Trial in profiling lawsuit against Arpaio set for July 19
SourceTrial in profiling lawsuit against Arpaio set for July 19
Posted: Wednesday, July 4, 2012 1:03 pm
Associated Press
A trial will begin as scheduled on July 19 in a racial profiling lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio after the judge who will decide the case rejected handing the matter to another judge.
The question of whether U.S. District Judge Murray Snow should stay on the case had raised the possibility of pushing back the trial until after the November election in which Arpaio is seeking a sixth term.
Snow raised the possibility of his recusal in mid-June after lawyers who are pressing the lawsuit on behalf of a small group of Latinos had learned that the judge's brother-in-law, Keith Teel, is a partner in the firm for which they work. Teel isn't a lawyer in the racial profiling case and is an insurance, patent, and product liability litigator who works out of the firm's office in Washington.
The lawsuit alleges that officers based some traffic stops on the race of people in the vehicles and made the stops so they could inquire about their immigration status.
Arpaio denies the racial profiling allegation, saying people pulled over in the sweeps were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes.
During the patrols known as 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.
The people who filed the lawsuit aren't seeking damages and instead want Arpaio to enact changes to guard against what they said is discriminatory policing at his agency. Still, the plaintiff attorneys can seek reimbursement for their time and costs if they win.
Earlier in the case, when some of the firm's lawyers took over the case for another firm, the judge considered whether to remove himself, but concluded that he could continue. At the time, Snow didn't tell the attorneys in the case that he had considered whether to recuse himself.
But the judge revisited the issue after attorneys for those who filed the racial profiling case recently broached the subject when they learned of the judge's relationship to Teel.
Attorneys on both sides said they wanted Snow to remain on the case and that no reasonable observer could conclude the judge would be biased because of his relationship to Teel.
"I have full confidence in the judge and the judicial process," Arpaio said last week.
Snow wrote in Tuesday's ruling that even if the attorneys for Teel's firm win and are awarded fees, Teel wouldn't receive any financial benefit due to steps taken by his firm to keep him from the case.
Snow is the second judge to hear the case. Then-U.S. District Judge Mary Murguia was originally assigned the case, but recused herself in July 2009 when Arpaio's attorneys questioned her impartiality because Murguia's twin sister was the leader of the National Council of La Raza, a prominent advocacy group for Latinos.
At the time, the sheriff's lawyers argued that the group had concluded that the enforcement of federal immigration laws by local police would likely lead to racial profiling of Latinos.
Arpaio for sheriff of ... Mayberry?
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Arpaio for sheriff of ... Mayberry?
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has won four elections in Maricopa County, but could he get elected in Mayberry, North Carolina?
Arpaio apparently feels a certain affinity for Sheriff Andy Taylor, the fictional small town lawman portrayed by Andy Griffith in the 1960s TV show.
When Griffith died at 86 last week, the 80-year-old Arpaio tweeted: “From ‘Americas Toughest Sheriff’ to Americas most iconic sheriff Andy Griffith; Rest in Peace. A great man a great show, he will be missed”
Twitter didn’t exist in the 1960s. If it did I expect Andy Taylor would not have had an account. I doubt he would have used a computer, either. Or a Blackberry. Or an iPad. Andy preferred chatting with folks face to face.
Sheriff Joe is that way, too. He doesn’t use a computer. And underlings on his public relations staff manage his Twitter account and post his “tweets.”
Sheriff Taylor didn’t have a public relations staff.
Still two men do have some things in common.
The fictional Sheriff Taylor and the real Sheriff Arpaio are both kind of folksy, for example.
They both enjoy enormous local popularity.
They both have limited jurisdictions but are known to people all over the world.
They both choose not to wear weapons.
As Sheriff Taylor explained on the TV show: “When a man carries a gun all the time, the respect he thinks he’s getting might really be fear. So I don’t carry a gun because I don’t want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun. I’d rather they respect me.”
Arpaio talks a lot about respect, too, but he’s not averse to getting it through fear.
Once, some appointed police chiefs spoke out against Arpaio’s immigration raids. The elected politicians for whom the chiefs worked kept silent, however, and I asked Arpaio if the politicians feared him.
"Me?" Arpaio said. "They're not afraid of me. They're afraid of the people."
There are a few other small differences between Sheriff Andy and Sheriff Joe.
The fictional Sheriff Taylor had one Deputy Barney Fife. The real Sheriff Arpaio has had several.
Sheriff Taylor made sure the tenants of his jail were comfortable and well fed, so much so that Otis the town drunk was known to lock himself up.
Sheriff Arpaio put inmates in pink underwear and striped outfits, housed them in tents, reinstituted chain gangs and bragged about feeding the dogs under his care better than the humans.
As far as I know, no one ever died in Sheriff Taylor’s jail. They have under Sheriff Arpaio’s watch. And Mayberry never had to pay millions of dollars in damages after lawsuits were filed, as has happened with Maricopa County.
I’m not aware of any cases involving sexual assault in Mayberry, either, but I’d guess that Sheriff Taylor would not have allowed hundreds of cases to go uninvestigated, as occurred under Arpaio.
I don’t believe Sheriff Taylor ever conducted vendetta-based investigations of Mayberry’s public officials, as Arpaio has been accused of doing. And I don’t believe Andy ever sent Deputy Fife out-of-state to check on the birth certificate of the President of the United States.
Also, Sheriff Taylor’s office was never put under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department or sued for what the feds claim is a “pattern of unlawful discrimination.”
Sheriff Taylor, unlike Sheriff Arpaio, didn’t stage a lot of press conferences. If anything he went out of his way to make it look like someone else deserved all the credit.
Arpaio likes to keep the media focused on Arpaio.
A reporter for The Arizona Republic once pointed out in an article that to better display his rank for television cameras Sheriff Joe “increased the size of stars on the collar of his uniform.”
It’s hard to say if the actor Andy Griffith, who portrayed Sheriff Taylor, would have made a good lawman. Likewise, opinions vary on Arpaio’s success or failure in law enforcement.
What cannot be denied, however, is that each of them is very, very good at playing a sheriff on TV.
Sheriff Joe on Trial
Published: July 15, 2012 42 Comments
Five years after he started “crime suppression” sweeps that terrorized Latino neighborhoods across Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is finally having to explain himself. Not to TV crews in Phoenix or to fawning hosts on Fox News, but before a federal judge.
