement to correct violations. Otherwise, "the United States will conclude that voluntary compliance is not possible and will initiate civil litigation to compel compliance."

The letter says a voluntary agreement must include civil-rights training for deputies and an overhaul of the sheriff's systems for complaints, internal investigations, data collection and accommodating foreign inmates.

Legal and criminological professionals say the success of a reform campaign depends to some extent on clearly defined reforms and community involvement but primarily on the willingness of an agency's top law officer.

David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, recently told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans: "If you have a leader who is not committed to it, who has it stuffed down his or her throat, who doesn't believe in it, who doesn't think it is necessary, it is going to be very difficult to get long-term results."

In a past inquiry, Arpaio agreed to oversight yet remained entrenched in his tactics.

In 1997, federal authorities completed a similar investigation aimed at treatment of inmates in Maricopa County jails, finding a plethora of civil-rights violations such as excessive force and improper restraints.

Arpaio signed a consent agreement, then joined then-U.S. Attorney Janet Napolitano in a news conference, in which he announced he was not changing anything in his jail: "The chain gangs stay. The tents stay. The pink underwear stays. All my programs stay," he declared. "This has nothing to do with my policies and programs. Nothing changes."

There were no consequences from Washington, D.C., or at Maricopa County ballot boxes.

This time, the Justice Department did not invite Arpaio to its news conference, and it criticized him for failing to cooperate with the investigation. Mixed results

Those who study policing point to the Cincinnati Police Department as an example of successful transformation and of the key role played by an agency's top cop.

In the late 1990s, Black community groups complained about discriminatory enforcement, including the deaths of 15 African-Americans shot by officers. Greenwood became lead attorney in a class-action lawsuit that was joined by the Justice Department. As the case developed, another police shooting sparked the Cincinnati riot of 2001.

Greenwood said Chief Thomas Streicher was resistant to change. A court-appointed monitor was thrown out of the police station. Streicher faced a contempt motion in federal court.

Then, suddenly, police administrators began to cooperate. The Fraternal Order of Police joined in. "The Police Department realized that it really had to change or it would fail," Greenwood said. "It became a model of success."

An independent monitor's final report described the makeover as "one of the most successful police-reform efforts ever undertaken in this country."

Greenwood credits Streicher, who has since retired, as well as community groups and clear guidelines established with help from the Justice Department.

Since 2008, when federal oversight ended, the number of police shootings fell dramatically, along with complaints of discrimination. Beyond that, Greenwood said, "there is absolutely a stronger sense of professional pride among officers."

Law-enforcement experts said there is no set course for civil-rights cases and outcomes seem checkered.

The Pittsburgh police department reportedly made dramatic improvements under a progressive police chief but regressed after he left.

Oakland, Calif., adopted what Greenwood described as an ideal set of reform measures but never implemented them. "They have great policies in place," he said. "They just ignore them."

Walker, the University of Nebraska professor emeritus, who has written 11 books on policing, said a flawed police culture can be difficult to overcome, particularly in an agency that has been under one chief for more than a decade.

Both men said that situation becomes even more complicated when the boss, such as Arpaio, holds an elective office and cannot be fired.

On Saturday, the sheriff said political enemies are trying to force him out of office, but he will not resign or back down. He said he's considering a run for U.S. Senate, but otherwise will seek a sixth term as sheriff.

"I'm going to keep doing this. I'm not going to surrender," Arpaio said. "I'd say 99 percent I'm running for sheriff again next year."

Justice Dept. and other agencies

U.S. law-enforcement agencies under similar pressure have elected, sometimes grudgingly, to sign memorandums or court-enforced consent decrees rather than fight.

In New Orleans, where corruption and improper use of force were exposed after Hurricane Katrina, FBI agents now work inside the Police Department's internal-affairs office, monitoring misconduct and the agency's disciplinary review system.

In Detroit, municipal and federal authorities have spent nine years trying to implement police reforms under a consent decree, apparently with limited success. Two months ago, the attorney who served as an independent monitor, Sheryl Robinson Wood, was sued for $10 million by the city, which accused her of false billing and bias. Robinson Wood also was censured by the Bar for having an intimate relationship with then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

In Cincinnati, after a race riot in 2001, the Justice Department joined public-interest groups and reached a "collaborative agreement" with the city to reform use-of-force practices and combat racial prejudice. In a paper published this year, the Center for Constitutional Rightsdescribed that effort as successful in reducing discriminatory enforcement against minorities and improving police relations with the Black community.

Claims, missteps may crack Arpaio's political armor

Claims, missteps may crack Arpaio's political armor

by Dan Nowicki - Dec. 17, 2011 11:20 PM

The Arizona Republic

For nearly two decades Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has seemed an invincible political juggernaut. Few dared to run against him, and those who criticized him publicly feared that they might themselves be targeted for retribution.

But longtime critics are detecting a shift in the political winds, saying the one-two punch of a blistering Justice Department letter alleging civil-rights abuses and a scandal involving more than 400 mishandled sex-crimes cases may have finally shaken Arpaio. They say the five-term Republican lawman's policing tactics targeting illegal immigrants have given Arizona a black eye and the time may be right for the state's GOP heavyweights such as Gov. Jan Brewer and U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl to try to pressure him out of office.

Barring that, critics believe that Arpaio could at last be vulnerable to either a Republican primary challenger or a moderate-to-conservative Democrat in the 2012 general election.

Federal investigators on Thursday outlined allegations of rampant racial profiling against Latinos and other illegal policing practices in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Justice Department officials also accused Arpaio's office of unlawfully retaliating against people who complain about its activities and policies. That alleged abuse of power by Arpaio also is the focus of a separate federal criminal probe.

Arpaio and his top aides initially took a combative stance toward the Justice Department's claims of a "general culture of bias" and wrongdoing within the agency. Arpaio countercharged that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, "and a band of his merry men" were on a politically motivated witch hunt and targeting him because of his illegal-immigration enforcement. Arpaio subsequently has said he is willing to discuss proposed reforms with the Justice Department but hasn't decided whether to accept them or fight the case in court. On Saturday, he told The Arizona Republic that he didn't intend to resign and would likely seek a sixth term as sheriff in 2012. "I'm not going anywhere," he said.

The allegations of mismanagement and unprofessionalism have increased the drumbeat of calls for Arpaio's resignation. But Arpaio still has plenty of supporters, some of whom demonstrated in Phoenix on Thursday after the Justice Department issued its report. Some of his political allies in Arizona and across the country also rallied to his defense, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the presidential candidate who this year secured Arpaio's backing. It appeared to be as much an opportunity to slam Obama and the Justice Department over an unrelated bungled gun-trafficking operation as to stand up for Arpaio.

"From the Fast and Furious gun running scandal to fighting the rights of state and local governments to protect their citizens, the Obama Justice Department has little credibility left," Perry said in a written statement.

Many others in the GOP so far have said nothing.

"Where is John McCain and Jon Kyl?" said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a national group that advocates for comprehensive immigration reform. "They're national leaders, and they're letting the reputation of Arizona be trashed by a thug like Arpaio? You know the kind of moral and political strength McCain and Kyl have. ... At a minimum, one would think that the adults in Arizona would step forward and say, 'All right, the crazies have been running the asylum for too long. Let's work to create a pro-business climate in Arizona, a bipartisan approach to solving tough problems, and stop making Arizona the laughingstock or the bogeyman of the rest of the country.' " Quiet Republicans

McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and Kyl, the Senate minority whip, publicly expressed concern about reports that Arpaio's agency failed to follow up on more than 400 alleged sex crimes between 2005 and 2007. Some of the cases involved children.

"Victims of abuse not only deserve the respect of law enforcement, but their rights must also be protected throughout the criminal justice process," McCain and Kyl said in a Dec. 8 joint written statement.

Neither McCain nor Kyl was available for comment on the Justice Department's inquiry.

Brewer is waiting to hear Arpaio's side of the story.

"I think everybody's concern is that we don't want anyone's civil rights violated," Brewer told reporters Friday. "That has always been of big concern to me."

There is precedence in Arizona for a coordinated effort by Republican leaders to push for an embattled GOP official to step down.

In January 1988, McCain, then a freshman senator, and Kyl, then serving in the U.S. House, held a news conference with then-U.S. Reps. Jim Kolbe and Jay Rhodes to call for the resignation of controversial then-Gov. Evan Mecham, who was facing a recall election over his incendiary decision to rescind Arizona's original paid holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. as well as other issues. Retired U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP presidential nominee, had led the way a few months earlier by saying Mecham should quit. Mecham, remembered today for numerous intemperate comments and verbal gaffes, refused to step down and eventually was impeached and removed by the Arizona Legislature before the recall election was held.

"Truthfully, I do believe that the leaders of the party should consider having that type of a discussion," said former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, a longtime Republican critic and political foil of Arpaio's. "Barry Goldwater did that with Mecham. I think that's leadership for the good of the party. Whether or not the person would listen is always another matter."

Romley, who lost his 2010 race amid intense opposition from the sheriff, believes Arpaio would continue to ignore any calls for his resignation from Brewer, McCain, Kyl or anybody else. So far, the clamor for Arpaio's resignation has come from the left and thus carries no weight with the sheriff. Two U.S. lawmakers from Arizona -- Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ed Pastor -- are among the Democrats who have said he needs to go.

Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican, said he believes there is a chance that GOP leaders still will stand up against Arpaio.

"The seriousness of the situation is pretty unprecedented," said Woods, who thinks Arpaio should quit. "Would he care? I doubt it. That would be analogous to Mecham in some respects -- he didn't really care, either."

Woods, a former McCain aide and a close friend to the senator, also defended the written statement that McCain and Kyl put out about the sex cases that Arpaio's agency initially didn't investigate.

"That was pretty unusual that they took that step, and that was prior to this (the Justice Department report) coming out," he said. "It was the two senators from the state -- the immediate past presidential candidate and the second-in-command Republican in the United States Senate. I wouldn't just act like that was nothing."

Grijalva said that he was surprised by the statement and that he hopes his Republican colleagues in the state's congressional delegation make their positions on Arpaio known. He stopped short of saying Arpaio has reached "a tipping point" in his political career but said he feels the sheriff's critics now have momentum.

"Because of his political retaliation against anybody that criticized him, which is also in the report, I think there's been a reluctance on the part of some elected officials to really take this guy on," Grijalva said. "I think that part's over. This is the beginning of the unraveling, because now people that have felt intimidated because they didn't want the consequences of having Arpaio after them will feel more free to speak."

Support shifting?

But state Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said don't count on many Republicans turning on Arpaio, who for years has been a sought-after political endorsement for GOP candidates. Kavanagh called the Justice Department investigation a political "smear job" and "a sneak attack on Arpaio" because the Sheriff's Office was not notified in advance of the news conference in which the allegations were announced.

Kavanagh, who, like Arpaio, is an ardent foe of illegal immigration, said he has heard no GOP conversation about seeking the sheriff's resignation.

"That's certainly a Democrat Party talking point, but it has not spread to the Republican Party," Kavanagh said. "I've seen nothing but support for the sheriff."

Even if Republicans close ranks behind Arpaio, his political foes now believe that it will be hard for voters to ignore what critics characterize as egregious unprofessionalism in the office. "With that type of law enforcement, you wonder if you're back in the 1950s in the Deep South," said Pastor, the senior member of Arizona's U.S. House delegation. "The question to ask is not if this is the tail end of his political power, it's how much longer are the citizens of Maricopa County willing to put up with it?"

Arpaio's latest troubles follow the ballot-box defeats of two of his key allies in his fight against illegal immigration. Andrew Thomas, county attorney from 2005 to 2010, last year lost his primary race for Arizona attorney general. More recently, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, the author of Arizona's controversial Senate Bill 1070, was ousted in a recall election.

Randy Parraz, the political organizer and co-founder of Citizens for a Better Arizona who orchestrated Pearce's undoing, already has put Arpaio on notice that a "citizens posse" will be working to ensure that he is not re-elected in 2012.

An opposing candidate could run against Arpaio solely on the issue of dereliction of duty with regard to the botched sex-crimes cases and not even have to mention immigration, said Sharry of America's Voice.

"I suspect this will be the beginning of the end for Arpaio," Sharry said. "He rode an issue that is deeply emotional and deeply frustrating and milked it for as much publicity and popularity that he could. Now you can see that the tide has turned in Arizona and elsewhere."

Sheriff Joe want's it bother ways!

I guess he wants it both ways. On one hand he is admitting he is a government terrorist and willing to accept the "slap on the wrist" punishment he will receive from the Feds, while at the same time he is also saying he is innocent and will fight the Feds.