The trial in Melendres v. Arpaio, a class-action civil-rights lawsuit, is scheduled to begin Thursday in Federal District Court in Phoenix. The plaintiffs, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, accuse the sheriff of waging an all-out, unlawful campaign of discrimination and harassment against Latinos and those who look like them.
They say the sheriff and his deputies — aided by ad hoc civilian “posses,” anonymous phone tipsters, even motorcycle gangs — made illegal stops, searches and arrests, staged wrongful neighborhood and workplace raids, and provoked widespread fear among citizens, legal residents and undocumented immigrants alike.
One plaintiff, Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, is a Mexican citizen who had a valid visa when Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies arrested him in 2007. He said he was handcuffed and held for hours, not read his rights or allowed a phone call, or told why he had been arrested. Two other plaintiffs, Velia Meraz and Manuel Nieto, were accosted by deputies at gunpoint during a neighborhood sweep, for no explained reason. They are citizens.
The outrages to be presented to the court can be added to a long list of abuses going back years, on the streets of Maricopa and in the sheriff’s jails. As early as 2008, The East Valley Tribune of Mesa, a city outside Phoenix, published a series of articles examining the immigration raids as a law-enforcement disaster. While deputies scoured the county making baseless immigration arrests, they neglected other duties, racking up millions of dollars in overtime and showing up ever later to emergencies while the number of criminal arrests and prosecutions plummeted.
Despite those results, Sheriff Arpaio kept going. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano could have condemned his actions years ago and refused to work with him. But instead, he was allowed to continue the abuse, even as his squad of immigration enforcers deputized under the federal 287(g) program grew to 160, by far the country’s largest. The sheriff became a right-wing celebrity, courted by politicians eager to win the anti-immigrant vote. One of these was Mitt Romney, who accepted his endorsement for president in 2008.
This case is only the first of what is likely to be a string of civil rights challenges against immigration actions in Arizona. A civil lawsuit, brought by the Justice Department, accusing Sheriff Arpaio of systematic and widespread civil rights abuses, is moving through the courts.
Last month, the United States Supreme Court declined to overturn the section of Arizona’s immigration law that requires local officers to check the papers of suspected illegal immigrants. But it said the provision could be challenged on equal-protection grounds, if there is evidence of racial profiling in the way it is carried out. The trial this week does not deal with police conduct under that law, but it does suggest that racial profiling is a deep-seated problem, certainly in Maricopa County.
Sheriff Arpaio is facing the voters for a sixth term this fall. He has long insisted that he answers to no one but the county’s residents, who keep re-electing him. If voters won’t put an end to his abuses, the courts and the Constitution will have the final word.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio shocked by George Lopez's profanity
Jul. 17, 2012 03:27 PM
Associated Press
PHOENIX -- Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio says he's shocked by comedian George Lopez's profanity-laced tirade against him.
Lopez made the comments about the top cop of Maricopa County during the debut of his solo stand-up special, "George: It's Not Me, It's You," which aired Saturday on HBO.
Arpaio says he had been watching the show but changed the channel before Lopez directed curse words at him. The sheriff known for his tough stance on illegal immigration says he was shocked that the comments weren't part of a joke.
Ina Treciokas, a publicist for Lopez, says the comedian would have no further comment.
The sheriff is the target of several lawsuits, including one going to trial Thursday that accuses his department of racially profiling Latinos.
And no I don't mean people with brown skin. Even though Sheriff Joe
probably thinks anybody with brown skin is a felon that he can deport
to Mexico. I mean real criminals like robbers, rapists, muggers and
murders. Not brown skin folks who wash our dishes, trim our trees,
build our homes and server us McBurgers.
Arpaio: Obama birth certificate issue needs further investigation
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 17, 2012 11:22 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
When Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio scheduled a news conference to discuss the findings of his "birther" investigation just two days before a civil-rights case against his agency gets under way, it drew a knowing sigh from longtime observers.
Tuesday's event was not the first instance in which a well-timed Arpaio news conference has coincided with potentially negative news involving his office.
Arpaio's supporters say the timing of Tuesday's event, revealing results from the sheriff's volunteer investigation into the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, was purely coincidental.
Whether or not it was a coincidence, the substance of his message Tuesday -- that Hawaiian officials' stonewalling about inconsistencies in Obama's birth certificate must mean it is forged -- will be at least somewhat obscured by the federal civil-rights trial beginning Thursday.
In that case, U.S. District Judge Murray Snow will determine whether Arpaio's agency has engaged in racial profiling.
"Sometimes, in such high-profile cases, you might want such publicity to influence potential jury pools, but that has no application for the upcoming trial because it's a bench trial and this is a no-nonsense judge," said David Don, a Phoenix civil-rights attorney. "I see this (birther announcement) as part of his political campaign, to put on a show and do some counterprogramming, give something for his supporters to get excited about because he probably anticipates some unfavorable news in this trial."
Tuesday was the second time in recent months that the sheriff has shared with the media what he considered positive news in advance of anticipated negative publicity.
In May, the federal government was preparing to file a separate civil-rights lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office that claimed the agency engaged in discriminatory policing and disregarded the needs of Latino citizens. Arpaio held a news conference the day before the lawsuit was filed at which he unveiled a plan to restore integrity and accountability to his agency.
Sheriff's officials said at the time that the document had been in the works for weeks leading up to its release and that they had no idea when the Justice Department would file a lawsuit.
Chad Willems, Arpaio's campaign manager, dismissed suggestions that Arpaio's news conferences were part of a strategy to deflect attention from other matters. He noted that it would be difficult for sheriff's officials to coordinate timing for a Justice Department lawsuit.
"We don't know when bad stories are going to come out. I think it's paranoia on the part of our detractors," Willems said. "People around Arizona support the sheriff for a variety of reasons, and they have for the last 19 years. We don't pick and choose dates and times based on anyone else's calendar or schedule of events."
If the revelations related to Obama's birth certificate were intended to deflect the spotlight from the upcoming civil-rights trial, it will likely be the last time Arpaio can employ that tactic: He revealed at the end of Tuesday's news conference that a governmental body with more authority, like Congress, would have to take up the investigation into the authenticity of the president's birth certificate.
"It's time for someone else to look into this situation," Arpaio said.
The information revealed by Arpaio and his team on Tuesday did little to resolve questions about Obama's birthplace that linger in the minds of the sheriff's supporters. Instead, the sheriff's lead volunteer investigator, Mike Zullo, took nearly an hour to lay out his case after he and a spokeswoman for
Arpaio admonished the media for ignoring information Zullo presented in March.
While Arpaio's investigators were in Hawaii for 10 days, they located a former local registrar who might have written coding on the copy of Obama's birth certificate posted on the White House website. The woman is now 95 years old.
After the team's return from Hawaii, a national leader in the so-called birther movement who has worked with the sheriff's volunteer investigators placed a call to the woman, pretending to be a news reporter. The woman, who Zullo referred to as "amazingly sharp," told the fake reporter that the numbers on Obama's birth certificate were inconsistent with the time and place of his birth.
Her information, other inconsistencies investigators said they discovered in documents posted on the White House website and the refusal of Hawaii officials to let Arpaio's investigators inspect the original birth certificate led the team to conclude the document is a fraud.
The team also discovered information that they said caused concern about Hawaii's lax standards for verifying where children are born or where their parents live.
When such media events are timed to coincide with a potential onslaught of negative news, there are generally three goals, said Jason Rose, a longtime Valley political consultant and Arpaio supporter: Mobilize fans, distract critics or take the wind out of your foes' sails.
"In this case, all three options are not the best options," Rose said. "The upcoming trial is an example: It's an opportunity for the sheriff to make up ground with people who could be determinative with the election. There's a bunch of people in the middle who want to know, 'Is this a coldhearted or a warmhearted human being?' I think it's an opportunity to say, 'These charges are not true, here's why and here's a more complete portrait of me as a husband, father and grandfather.'"
The impact will likely be negligible for Arpaio and his critics, observers say, citing the well-worn theory that most Maricopa County residents long ago made up their minds about the sheriff, just as many have about the president's citizenship.
But it could help the sheriff raise campaign money.
The Justice Department's decision in May to file a separate civil-rights lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office proved to be a boon for his campaign fund, and Arpaio's birther probe has resonated with Obama's critics nationwide -- including in Hawaii.
Richard Ferguson, a 71-year-old Honolulu resident, said he worked with Obama's grandmother when she was a bank administrator in Hawaii. He graduated from the same high school as the future president. Now a retiree, Ferguson has donated $50 to Arpaio's re-election campaign.
"I'm a person who deals with the facts, you know. It seems like Arpaio's trying to get at some of those facts," Ferguson said. "Arpaio's standing up for things that I think we should know about, which is probably predominantly the immigration issue. The other one (Obama probe) is just interesting. But Arpaio's under siege."
Reach the reporter at jj.hensley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8464.
“Real” story behind Arpaio's birther news conference
We blew it, again.
All of us in the media. We completely missed the story. Again.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio along with the volunteer members of his posse and their partner from the conspiracy web site WorldNetDaily held another press conference Tuesday concerning their investigation into the birth certificate of President Barack Obama.
The posse relied heavily on its “expert,” Jerome Corsi, who once called Islam a “worthless, dangerous Satanic religion,” referred to Hillary Clinton as a “fat hog” and to her daughter as “Chubby Chelsea.”
The WND website also launched the swift-boat attacks on former presidential candidate John Kerry, published a six-part series of commentaries under the headline “Soy is making kids 'gay,' and said former President George W. Bush and the Council on Foreign Relations and who-knows-who-else were plotting to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico.
At Tuesday’s press conference Arpaio, his posse and their expert again announced that the birth certificate of President Barack Obama is a fake and – once again – the assembled news gathering professionals got the story wrong.
After all the presentations, the videos and the question-and-answer period after the press conference the headline to come out of the event is not: “Obama birth certificate a fake”
Or: “State and federal authorities involved in massive cover-up."
Or: "Every single birth certificate in Hawaii is suspect? (Say it ain't so, Don Ho.)"
Or: “Why is the entire world ignoring us!!!!???”
Each of them would reflect the impression left from Tuesday's press conference but wouldn't tell the REAL story. The only proper headline to accompany a sideshow like the one put on by Arpaio and his cronies on Tuesday would have to be:
“All Crimes in Maricopa County Solved!”
After all, if there were actual criminals perpetrating actual misdeeds within the sheriff’s jurisdiction would he have time to engage in another birther extravaganza?
No.
So, every crime must be solved. Every investigation must be completed. He must have NOTHING else to do.
And there must be no other potentially embarassing news event pending from which the sheriff would like to divert attention.
For instance, you don’t suppose the press conference Tuesday had anything to do with the fact that the class-action lawsuit against the sheriff (Melendres v. Arpaio) is set to go to trial later this week in Federal District Court?
Naaah.
NY Times thinks Sheriff Joe sucks???
NY Times thinks Sheriff Joe sucks???
Sheriff Joe Arpaio shocked by George Lopez's profanity
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Arpaio: Obama birth certificate issue needs further investigation
Doesn't Sheriff Joe have any real criminals to hunt down????
“Real” story behind Arpaio's birther news conference
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Ariz. sheriff says Obama birth certificate is fake
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Ariz. sheriff says Obama birth certificate is fake
Associated Press Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — Investigators for an Arizona sheriff's volunteer posse say President Barack Obama's birth certificate is definitely fraudulent.
Members of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's posse said in March that there was probable cause that Obama's long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April 2011 was a computer-generated forgery.
Now, Arpaio says investigators are positive it's fraudulent.
So-called "birthers" maintain Obama is ineligible to be president because, they contend, he was born in Kenya. However, Hawaii officials have repeatedly verified Obama's citizenship, and courts have rebuffed lawsuits over the issue.
Mike Zullo, the Arizona posse's chief investigator, said numeric codes on parts of the long-form birth certificate indicate those parts weren't filled out, yet those sections asking for the race of Obama's father and his field of work or study were completed.
Zullo said investigators previously didn't know the meaning of the codes but they were explained by a 95-year-old former state worker who signed the president's birth certificate. Zullo said a writer who published a book about Obama's birth certificate and was aiding investigators let them listen to an interview he conducted with the former state worker.
The Arizona Democratic Party said in a statement that Arpaio's investigation is intended to draw attention away from problems within his own agency, such as hundreds of sex-crime cases that the sheriff's office failed to adequately investigate over a three-year period.
A civil trial is set to begin Thursday in a lawsuit that accuses Arpaio's office of racially profiling Latinos. The suit filed by a handful of Latinos will serve as a precursor to the U.S. Justice Department's lawsuit that alleges a broader range of civil rights violations against Arpaio's office.
Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate in an attempt to quell citizenship questions. His campaign declined to comment on Arpaio's allegations.