I guess nothing has changed and government continues as usual!

Source

Arpaio to cooperate, not 'back down'

It was the day after the Justice Department's big press conference and I wondered if Sheriff Joe Arpaio had calmed down.

The answer was yes.

And no.

Last Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez outlined a Justice Department report that included a blistering condemnation of the inner workings of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office under Arpaio.

The sheriff lashed back, calling the Justice Department's action a "sad day for America" and labeling the whole investigation a political witch hunt. At the same time, Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano rescinded Arpaio's authority to conduct immigration screening in the jails.

A day after all this, how was Arpaio feeling?

"It's hard to get the story out with the media frenzy," he said. "I'm a little concerned with Janet Napolitano, who I have worked with for years, taking away my federal authority in the jails. That's bad. ...

"That's one thing we've been doing that the feds have loved us for doing. We've had audits every year. We had the U.S. marshal come into our jails. We had Homeland Security officials. So it looks like one hand of the government doesn't know what the other is doing."

What about that 22-page letter outlining the government's investigation, including incidents of racial profiling and discrimination?

"So, we had a couple of bumps," Arpaio said. "We had some isolated incidents, and they make it look like it's systemic. ... We thought we almost had this thing resolved. We gave them more files. Then we wake up in the morning and they do a press conference."

Arpaio believes that the timing of that press conference was aimed at diverting attention from problems the administration has been having with the Fast and Furious gun-running operation and other issues.

At the same time, he said that he remains willing to work with the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The feds say that Arpaio has to decide to cooperate with them by Jan. 4, after which they'll have 60 days to fix things or the U.S. Attorney's Office will sue.

"If this is not resolved we'll see them in court," he said. "But I'm ready to talk with them -- again. I'm an ex-federal guy for 30 years. ... I'd tell them this isn't systemic. This is a few examples that happened and we corrected them. ...

"We're going to work with them. We have for three years. But one thing I'm not going to agree to is to be controlled by some federal monitor or something. I'm the elected sheriff here, and I report to the 4 million voters in the county."

In the meantime, he said he'll do his job as he sees fit.

"I'm still going to enforce the illegal-immigration laws. We still have two state laws to enforce," he said.

"I've sworn in over 100 ICE agents, deputized them so they can work with us. What do I do with that? They took away all my officer credentials. Do I take away theirs, too? I won't because that's not good for enforcement. But why isn't Napolitano worried about the ICE agents wearing my badges if we're so bad?"

Arpaio even sees some good news in what happened.

"I should thank the president," he said. "He brought immigration back. Everybody in the debates is talking about immigration. The issue was going away. They want to hide it. And here comes the president and now everybody is talking about it. That's what should happen. They should talk about and get it resolved, the Congress and White House and get it over with."

He joked about how it would have been nice if President Obama had invited him to the White House for a glass of wine and a nice chat to discuss the problem.

What about Arpaio's future? Democratic lawmakers, immigrations activists and others have been clamoring for the sheriff to resign.

And he comes up for re-election (for what would be his sixth term) in November. He supposedly has as much as $6 million socked away for what could be the most bruising campaign of a long career.

So, will he run?

If you've lived here and followed the sheriff for even a little bit, the question seems silly. You know the answer.

"I'm not going to back down," Arpaio said. "When they ask if I'm going to resign I say, 'Are you kidding?' I'll decide in January what office I'm running for. I'm still interested in the (U.S.) Senate race. If I don't run for Senate I am definitely running for sheriff. Let the people decide."

La Migra comes to Maricopa County Jail!!!

On one hand he wants to show people who hate Sheriff Joe that he is enforcing the law and terminated the Sheriff Joe's participation in the federal 287(g) program.

But on the the other hand Emperor Obama wants to make the Arizona's who hate Mexicans happy, by continuing the 287(g) program in Maricopa County jail, by bringing in INS agents to do it instead of Sheriff Joe's thugs.

Obama will do anything to get elected and this is an example of what he is doing in Arizona.

Source

ICE agents to do Maricopa County jail screening

by Michael Kiefer - Dec. 19, 2011 09:55 PM

The Arizona Republic

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced it will send 50 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Maricopa County to perform immigration screening of county jail inmates.

Nelson Peacock, an assistant secretary of homeland security, informed U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl in a letter that the ICE agents will do the work instead of Maricopa County sheriff's detention officers in the wake of the department's decision Thursday to rescind the sheriff's access to federal immigration databases.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice served notice on Sheriff Joe Arpaio that an investigation found his office has engaged in a pattern or practice of racial discrimination against Latinos and retaliation against his critics.

Justice officials gave Arpaio a Jan. 4 deadline to decide whether to cooperate in reforming his office. It also set a 60-day deadline for an agreement on a reform plan.

If Arpaio does not comply, officials said, the Justice Department plans to seek a court order to force reform and could revoke hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

That same day, the Homeland Security Department said it was terminating the sheriff's participation in the federal 287(g) program, which allows local law-enforcement agencies to assist in immigration policing. The Sheriff's Office used the federal technology and authority to verify immigration status of all people booked into the county's jails and convey that information to ICE. It was also used as probable cause under state law to hold illegal immigrants in the jails without bail if they were charged with serious crimes, as defined by the Arizona Legislature.

Both sides accuse the other of hindering public safety.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no interest in supporting an unconstitutional pattern and practice of racial discrimination," Peacock wrote.

"Based on the nature of DOJ's findings in Maricopa County, ICE took the immediate and necessary step of terminating its 287(g) agreement with MCSO," his letter says.

Homeland Security officials told The Arizona Republic that the 50 agents will be reassigned from outside Arizona and will do the work of the 90-some MCSO detention officers who used to perform the screenings.

Arpaio and County Attorney Bill Montgomery have both claimed that the federal decision to revoke Arpaio's screening authority would release criminals to the streets and questioned how ICE would pick up the slack.

"Where are they going to find 50 agents?" MCSO Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre said on Monday. "It is the Christmas season, but can they just pull them out of a Christmas stocking?"

MacIntyre also questioned how the agents would get jail credentials, hinting that MCSO may raise issues about allowing ICE agents into the jails.

And he called Peacock's letter to Kyl "placating."

But the Homeland Security officials said that ICE agents are frequently at the jails and will answer all calls regarding possibly illegal immigrants held there. Regarding access, "we expect the sheriff will give it to us," one said.