But Joshua A. Wisch, a special assistant to Hawaii's attorney general, said his state's vital records are some of the best-managed and have "some of the strongest restrictions on access to prevent identity theft and fraud."
"President Obama was born in Honolulu, and his birth certificate is valid," Wisch said in a statement. "Regarding the latest allegations from a sheriff in Arizona, they are untrue, misinformed, and misconstrue Hawaii law."
Arpaio faces profiling allegations at trial
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Arpaio faces profiling allegations at trial
Jul. 19, 2012 07:25 AM
Associated Press
For years, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America has vehemently denied allegations that his deputies racially profile Latinos in his trademark immigration patrols.
Joe Arpaio would dismiss his critics in his signature brash style at countless news conferences and in numerous appearances on television.
Now, the sheriff in Arizona's most populous county will have to convince a federal judge who is presiding over a lawsuit that heads to trial on Thursday and is expected to last until early August.
The plaintiffs say Arpaio's officers based some traffic stops on the race of Hispanics who were in vehicles, had no probable cause to pull them over and made the stops so they could inquire about their immigration status.
"He is not free to say whatever he wants," said Dan Pochoda, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, one of the groups that has pushed the lawsuit against Arpaio.
"He will be called as a witness in our case," Pochoda said. "He will not have control over the flow of information, and he is not the final arbiter."
The plaintiffs aren't seeking money damages and instead are seeking a declaration that Arpaio's office racially profiles and an order that requires it to make changes to prevent what they said is discriminatory policing.
If Arpaio loses the civil case, he won't face jail time or fines.
Arpaio declined to comment, and his lead attorney, Tim Casey, didn't return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
But at a late June hearing, Casey said the sheriff wanted the trial so he could prove his critics wrong and remove the stigma that the racial profiling allegation carries. "What we want is resolution," Casey said.
The lawsuit marks the first case in which the sheriff's office has been accused of systematically racially profiling Latinos and will serve as a bellwether for a similar yet broader civil rights lawsuit filed against Arpaio in May by the U.S. Department of Justice.
That lawsuit makes many of the same racial profiling allegations, but goes further to say that Arpaio's office retaliated against its critics, punished Latino jail inmates with limited English skills for speaking Spanish and failed to adequately investigate a large number of sex-crimes cases. No trial date in that case has been set.
Arpaio has said the DOJ lawsuit is a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration as a way to court Latino voters in a presidential election year. DOJ officials say the department began its initial civil rights inquiry of Arpaio's office during the Bush administration and notified the sheriff of its formal investigation a few months after Obama took office.
Arpaio has staked his reputation on immigration enforcement and, in turn, won support and financial contributors from people across the country who helped him build a $4 million campaign war chest.
The patrols have brought allegations that Arpaio himself ordered some of them not based on reports of crime but letters from Arizonans who complained about people with dark skin congregating in an area or speaking Spanish.
Some of the people who filed the lawsuit were stopped by Arpaio's deputies in regular patrols, while others were stopped in his special immigration patrols known as "sweeps."
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, which hasn't conducted any of the special patrols since October.
Arpaio has repeatedly said people who are pulled over in his patrols were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes and that it was only afterward that officers found that many of them were illegal immigrants.
U.S. District Judge Murray Snow has issued rulings against Arpaio earlier in the case. In December, he barred Arpaio's deputies who are enforcing Arizona's 2005 immigrant smuggling law from detaining people based solely on the suspicion that they're in the country illegally. Arpaio has appealed that decision.
The judge also has reminded plaintiffs' attorneys what they need to prove to make their claim of systematic discrimination. At a March hearing, he told them that to back up the racial profiling allegations, they must show Arpaio's office had a policy that was intentionally discriminatory.
The plaintiffs' attorneys say they plan to do so, in part, by focusing on their allegation that Arpaio launched some patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints that alleged no actual crimes.
Separate from the two lawsuits that allege racial profiling, a federal grand jury has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.
Arpaio's act gets tiresome
Source
Arpaio's act gets tiresome
Jul. 19, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Pity poor Joe. His routine has gotten painfully stale. His latest "birther" news conference didn't provide much entertainment value. His sleight of hand was too clumsy. The attempt at distraction too transparent.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's chickens are coming home to roost and he's hoping nobody notices the deeply disturbing charges of discrimination and racial profiling he faces in one trial that begins today and another later when he faces the Justice Department.
Obama's birth certificate? It isn't even a side show anymore. Not even a fringe issue. It's the fuzz at the end of the fringe. A desperate tactic from those who would rather discredit President Barack Obama than debate him.
The so-called "evidence" Joe Arpaio and his birther team revealed Tuesday wasn't just thin, it was anorexic.
The only news out of the event was that there was no news. Just an aging hoofer trotting out his act one more time.
But he's really not the one who deserves sympathy.
Arizona didn't elect Joe Arpaio, but the state has to endure the derisive laughter his antics bring our way. It's like a bad case of boils on the state's image.
Maricopa County did elect him, but county residents don't get the benefit of a sheriff who focuses on local law enforcement issues. He's a showman, not a lawman.
While Arpaio was honing his national image as immigration tough guy, hundreds of reports of sex crimes were not properly investigated by the Sheriff's Office. Who scares you more? A maid or a sexual predator?
Illegal immigration is a serious concern in Arizona and Maricopa County. You could argue that Arpaio's focus was appropriate, albeit myopic. His methods, which included using minor traffic violations as a pretext to stop Latinos, were not.
But at least he was addressing a local issue.
Obama's birth certificate? There is no good reason for the sheriff of Maricopa County to spend tax money, public resources and energy looking for evidence to back up a ridiculous, discredited fantasy.
Unless, of course, the sheriff believes that feeding his unhealthy dependence on the media spotlight will keep people from seeing the very real problems closing in on him.
Joe looks pathetic.
But Maricopa County and Arizona are the ones suffering.
Racial profiling trial: Ruling to be based on current conditions
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 19, 2012 01:00 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The racial-profiling lawsuit involving the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office got under way with testimony from a plaintiffs' expert who reviewed more than 100,000 traffic stops the department's deputies made and found discrepancies in how Latino drivers are treated.
The differences between the treatment of Hispanic and non-Hispanic drivers were stark, said Ralph Taylor, a Temple University professor who reviewed data from more than 100,000 stops deputies conducted between January 2007 and November 2009. Hispanic motorists were 30 to 40 percent more likely to have their names checked, Taylor testified.
That variation increased even more on days when the Sheriff's Office conducted saturation patrols, or immigration sweeps, Taylor said, and the discrepancy extended to other days when deputies involved in the sweeps encountered Hispanic motorists. Hispanic drivers were nearly 50 percent more likely to have their names checked by deputies involved in the saturation patrols, Taylor said.
And those stops typically lasted longer.
"If you look at the incidents, or if you will the stops that take place, the incidents are more likely, and this is for the entire series, the incidents are going to last about 22 percent longer," he said. "About two minutes longer, if during that incident the officer checks at least one Hispanic name."
The statistical data goes to the heart of the plaintiffs' claim that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies violate constitutional rights by treating Hispanic drivers differently than non-Hispanic motorists.
Tom Liddy, an attorney representing the Sheriff's Office, attacked the data at the first opportunity.
More than two hours into the packed hearing in U.S. District Court in downtown Phoenix, Liddy began cross-examining Taylor and tried to chip away at the expert's findings, pointing out that Taylor included only stops where the driver's name was provided on the Sheriff's activity log and that Taylor excluded traffic stops with an outcome such as drug possession or DUI.
The relatively dry proceeding became more lively with Liddy's cross-examination, and prompted an objection from the plaintiffs' lawyers that the Deputy County Attorney was being argumentative with Taylor.
"Do you have any idea how many traffic stops were made by deputies of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office between 2007 and 2009 when they did not use their radio?" Liddy asked.
"I do not, but that information is not necessarily relevant to my findings," Taylor replied.
"Is it relevant to anyone who wants to determine how much weight to give your testimony?" Liddy asked.
"Not necessarily," Taylor responded.
Taylor later said that he did not include traffic stops that resulted in drunk-driving or drug arrests because deputies could have had less discretion in whether to stop that car than on a more typical traffic stop.
"This is not a matter of dropping out cases," Taylor said. "It's a matter of defining what is the range of the topics of interest that aligns with the scholarship in the field and aligns with the concept of officer discretion."
The hearing broke for lunch about noon and was scheduled to resume shortly after 1 p.m.
At the start of the trial, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow told the attorneys involved that his ruling was going to be based on the facts as they stand presently, not when the case was filed in 2007.
"Keep in mind that I'm going to make a decision...based on the facts as I understand them today," Snow said, presiding over a packed hearing in the special proceedings courtroom in downtown Phoenix.
The case began when Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist who was in the United States legally, was stopped outside a church in Cave Creek where day laborers were known to gather. Melendres, the passenger in a car driven by a White driver, claims that deputies detained him for nine hours and that the detention was unlawful.
Eventually, the case grew to include complaints from two Hispanic siblings from Chicago who felt they were profiled by sheriff's deputies, and from an assistant to former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon whose Hispanic husband claims he was detained and cited while nearby White motorists were treated differently.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, a class that now includes every Latino driver stopped or detained by Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies since 2007, told Snow the issues in the case were not about immigration policy, but about fundamental rights protected by the Constitution. Sheriff Arpaio's use of saturation patrols as a means of immigration enforcement tramples those rights, said Stanley Young, an attorney from San Francisco representing the plaintiffs.
"Our goal here is not to impede enforcement of immigration laws; rather our goal is to ensure the actions of the MCSO conform to the Constitution," Young said. "We hope the court will compel the MCSO to honor the Constitution and put in place the standard practices that other law-enforcement agencies around the county have used to prevent racial discrimination and comply with equal protection laws."
To prove institutional discrimination, experts say, plaintiffs in the Melendres case will have to rely on a three-pronged approach that uses the sheriff's own statements and internal communications to prove the agency's intention to target Latino drivers. Then they must use a combination of anecdotal evidence and statistical analysis to show the results.
But the plaintiffs' evidence is scant, Tim Casey, the sheriff's attorney, told Snow. There are five named plaintiffs in the case, Casey said, who were pulled over in three separate traffic stops. Any attempt to connect the dots between those stops- which did not come during saturation patrols, or immigration sweeps- and the intent of the Sheriff's Office to target Latino residents is a reach, Casey said.
"There are press statements and there are actual field operations," Casey said. "Race or ethnicity had nothing to do with the initiation, planning or execution of these things (saturation patrols)...MCSO operations focus on crime and only crime. We enforce all the laws, whether they're popular or not."
Arpaio expected to testify today in racial-profiling case
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 24, 2012 07:24 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The racial-profiling case against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office will be the subject of intense media scrutiny with Sheriff Joe Arpaio scheduled to take the stand sometime Tuesday to answer questions about his immigration-enforcement priorities and how he kept deputies from discriminating against Latino residents.
Attorneys for plaintiffs who accuse the Sheriff's Office of widespread discrimination are scheduled to call Arpaio to the stand sometime after one of Arpaio's deputies concludes his testimony in the morning.
The case alleges that the Sheriff's Office engaged in institutional discrimination against Latinos when it embarked on what has become the defining mission of Arpaio's 19-year tenure: immigration enforcement. His efforts have been met by accusations -- by citizens, activists and the U.S. Justice Department -- that his agency has engaged in racial profiling and treat Latinos differently than others.
But Arpaio's track record in court hearings and depositions leaves doubt as to whether attorneys from either side will be able to elicit anything substantive from the five-term sheriff.
When Arpaio was called to testify last year in a disciplinary hearing involving former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, the sheriff had difficulty remembering any of the conversations he had with prosecutors as the two agencies worked to take the unprecedented step of filing criminal charges against a sitting judge.
"I don't recall," was Arpaio's most common refrain in that hearing.
In hearings earlier this year related to a fired Sheriff's commander, Arpaio claimed to be unaware of a political-action committee that top commanders in his agency were donating to as part of his 2008 re-election campaign.
And when attorneys representing the plaintiffs in this case took Arpaio's deposition in December 2009, the sheriff claimed ignorance about the racial-profiling lawsuit, said he delegates many decisions about immigration enforcement to his subordinates and claimed he had not read a book he co-authored a year earlier.
When the hearings concluded last week, Sheriff's Deputy Louis DiPietro was on the witness stand and time ran out before the American Civil Liberties Union had the opportunity to re-direct questions at him. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow also indicated he might have some questions for DiPietro when the lawyers are through.
With no jury in the case, Snow will decide whether the Sheriff's Office participated in widespread discrimination against Latino residents. The judge occasionally took moments to clarify testimony or ask questions from the bench during the trial's first day of hearings last week.