The agents will check fingerprints against a national database and will identify those immigrants they deem to be threats to public safety. If the immigrants are charged with violent crimes, they will likely be left to the jurisdiction of the state to face charges.

The dispute centers on what happens to immigrants who meet the state's definition of serious criminals, which includes those charged with such non-violent crimes as identity theft, conspiracy to commit human smuggling or forgery. Under state law, they would be held non-bondable, and in the past they would have been identified as illegal immigrants by county detention officers. That information would be used as evidence in their initial court appearances to persuade a judge to deny bond. Such suspects may not be deemed threats to public safety under federal definitions.

Now judges will have to evaluate each immigrant according to the standards for setting bond used for most suspects, including flight risk, ties to the community and the nature of the offense.

Without the 287(g) access, some of those inmates may be detained by ICE and deported without facing trial; the judicial result of those cases is frequently to plead them to a low-level felony, place the detainee on probation and deport them.

"As was done previously, all individuals booked into the Maricopa County jail will be screened to determine if they are removable from the United States," ICE spokesman Brian Hale said. "ICE has dedicated over 50 personnel to handle the tasks previously performed by MCSO deputies and ensure that individuals arrested for criminal offenses and also in the country illegally will be detained and removed from the United States in line with our priorities."

But those will be federal priorities, not state or county priorities.

County Attorney Montgomery said Monday, "This is the federal government ensuring that immigration laws are not enforced to any greater degree than federal immigration policy calls for."

Racist Sheriff Joe sued for shaking down Mexicans

Source

5 challenge Arpaio's enforcement tactics

by JJ Hensley - Dec. 21, 2011 09:58 PM

The Arizona Republic

Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres wasn't the first person to accuse the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office of racial profiling, but the legal resident's lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office was among the first legal challenges to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration-enforcement tactics.

The 4-year-old case today will go before a U.S. District Court judge, who could determine whether the case will move forward.

Since Ortega Melendres filed his lawsuit in December 2007, four other plaintiffs have joined the case with claims that are now familiar to Maricopa County residents who have followed Arpaio's attempts at local immigration enforcement. They claim deputies stopped or unreasonably detained them because of their race.

All the plaintiffs are either U.S. citizens or legal residents.

According to the lawsuit:

Ortega Melendres was the passenger in a truck pulled over in Cave Creek in 2007 where deputies were watching a church that doubled as a day-labor center and, according to deputies, could be serving as a drophouse for illegal immigrants. The lawsuit claims Ortega Melendres was detained for about eight hours before an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent verified his documents and set him free.

David and Jessica Rodriguez, both U.S. citizens, were traveling near Bartlett Lake in December 2007 when they encountered a washed-out road and turned around along with other cars in their party. Sheriff's deputies stopped all the vehicles involved but let the others go immediately without exchanging documentation. Deputies requested a Social Security card from David Rodriguez and gave the couple a citation.

Velia Meraz and Manuel Nieto Jr., both born in Chicago, were working at their family's auto-repair business in Phoenix when deputies were conducting a sweep in the area in March 2008. Meraz was singing along to Spanish music in their car when a deputy threatened the two with disorderly conduct charges if they refused to leave a gas station where men were handcuffed nearby as part of the sweep. Nieto left the gas station and returned to the family business, where sheriff's deputies arrived with guns drawn and pulled Nieto from the car. Nieto handed over his driver's license and was not cited.

Today's hearing will allow U.S. District Judge Murray Snow to weigh four issues: Each side has asked the court to find in their favor, and the plaintiffs have also asked for Snow to sanction the Sheriff's Office for destroying evidence in the case and to allow more plaintiffs to join the lawsuit as part of a class action.

Late last month, Snow presented each side with a series of issues they needed to address before the hearing, many of which dealt with the authority of sheriff's deputies to enforce federal immigration law. The sheriff's attorneys claim in court filings that deputies are enforcing Arizona's human-smuggling statute that targets coyotes and so-called "co-conspirators in their own smuggling" and have not enforced federal law since Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed that authority in October 2009.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs and the Sheriff's Office each declined to comment before the hearing.

The hearing comes one week after the Justice Department released the findings of a lengthy civil-rights investigation that concluded the Sheriff's Office engaged in a wide-ranging pattern of discrimination against Latino residents.

Those findings will likely play a large role in the hearing, said Stephen Montoya, who brought a civil rights case on behalf of municipal employees against Tempe in 2002 that he was able to bolster with an Arizona Attorney General's report on practices in the city.

A federal jury awarded the Tempe workers $2.4 million in 2005.

"That letter has a lot of potential," Montoya said. "If the Justice Department behaves the way that it usually behaves, those findings are going to be difficult to overcome."

The issue of sanctions was already addressed in part when Snow awarded more than $90,000 in court costs and attorney's fees to offset the costs of depositions that had to be taken again after the Sheriff's Office produced thousands of records that it initially said were not available.

Regardless of the sanctions, the Justice Department's findings revealed last week should make it much easier for the plaintiff's attorneys to argue in favor of broadening the lawsuit to make it a class action, Montoya said.

Such a decision would open the case to "thousands of Hispanics," according to a motion the plaintiff's attorneys filed in the spring.

"That is the type of evidence that shows a systemic policy that is either intentionally or negligently violating the rights of Hispanics. That is the type of thing that the court cannot ignore," Montoya said. "Case after case in class-action and discrimination context has said this statistical evidence can be used to prove discrimination. They don't have to prove guilt at this point, they just have to prove probability."

Two other cases accusing sheriff's deputies of racial profiling have made their way through the court system this year with varied results.

In July, the Sheriff's Office paid $200,000 to settle a claim brought by two Hispanic men, one a U.S. citizen and the other a legal resident, who were detained during a worksite raid in 2009. U.S. District Judge David Campbell ruled in the spring that sheriff's deputies had no reason to stop the men before dawn outside of the worksite perimeter. An attorney for the Sheriff's Office said the agency had to settle the lawsuit because administrators could not identify the deputy who made the stop, making it impossible to defend the merits of the stop.

But in August, a federal judge dismissed a similar claim stemming from the same worksite raid on the grounds that the Sheriff's Office did not participate in or authorize any unconstitutional conduct during the enforcement effort at a landscaping company.