The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. Instead, the plaintiffs want the kind of injunctive relief that the Sheriff's Office has resisted to date -- a declaration that spells out what deputies may or may not do when stopping potential suspects, and a court-appointed monitor to ensure the agency abides by those rules. The case is also distinct from a separate civil-rights lawsuit the Justice Department filed against the Sheriff's Office earlier this year, although the ruling in the ACLU's case will likely have a significant impact in that proceeding.
The trial is scheduled to end on Aug. 2.
Arpaio's words used against him at racial-profiling case
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 24, 2012 11:20 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
It was a tactic attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union telegraphed in court filings before the racial-profiling trial began last week -- to use the sheriff's statements to show the intent of Arpaio's immigration enforcement program, along with data and victims' anecdotes to show the impact.
Stanley Young, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the sheriff's immigration-enforcement plan was conceived in November 2005 after Arpaio received a letter from the Minutemen group asking why law enforcement agencies in Arizona refused to question day laborers about their immigration status.
Arpaio's response, according to his handwritten note in the margins of the Minutemen letter, was to have a meeting within the Sheriff's Office to decide how to respond.
Young then played a video clip from a 2007 news conference where Arpaio described the sheriff's immigration-enforcement efforts as a "pure program" designed to target illegal immigrants regardless of whether they had violated Arizona law.
"I'm not afraid to say that, you go after them and you lock them up," Arpaio said during the news conference.
The sheriff tried to clarify his stance on the witness stand Tuesday.
"Under the 287g agreement (with Immigration and Customs Enforcement) when we enforce the laws and stop someone for violating the laws, under that agreement we have the authority to enforce the federal immigration laws even though they were not connected with any state crime," Arpaio explained.
Young quickly moved through other statements Arpaio made through the years regarding immigration enforcement, some of which were contained in the sheriff's press releases and others from his 2008 autobiography.
But Arpaio, as he had done in countless depositions and sworn statements through the years, attempted to deflect responsibility for some of those statements on to his staff members and the co-author of his autobiography.
Arpaio also told the court at the start of Tuesday's proceedings that he had a touch of the flu. He cited suffering a similar illness during testimony last year in disciplinary hearings involving former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, when Arpaio failed to recall certain key meetings with the former prosecutor.
Arpaio's recollection on Tuesday was sound, but he refused to take credit for some of the statements attributed to him, and claimed others were taken out of context.
"I don't get involved in those operations," Arpaio said when asked about one of the sheriff's immigration sweeps. "I'm not there on the street patrolling and making arrests."
Earlier in the morning, the judge in the case, U.S. district Judge Murray Snow, directed questions at one of Arpaio's deputies who participated in a 2007 traffic stop.
Snow focused in on the background, training and experience of Deputy Louis DiPietro, who stopped a car in Cave Creek that had just picked up a group of day laborers, including Manuel de Jesus Ortega-Melendres. Ortega-Melendres is a named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Of particular interest to Snow was a statement DiPietro made last week regarding his opinion that most day laborers are in the country illegally. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have long contended that the Sheriff's Office conflates being Hispanic and being a day laborer with being an undocumented immigrant.
DiPietro said he formed that opinion based on the stop he made in Cave Creek nearly five years ago.
"Is there any other basis other than that day on which you have now formed that opinion," Snow asked.
"The fact that that type of work doesn't require any type of, um, you don't have to show an ID, um, it would be easier, that type of work would be easier for, um, a person in this country illegally to, um, get because they wouldn't have the proper paperwork for other types of employment," DiPietro replied.
After a little more than an hour on the stand, DiPietro was excused and Arpaio took center stage.
The case alleges that the Sheriff's Office engaged in institutional discrimination against Latinos when it embarked on what has become the defining mission of Arpaio's 19-year tenure: immigration enforcement. His efforts have been met by accusations -- by citizens, activists and the U.S. Justice Department -- that his agency has engaged in racial profiling and treat Latinos differently than others.
With no jury in the case, Snow will decide whether the Sheriff's Office participated in widespread discrimination against Latino residents. The judge occasionally took moments to clarify testimony or ask questions from the bench during the trial's first day of hearings last week.
The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. Instead, the plaintiffs want the kind of injunctive relief that the Sheriff's Office has resisted to date -- a declaration that spells out what deputies may or may not do when stopping potential suspects, and a court-appointed monitor to ensure the agency abides by those rules. The case is also distinct from a separate civil-rights lawsuit the Justice Department filed against the Sheriff's Office earlier this year, although the ruling in the ACLU's case will likely have a significant impact in that proceeding.
The trial is scheduled to end on Aug. 2.
Updated: Arpaio shows none of trademark swagger
Posted: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 2:45 pm
Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — There were no TV cameras, no scrum of reporters, no protesters — and there was no swagger inside the courtroom when the typically brash Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio took the stand to face critics who say he and his deputies racially profile Hispanics.
Under questioning from lawyers representing a group Latinos who are suing him and his department, Arpaio spoke in a hush, offering that he was suffering from the flu.
He was asked: Why did you call illegal immigrants "dirty?"
The Maricopa County sheriff responded quietly, clearing his throat often, and saying the statement was taken out of context. He added that if a person were to cross the U.S.-Mexico border on foot over four days in the desert that person "could be dirty."
[You honestly mean you are not a racist Joe?????]
"That's the context on how I used that word," he said.
The case represents the first time the sheriff's office has been accused of systematic racial profiling and will serve as a precursor to a similar yet broader civil rights lawsuit filed against Arpaio by the U.S. Justice Department.
Arpaio has long denied racial profiling allegations and said Tuesday, "We don't arrest people because of the color of their skin."
Letters in the sheriff's immigration file took center stage during his more than five hours of testimony — as did his previous statements, which critics say show prejudiced thinking on his part.
Lawyers in court asked Arpaio: What about your statement on a national TV news show saying you considered a 2007 comparison between your department and the Ku Klux Klan "an honor"?
Arpaio responded that he doesn't consider the comparison an honor, adding that he has no use for the KKK.
[Either way Sheriff Joe is a liar]
The plaintiffs' attorneys also turned to Arpaio's famous practice of putting county jail inmates in pink underwear, using statements he made during a 2009 speech to an anti-illegal immigration group in Houston.
"I always have an official reason so I can win the lawsuits," Arpaio said, after stating the pink shorts are less likely to be smuggled out of jail and sold on the black market.
"And then I have my reasons," he went on. "And my reason is they hate pink. They do. They may like it in California, but they don't like it in Arizona."
He was asked whether he says one thing in court and does another when he leaves.
"This is in humor," Arpaio said. "I make sure we do things properly in case I get sued."
The group of Latinos who say they have been discriminated against say Arpaio launched some immigration sweeps based on emails and letters that don't allege crimes, but complain only that "dark-skinned people" are congregating in a given area or speaking Spanish.
During the sweeps, sheriff's 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 Arpaio's office since January 2008, according to figures provided by the sheriff's department, which hasn't conducted any such patrols since October.
Arpaio was asked whether a white person was ever arrested on an immigration violation during the first two years of such sweeps, to which he replied, "I can't recall."
The plaintiffs aren't seeking money in the suit. They are seeking a declaration that Arpaio's office racially profiles Latinos and an order requiring policy changes.
If Arpaio loses the case, he won't face jail time or fines. If he wins, it would be likely to severely undercut the government's case against him.
The plaintiffs say deputies conducting Arpaio's sweeps pulled over Hispanics without probable cause, making the stops only to inquire about the immigration status of the people in the vehicles.
The sheriff maintained that people are stopped only if authorities have probable cause to believe they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of the people stopped are illegal immigrants.
Plaintiff's lawyers say Arpaio endorsed calls for racial profiling with the sweeps by passing along the ambiguous and racially-charged complaint letters to aides who planned his immigration enforcement efforts and carried out at least three patrols after receiving the letters.
They also point out that Arpaio wrote thank-you notes to some who sent complaints.
Arpaio's attorneys denied that the letters and emails prompted the sheriff to launch the patrols with a discriminatory motive. His lawyers called the complaints racially insensitive and said aides to the sheriff — not Arpaio himself — decided where to conduct the patrols. They also said there was nothing wrong with the thank-you notes.
"He sends thank-you letters because he is an elected official," Tim Casey, the lawyer leading Arpaio's defense, said during opening arguments.
In an August 2008 letter, a woman wrote about a Sun City restaurant: "From the staff at the register to the staff back in the kitchen area, all I heard was Spanish — except when they haltingly spoke to a customer." The letter ended with a suggestion that the sheriff investigate.
Arpaio made a handwritten note in the margins saying, "letter thank you for info will look into it" and that the complaint should be sent to aide Brian Sands, who selects locations for sweeps, with a notation saying "for our operation." The sheriff's office launched a sweep two weeks later in Sun City.
Arpaio said in response to a question about the letter Tuesday that speaking Spanish is not a crime and that he sent the note to Sands for "him for whatever he wants to do with it."
Arpaio also said he generally passed along the letters that called for immigration enforcement in a particular area to his subordinates, but didn't do the planning for the sweeps.
"I just send this info to my subordinates so they could ask for it. I don't agree with every letter I receive," Arpaio said.
"We should never racially profile," Arpaio said. "It's immoral, illegal."
[Of course Sheriff Joe probably had his fingers crossed and was thinking
look MF I got a gun and a badge and I can do anything I want. FU ingrate!!!!]
Personal stories take forefront at Arpaio trial
Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2012 12:45 am
Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — The personal stories of people who said they were racially profiled in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration sweeps took center stage Wednesday at a trial aimed at settling allegations over whether the lawman's trademark patrols disproportionately single out Latinos.
One witnesses tearfully described feeling "humiliated, worthless, defenseless," saying the emotions were the result of being pulled over without justification and treated disrespectfully by Maricopa County sheriff's deputies.
Arpaio has repeatedly denied charges of racial profiling within his department and says his deputies only make stops when they think a crime has been committed.
The group of Latinos who filed the lawsuit against Arpaio and his office say that the sheriff's officers based some traffic stops on the race of the people who were in vehicles. The plaintiffs say they were pulled over only so deputies could inquire about their immigration status.
Those who filed the lawsuit aren't seeking money. They instead are seeking a declaration that Arpaio's office racially profiles and an order requiring the department to make policy changes.
If Arpaio loses the civil case, he won't face jail time or fines.
The lawsuit marks the first case in which the sheriff's office has been accused of systematic racial profiling and will serve as a bellwether for a similar yet broader civil rights lawsuit filed against Arpaio and his agency by the U.S. Justice Department.
U.S. District Judge Murray Snow will decide the case. Testimony is expected to wrap next week.
Daniel Magos, 67, a native of Mexico who became a U.S. citizen more than 45 years ago, said he was pulled over with his wife in the vehicle on his way to work.
Magos said the Maricopa County sheriff's deputy who pulled him over in 2009 didn't explain at first why he made the stop. Magos said eventually the officer explained that the license plate wasn't visible on his truck, which was pulling a trailer. But he testified that the trailer wasn't blocking the plate.
Magos said the deputy yelled at him and asked his wife, also a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, to show her identification.
He says the officer asked him whether he had drugs, guns or a bazooka in the truck, to which he replied that he had a legal handgun on the floor of the vehicle.
Magos began to cry as described being searched under his armpits and in his groin area, saying he felt "humiliated, worthless, defenseless."
He said the encounter ended with the deputy releasing with only a warning that the trailer needed a license plate, which it did not have, and an apology for yelling.
"But after his apology, he told me that the stop had nothing to do with racial profiling," Magos said. "I told him that's exactly what it was."
Magos said the deputy, before making the stop, couldn't have seen his license plate from the angle the officer's vehicle was situated.
One of Arpaio's lawyers suggested that the officer who pulled Magos over could not have known the race of the vehicle's occupants because the windows were tinted. The lawyer also suggested that the officer made the bazooka comment to ease tensions.
The deputy who pulled over Magos has not testified.
Judge Snow also heard from a man who said Arpaio's deputies pulled their guns on him during an unjustified stop in 2008.
Manuel Nieto, 37, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, says the encounter, which ended without a citation, began when he and his sister went to a gas station during a lunch break.
Nieto said when he pulled into the lot, he and his sister could see two men nearby who had been detained by a sheriff's deputy. He said the deputy told them to leave, giving a reason he said he still doesn't understand, and threatened to arrest them for disorderly conduct if they didn't.
Nieto's sister, Velia Meraz, testified that the officer became upset when she asked for his name and badge number.
Meraz said she yelled in Spanish as they were leaving that the two detained people didn't have to sign any document presented by the deputy.