For a job that doesn't even require a high school diploma pigs are paid very well! $47,000 for piggies in Pinal County! Pigs in most Phoenix area cities start at around $50,000, and again that doesn't even require a high school diploma.

For the record Sheriff Joe is in Maricopa County, which is where Phoenix is. Pinal County is just south and east of Maricopa County, and run by a Sheriff Joe clone called Sheriff Paul Babeu.

Source

County supervisors: Babeu can't close deputy pay gap

by Lindsey Collom - Dec. 21, 2011 09:30 PM

The Arizona Republic

Pinal County supervisors have shot down a request by Sheriff Paul Babeu to raise the salaries of 27 deputies to close a pay gap with their less experienced counterparts.

Supervisors denied the motion Wednesday, citing a resolution they passed in June to halt any pay increases for county employees in fiscal year 2012 no matter the funding source.

The pay disparity was first noted by county resources staff in June, when the Sheriff's Office implemented a starting salary of more than $47,000 for new recruits. In April, the starting salary for the same position was about $2,000 less.

Brandi Clark, the sheriff's human resources manager, said a deputy's starting salary used to be determined by experience, ranging from $45,052.80 at Step 1 to $47,361.60 at Step 3. Now, starting salaries all begin at the high end to remain competitive, Clark said.

It creates equity issues, she told the board, particularly when "you have a rookie cop that's at (level) 3 and a 4-year deputy at Steps 1 and 2."

The Sheriff's Office is having problems with retention, and hiring replacements is costly, she said, estimating it takes about $40,000 just to recruit, hire and train a deputy.

The sheriff had offered to use RICO funds, which come from assets seized in racketeering investigations, to cover the $44,869 in step increases from Nov. 27 through June 30, 2012. Also on the table was more than $77,000 in RICO money to keep pace in the following year.

Before casting a vote to deny the sheriff's request, Supervisor Bryan Martyn said he was concerned about RICO not being a guaranteed funding source.

"It's a great gesture, but not the best business practice of this board to budget based on funds that don't potentially exist," Martyn said.

Supervisor David Snider said the board would take a look at equity pay when it can do so for all county employees. The county implemented a freeze on cost-of-living adjustments and longevity pay in 2008 that is still in place.

Maricopa County Sheriff's officers turn in federal credentials

Maricopa County Sheriff's officers turn in federal credentials

by JJ Hensley - Dec. 21, 2011 09:40 PM

The Arizona Republic

Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Wednesday made a show of his detention officers turning in badges that came with their authorization to conduct federal immigration screenings in Maricopa County jails.

But federal officials say immigration enforcement at the jails will not change following a decision to revoke the authorization and take over the duties themselves.

The Sheriff's Office has had an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2007 that authorized detention officers to conduct immigration screenings on every inmate booked into a Maricopa County jail.

Under that agreement, Arpaio's officers screened nearly 475,000 inmates since the agreement took effect, placing immigration detainers on about 44,000 inmates that prevent them from leaving jail until federal officials have reviewed their files.

Federal officials, however, removed that authority last week in the wake of a Justice Department report that accused the Sheriff's Office of violating civil rights and discriminating against Latino residents and inmates.

In response, 92 detention officers joined Arpaio at a news conference Wednesday where they turned in their ICE credentials.

A federal Department of Homeland Security official said a contingency plan already is in place that dedicates 50 immigration officers to enforce immigration laws at the jail.

The sole responsibility of the 50 ICE officers is to respond, apprehend and arrest people for federal immigration violations, the official said.

The ICE officers will provide coverage at the jail 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the official said.

Under the plan, all people booked into the jail will have their fingerprints automatically screened through a DHS immigration computer database as part of the federal government's Secure Communities program, the official said. ICE officers at the jail will place detainers on every person who the database shows is either an immigrant in the country illegally or is a legal immigrant accused of committing an aggravated felony that makes him or her deportable from the United States.

The official pointed out that the DHS immigration database is not foolproof. Some illegal immigrants may not show up in the database if they entered the country illegally and have never been arrested by the police or apprehended by federal immigration officials. To prevent illegal immigrants not in the database from slipping through the cracks, ICE officials will interview every person booked into the jail, unless the database shows they are naturalized U.S. citizens who are not deportable or are legal immigrants accused of petty crimes who are also not deportable.

The DHS official rebutted claims by county officials that criminal immigrants could be released into the community without the 287(g) agreement because they can no longer be held without bail under state law.

The DHS official said the federal ICE officers will place detainers on all criminal immigrants identified in the jail and instruct the Sheriff's Office not to release them on the streets. ICE officials also will instruct the Sheriff's Office to hand over to ICE all criminal immigrants with detainers upon completion of their cases.

"ICE will take custody placing, them in a federal detention facility in Arizona while they face deportation proceedings," the official said.

In addition, ICE will provide immigration information requested by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for any arrests by police agencies other than the Sheriff's Office. In light of the Justice Department's findings of discrimination, arrests by the Sheriff's Office will be handled on a case-by-case basis, the official said.

ICE will provide immigration information related to MCSO arrests only if federal officers are satisfied that no racial profiling led to the arrest, the official said.

The Sheriff's Office books about 300 inmates into jail each day. Sheriff's Detention Chief Mike Olson said the agency placed immigration-related detainers on about 15 inmates each day.

The number of detainers placed on inmates has dropped since federal officials took over the program last week, Arpaio said. Since then, he said, federal officials have placed immigration-related detainers on three inmates.

An ICE official could neither confirm nor deny that total but insisted that undocumented inmates will not be allowed to "walk free" as Arpaio has claimed.

The 50 ICE officers dedicated to the jail consist of officers from the Phoenix office as well as ICE officers detailed to this assignment from other states.

They will continue to work at the jail indefinitely, the DHS official said.

If Apraio agrees to cooperate with the Department of Justice to resolve the issues in the report, ICE could reinstate the 287(g) agreement, allowing jail officers to resume enforcing federal immigration laws, the official said.

Woman sues Maricopa County in 2009 birth

Source

Woman sues Maricopa County in 2009 birth

Complaint says shackling inmate after C-section violated her rights

by JJ Hensley - Dec. 21, 2011 09:48 PM

The Arizona Republic

A woman has sued the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and others claiming that county employees exhibited deliberate indifference to her medical needs and violated her constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment when they kept her shackled before and after her 2009 Caesarean section.

The lawsuit, as support for the woman's claims, cites a recently released Justice Department report accusing the Sheriff's Office of discrimination and Maricopa County's struggles with maintaining accreditation in its jail health-care facilities.

Miriam Mendiola-Martinez was pregnant when Scottsdale police arrested her in October 2009 on forgery charges, and she remained in jail without bail due to a voter-approved measure that denied bond to undocumented immigrants suspected of committing certain crimes.

Mendiola-Martinez pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit forgery in December 2009 but went into labor before she was sentenced, according to her complaint.

Detention officers handcuffed Mendiola-Martinez and took her to Maricopa Medical Center, but nurses there said she was not in active labor and returned her to jail, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit claims that detention officers ignored Mendiola-Martinez's cries for help because they were made in Spanish and she had to ask someone who spoke English to translate her complaints to the officers.

The Justice Department's report issued last week claimed that sheriff's officers discriminated against Latino inmates in the jails by denying critical services as punishment for the inmates' failure to communicate in English.

One day after Mendiola-Martinez was turned away from the hospital, she returned, unshackled, and gave birth to her son via C-section.

The lawsuit claims that Mendiola-Martinez was not allowed to nurse or hold her son after the delivery and that an unidentified detention officer insisted Mendiola-Martinez be shackled to the hospital bed as she recovered from surgery.

Following her discharge, the lawsuit claims Mendiola-Martinez was forced to walk through the hospital with her hands and feet in cuffs and could do nothing about a post-operative injury she suffered.

"Once she was outside and entering the Sheriff's Office car, a nurse ran up from the hospital and scolded the Sheriff's Office deputy ... for taking Ms. Mendiola-Martinez so quickly and without Ms. Mendiola-Martinez receiving her pain medication and discharge paperwork," according to the lawsuit.

The claim notes that the Arizona Department of Corrections, U.S. Marshals Service and Federal Bureau of Prisons have all introduced policies in the past decade that prohibit the shackling of women in labor.

The Sheriff's Office declined to comment on the case late Wednesday until officials had time to further review the lawsuit, which arrived Wednesday morning, according to a sheriff's spokesman.

Kid you look illegal!!! Must be the brown skin!!!

He's considered Sheriff Bully

He's considered Sheriff Bully

By Ashley Powers and Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times

December 22, 2011, 6:17 p.m.

Armando Nido spotted the flashing lights of a Maricopa County sheriff's patrol car. He stiffened in fear.

It was February 2009, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies were the talk of the Phoenix area. Nido's relatives avoided parts of town when they swept through, wary of being stopped for something as minor as jaywalking and asked for immigration papers.

The deputy followed Nido, a U.S. citizen, to his home in Tempe. When Nido got out of his car, he said, the deputy ran him over.

Without naming Nido, the Justice Department detailed the incident in a scathing report last week accusing Arpaio's agency of bullying Latinos under the guise of immigration enforcement. Justice Department officials are expected to ask a federal judge to order changes in Arpaio's department, and the Homeland Security Department has stripped county jail officers of their authority to detain people on immigration charges.

Arpaio has derided the federal actions as part of a political witch hunt, and staged a media event this week when his detention officers turned in their Immigration and Customs Enforcement credentials. "We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration," he said at a recent news conference.

The Justice Department report omitted the names of victims of harassment by deputies. But by matching incidents in the report to lawsuits and other complaints, The Times was able to identify some victims.

Many people said Arpaio inspired paranoia, even among Phoenix's elite. Among those hassled and indicted were critics — a group that included judges, lawyers and Maricopa County supervisors.

One critic, Republican Supervisor Don Stapley, was arrested — twice. None of the charges, which involved Stapley's fundraising and financial disclosure forms, stuck. Democratic Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was indicted on a host of similar white-collar charges. All were dismissed.

Wilcox claimed the sheriff also had deputies camp outside her downtown Mexican restaurant, El Portal, to convince patrons it was bugged — a factor that contributed to the restaurant's closure, she said in court papers.

"If you didn't agree with him, he would come after you," Wilcox, who is suing the sheriff, said in an interview. "I had fear in the pit of my stomach every day."

Members of a citizens group that opposed Arpaio were arrested at a county supervisors meeting in 2008 for applauding and shouting. They were charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing, but none was convicted, the Justice Department report said.

In 2010, deputies arrested activist Salvador Reza twice during protests against SB 1070, Arizona's tough immigration law. One time, Reza said he had been watching demonstrators from across the street.

"I thought, if they can do this to me, they can do this to anybody," said Reza, who said he was barred by deputies from speaking to an attorney both times he was jailed.

Since his election in 1992, Arpaio has made headlines for his in-your-face style of law enforcement. He housed inmates in tents, clothed them in pink underwear and served them discolored green and blue meat — safe, but unsuitable for sale elsewhere. Troublemakers were given only bread and water.

In recent years, Arpaio gained a national following when he started using deputies as immigration agents. Arizona has struggled with illegal immigration, becoming a favorite entry point for smugglers after federal authorities toughened border enforcement in California. About 6% of Arizona residents are undocumented, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Arpaio's "sweeps" and muscular talk — he brags that he's America's toughest sheriff — endeared him to many Phoenix-area voters. GOP presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney sought his endorsement before he backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry. In recent months, Arpaio has publicly mulled running for U.S. Senate.

"Since this report came out, Joe Arpaio fans are more fervent in their support of him," said the sheriff's political advisor, Chad Willems.

Through the Sheriff's Department, Arpaio declined to be interviewed. His attorney, Bill Jones, also declined to comment. At his news conference, Arpaio said, "President Obama and the band of his merry men might as well erect their own pink neon sign at the Arizona-Mexico border saying, 'Welcome all illegals to your United States, our home is your home.' "

Though Arpaio said his agency would cooperate with the Justice Department's demands "the best we can," he has also described the incidents in the report as isolated "bumps," and not evidence of systemic problems.

But the report and interviews show that Latino residents, including U.S. citizens, mistrusted Maricopa County deputies, whom some residents call Los Sherifes del Arpaio.

For the department to launch a sweep, sometimes all it took was a citizen's letter to Arpaio asking whether a city's day laborers "are here under legitimate circumstances." A judge heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit that accuses Arpaio's department of racial profiling during the immigration patrols.

Once in jail, Latino inmates were taunted with racial slurs and refused replacements for soiled clothes if they asked for them in Spanish. This week, a former female inmate filed a lawsuit accusing sheriff's deputies of shackling her before and after her 2009 caesarean section. And a male inmate found unresponsive after tussling with sheriff's deputies died Tuesday when he was taken off life support.

During a raid of a suspected smuggler's house in Phoenix in 2009, deputies knocked on musician Filiberto Gaucin's door. They asked whether he knew about the illegal immigrants at a nearby home and then, without a warrant, searched his house, Gaucin said.

"I had no idea that they had illegal people there," Gaucin said he told them in Spanish. "I would just go back there to throw away the trash."

Deputies restrained his hands with zip ties, he said, and made him sit outside in the mud. They did the same to his son, Filiberto Jr., who was 12. No charges were filed.

"I'm 12 years old. Why would I get handcuffed and put on the floor?" Filiberto Jr. asked. "I was confused. We did nothing wrong."

Such incidents frustrated deputies who tried to reach out to the Latino community and encountered what one told the Justice Department was a "wall of distrust." An attorney for the Maricopa County deputies' union did not respond to a request for comment.

The raids were only part of the problem, the Justice Department report said. Latino drivers were at least four times more likely to be pulled over by Maricopa County deputies than drivers of other races. Few stops turned uglier than Armando Nido's.

Nido, the man hit by the patrol car, recalled how its oil pan and bumper rolled over him before he was pinned under the vehicle. He said he heard the deputy who'd hit him, James Carey, tell his comrades: "Leave him there." Nido was stuck for about 40 minutes while deputies handcuffed his mother and tasered his brother, he and his family said in a lawsuit.

Eventually, firefighters extracted him. Nido's pelvis was broken in eight places, and pins were placed in his vertebrae, he said. Now 30, he runs a restaurant and a cellphone store, but often needs pain medication to get through the day.

The county settled his lawsuit last year for $600,000. Carey resigned and no charges were filed against him. The deputy said the episode was an accident — he thought that Nido had been trying to flee.

ashley.powers@latimes.com

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com

You can't be arrested for having brown skin???

Source

Arpaio case: Latinos allowed to join class-action suit

by JJ Hensley - Dec. 23, 2011 11:17 PM

The Arizona Republic

A federal judge issued a ruling Friday that will curtail the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's ability to target illegal immigrants and gives thousands of Hispanics standing in a civil lawsuit that seeks to fundamentally alter Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration-enforcement efforts.

Judge Murray Snow's ruling created a class action, giving every Latino stopped, questioned or detained by the Sheriff's Office since January 2007 standing in the 4-year-old civil-rights lawsuit.

The suit does not request monetary awards but seeks to change the way Arpaio's deputies enforce immigration laws.

The judge's ruling also bars all sheriff's officers from arresting any person "only on knowledge or reasonable belief, without more, that the person is unlawfully present within the United States."

Such knowledge or belief, Snow ruled, does not amount to cause for arrest.

The class standing offers court-ordered protection to that broad category of Latino residents, said Cecilia Wang, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project.

"It means that you have the protection of a federal court order that has stopped MCSO from arresting or detaining you by trying to figure out if you're lawfully in the United States," Wang said. "Our main mission with this litigation has been to stop MCSO from engaging in these illegal practices."

Arpaio's attorney said that he plans to appeal the injunction and that deputies will comply with the ruling while continuing to enforce immigration-related laws.

The most immediate impact from the ruling will be evident as deputies try to enforce Arizona's human-smuggling law.

The Sheriff's Office says it has booked thousands of people on human-smuggling allegations since forming a human-smuggling unit in 2007.

The law, passed in 2005, has several elements, including illegal presence in the U.S. Previously, sheriff's deputies could rely on their suspicions under that element of the law alone to detain a suspect and launch into further investigation.

The judge's ruling means suspicion alone will not give officers probable cause. It requires deputies to develop reasonable suspicion that other factors of the law are being violated, including that the person is being transported for a commercial purpose.

To prove violation of the human-smuggling law, authorities have to demonstrate the individual harbored, transported or found transportation for a person known to be in the country illegally, and did so for a profit or a commercial purpose.

Interpretation of the law has been controversial. Former County Attorney Andrew Thomas interpreted it to allow charging people smuggled into the country as co-conspirators in their own smuggling, an interpretation that was only enforced in Maricopa County. Under the law, deputies have arrested undocumented immigrants who were not obviously in transit.

Arpaio has said that he runs the only law-enforcement agency in Arizona enforcing all aspects of the state's human-smuggling law.

But Snow ruled that Arpaio's enforcement tactic is wrong, to the extent that deputies enforce the law by arresting illegal immigrants who are not actually being smuggled.

"To the extent that Defendants claim that the human smuggling statute, or any Arizona or federal criminal law, authorizes them to detain people based solely on the knowledge, let alone the reasonable suspicion, that those people are not authorized to be in the country, they are incorrect as a matter of law," Snow wrote.

The ruling comes a little more than a week after the Justice Department issued the findings of a two-year investigation, accusing the Sheriff's Office of widespread civil-rights violations. In recent filings, attorneys in the suit cited those findings in support of their claims that the Sheriff's Office discriminates.

Arpaio plans to appeal the ruling, but deputies will abide by the injunction, according to Arpaio's attorney, Tim Casey.

"So long as the deputies are briefed and trained that they must comply with Judge Snow's findings, that you have to have reasonable suspicion on all the elements, crime-suppression operations can continue, the enforcement of the human-smuggling law can continue," Casey said.

Despite the federal injunction, Casey claimed the ruling was a "wonderful victory" for the Sheriff's Office that will allow persistent claims of racial profiling to be thoroughly examined in U.S. court.

"I think they got a very narrow slice of the pie," Casey said of Snow's rulings in the plaintiffs' favor. "They're the ones that were out there telling the world that this is going to be coming down on racial profiling as a matter of law, and the judge said, 'No.'"

Since Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres filed his lawsuit in December 2007, four other plaintiffs have joined the case with claims that Arpaio's deputies stopped or unreasonably detained them because of their race.

All the plaintiffs are either U.S. citizens or legal residents.

The case was delayed by the sheriff's destruction of or failure to turn over e-mails and other documents relevant to the plaintiffs' claims. Snow already has forced the office to pay more than $90,000 in court costs and attorneys fees to offset the costs of depositions that had to be taken again after the Sheriff's Office produced thousands of records it initially said were not available.

But not all the ruling went in favor of the plaintiffs.

Snow granted a judgment in favor of the Sheriff's Office in the case of David and Jessika Rodriguez, two plaintiffs who were stopped by sheriff's deputies after turning around on a washed-out road near Bartlett Lake in 2007. The deputies asked David for a Social Security card and issued him a citation but, according to the claim, did not request documents or cite other drivers in the party, who were White.

Snow found that none of those circumstances meant the couple were subjected to unreasonable search and seizure, as they had claimed.

Snow's ruling included a mention of Arpaio's handling of public requests for immigration sweeps based on people speaking Spanish in a fast-food restaurant and the appearance of Hispanic men on street corners, which Arpaio passed on to administrators for further investigation.

The Sheriff's Office later conducted immigration sweeps in those same areas, though sheriff's officials have insisted that the correspondence and subsequent sweeps were unrelated.

The claims deserve to be heard at trial, Snow found, but the judge noted: "Sheriff Arpaio has made public statements that a fact finder could interpret as endorsing racial profiling."

Those issues and other evidence amassed in the case will play a significant role in the trial, Wang said.

"I think for any injunction in this sort of case to be effective and to really stop the unconstitutional behavior by MCSO, there needs to be significant reform," she said. "If we do prevail on the equal-protection claim, we'll be proposing that the court appoint a monitor."

Joe Arpaio combines bad policy, bad politics

The editorial seems to says that Sheriff Joe will be punished for his crimes, but I doubt it. Emperor Obama wants to win Arizona in 2012 and I am sure he won't do anything to piss off the large number of nut jobs who support Sheriff Joe.

Source

Editorial: Joe Arpaio combines bad policy, bad politics

Joe Arpaio likes to call himself America's toughest sheriff. In Maricopa County, Ariz., which encompasses greater Phoenix, Arpaio has made a name for himself by his almost singular focus on stemming illegal immigration, and through such practices as re-instituting chain gangs and issuing inmates pink underwear.

But a Justice Department report issued this month concludes that what Arpaio calls toughness is really a cover for civil rights violations by his office. The report, which followed a three-year investigation, makes for compelling reading. And it raises troubling questions about how law enforcement and politics are practiced in an era of ideological polarization.

The Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that Arpaio's office engaged in a host of illegal and unconstitutional acts. These include targeting Latinos for traffic stops, discriminating against people in police custody who don't speak English well, and retaliating against critics by detaining them or filing unwarranted charges against them. If even half of the findings, which are presented in fairly broad-brush fashion, prove to be true, they would be quite damning.

It's impossible to review them without wondering why Arpaio thinks that alienating a large segment of the community is a good way to undertake law enforcement. And it's even harder to figure why he thinks that the Justice Department and the courts wouldn't eventually discover what he is doing and put a stop to it. (He has until Jan. 4 to declare whether he wants to work out an agreement to settle the allegations, or face legal action.)

While Arpaio has been re-elected several times, there are many signs that his star is in decline. Last month, a prominent ally, State Sen. Russell Pearce, author of Arizona's tough immigration law, was recalled. Arpaio faces a lawsuit from Latino residents, alleging racial profiling during sweeps for immigration violations. And Arizona's two Republican U.S. senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, have expressed concern about botched sex-crime investigations in Arpaio's department.

An undaunted Arpaio, who has been sheriff for 19 years, has endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president and is considering running for the Senate himself. But his overly zealous practices — coupled with unduly harsh immigration laws like the one enacted in Alabama — are likely to harm his party.

To see where this is heading, one need only look at California. Not long ago it was a reliably Republican state, voting for the GOP presidential candidate in nine of the 10 elections from 1952 to 1988.

But in the five most recent elections, California has gone heavily Democratic. This political shift was accelerated and amplified by Proposition 187, which sought to deny health care and other services to illegal immigrants. While initially popular when passed in 1994, it did not play well among naturalized U.S. citizens, who felt that all too often they were being hassled because of their ethnicity.

Today, the harsh GOP stance on immigration in places like Arizona threatens to repeat the party's errors from California. For this purely political reason, not to mention reasons of decency and upholding the Constitution, Republicans should stop denigrating those in the party who advocate a balanced policy toward illegal immigration.

Yes, the law should have meaning and the border should be secure. But "driving while Hispanic" should not be cause for being pulled over in today's America. If the Justice Department allegations are valid, Arpaio is bad news for the people of Arizona and even worse news for the GOP.

Arpaio support requests not slowed down by allegations

Source

Arpaio support requests not slowed down by allegations

by Dan Nowicki - Dec. 31, 2011 09:11 PM

The Republic

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio remains an in-demand Republican political endorsement despite controversies involving federal allegations of racial profiling and other civil-rights violations and his office's failure to investigate more than 400 sex-crime cases in a timely manner.

Last week, Arpaio spent two days in Iowa on a campaign bus tour with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, his choice in the 2012 GOP presidential primaries. He also participated in a fundraising appeal for U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

Arpaio said Republican candidates still want his endorsement even after the stinging 22-page, Dec. 15 report detailing the U.S. Department of Justice's allegations against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. "Everybody's still asking," Arpaio told The Arizona Republic. "They know about the 22 pages, I presume. Everybody read that. ... That (Justice Department investigation) has been in the news for a long time."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Arpaio stumped with Perry in Iowa, which on Tuesday hosts the nation's first caucuses. In a Wednesday e-mail to Gosar supporters, Arpaio solicited campaign contributions for the lawmaker, whom he wrote "has proven himself to be an effective leader in Congress."

Former U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., who lost to Gosar in 2010 but is running for Congress again, responded with her own fundraising message to supporters. Her e-mail, sent Thursday, carried the subject line "Unbelievable" and highlighted the allegations hanging over Arpaio's agency.

"Despite this corruption, Paul Gosar continues to cozy up to Sheriff Joe," Kirkpatrick wrote. "... I need your help to send a message to Paul Gosar and Sheriff Joe that times are changing here in Arizona."

In other developments:

Former Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano, a Democrat who had been considering running in Arizona's new Tempe-based, competitive 9th Congressional District, has decided against entering the race.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Chuck Gray, R-Mesa, cited the recently redrawn congressional map as a reason for his decision to drop out of the race in the East Valley-based 5th Congressional District.

Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow Arizona's congressional delegation on his blog at azdc.azcentral.com.

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