An Arpaio attorney suggested that Meraz had used profanity and called Arpaio a Nazi, referring to him even though he wasn't at the scene.
Nieto and Meraz testified that they were followed by another deputy who pulled them over as other officers arrived at their father's auto repair shop.
Nieto said officers pulled him from the vehicle, drew their guns and handcuffed him.
Nieto, who was released from prison in 2008 after serving a sentence for what he described only as a domestic dispute, was eventually released without being charged.
Deputy Michael Kikes, who pulled them over, testified race had nothing to do with the stop. He said the two refused to stop even though he had turned on his sirens.
Kikes testified that the officer at the gas station had urgency in his voice when he asked for an officer to pursue the vehicle and that Nieto made the matter worse by not stopping.
Kikes said he didn't know of Nieto's ethnicity until he pulled him over.
Kikes added that he never pulled his gun, though he noted he had his hand on it as he normally does during stops. He also disputed that he pulled Nieto out of the vehicle.
He said the encounter ended without charges because no crime had been committed.
Aide: Saturation patrols not based on day laborers, despite Arpaio claims
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 26, 2012 12:00 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Sheriff Joe Arpiao's public statements about his office's immigration-enforcement policies should not be taken as fact, one of his deputy chiefs told a judge in a racial-profiling lawsuit involving the Sheriff's Office.
Deputy Chief Brian Sands, who oversees the sheriff's human-smuggling unit, told the court that there is a disconnect between what Arpaio says publicly and what his deputies are actually doing when it comes to immigration enforcement.
"When I say a disconnect, oftentimes he doesn't understand what the rank-and-file deputies are doing out there," Sands said of Arpaio.
The deputy chief's statements came Thursday during two hours of testimony at the beginning of the fourth day of the trial. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow eventually must rule on whether the Sheriff's Office has engaged in institutional discrimination against Latino residents, as plaintiffs have claimed.
The class-action lawsuit does not seek monetary damages, but rather to prevent the Sheriff's Office from enacting immigration-enforcement policies that the plaintiffs say violate the rights of Hispanic residents. If the plaintiffs prevail, they would seek a court-ordered monitor to ensure the Sheriff's Office lives up to the terms of the ruling.
Arpaio's statements were the focus when the sheriff took the stand earlier in the week. Attorneys representing the plaintiffs attempted to use Arpaio's words to prove, for example, that the Sheriff's Office perceives all day laborers as illegal immigrants.
One of Arpaio's press releases touting a saturation patrol, in particular, noted that the sheriff was responding to concerns about day laborers.
"There were inaccuracies that went out" in press statements, Sands said, noting that he makes the decisions about where the patrols occur based on crime reports and without influence from Arpaio.
When Snow asked Sands if he could point to one of the sheriff's saturation patrols that targeted drop houses, Sands could not immediately recall one.
Sands said citizen requests for sheriff's deputies to conduct crime-suppression operations in certain areas of the Valley that were based solely complaints about race and contained no reports of criminal activity, were disregarded.
The deputy chief said the saturation patrols were typically launched in response to reports of crime in a certain area -- but apprehending undocumented immigrants, Sands testified, was often the result of the patrols.
Snow asked Sands if arresting undocumented immigrants was the goal of the patrols.
"That's not the goal or objective that's put out there, but it's the results that occur," Sands said. "We don't go out intentionally on a saturation patrol to stop any certain group of people. If people are arrested and subsequently they're in the country illegally, that's the end result of stopping a certain amount of people."
Sands is scheduled to be followed on the stand Thursday by a selection of sheriff's deputies and residents who say they were profiling victims.
The trial is scheduled to end next week.
Head of Arpaio's immigration unit admits errors
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 25, 2012 11:29 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
One of the men in charge of the Maricopa County sheriff's human-smuggling unit when the agency was most fervently pursuing undocumented immigrants supplied Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies with inaccurate or false interpretations of federal immigration law.
Sheriff's Sgt. Brett Palmer testified in federal court Wednesday that he also forwarded racially insensitive e-mails to other deputies, including to members of the human-smuggling unit, one of which depicted a Hispanic man passed out near a bottle of tequila with the caption "Mexican Yoga."
Palmer said in court that he regretted sending the e-mails, which he considered jokes.
"Did you ever receive any feedback from anyone indicating to you that this indicates to them that you have a problem, somehow you're racist, somehow you have some issue?" Arpaio's attorney, Tim Casey, asked Palmer.
"No I did not," he said. "I'm uncertain of the time of the discipline, but I am certain that I was disciplined."
The e-mail exchanges from one of the people responsible for directing the sheriff's human-smuggling unit came to light in the third day of what is expected to be a six-day bench trial to determine whether Arpaio's agency systematically discriminates against Latinos.
The deputy's testimony came a day after attorneys for the plaintiffs highlighted some of Arpaio's statements about illegal immigration, hoping to bolster the plaintiffs' claim that a culture of discrimination in the agency started with Arpaio and flowed down through the organization to commanders and supervisors like Palmer and deputies making traffic stops.
In Palmer's case, information flowed from him up the organizational chart in at least one key instance. Research the 12-year employee of the Sheriff's Office did on federal immigration law ended up being cited by Arpaio during a 2009 news conference. It was later learned that the law Arpaio cited did not exist and that the research was a legal interpretation taken from an anti-illegal-immigration website.
The trial is being conducted in front of U.S. District Judge Murray Snow without a jury, which allows Snow to question witnesses when he sees fit. On both occasions when he has questioned sheriff's deputies, his inquiries have centered on issues involving training, experience, oversight and instructions given before sheriff's saturation patrols, where deputies have flooded neighborhoods looking for traffic violations as a way to contact drivers and potentially capture undocumented immigrants.
Key players in a traffic stop took the stand Wednesday as a motorcycle deputy and a pair of siblings whom he stopped in a 2008 immigration operation near Cave Creek recounted their versions of the encounter.
Deputy Michael Kikes, who pulled over the SUV in which Velia Meraz rode with her brother, Manuel Nieto, took the witness stand first.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs pointed out numerous contradictions between deposition testimony Kikes gave earlier and his statements in court Wednesday.
Snow picked up on a couple of apparent contradictions, too. He questioned Kikes about his involvement with the sheriff's saturation patrols and the instructions he was given before the operations began.
Kikes initially told the court that he recalled seeing an instruction sheet for the March 2008 operation that included a specific warning against racial profiling. "In bold letters, I remember," Kikes said.
Snow later had Kikes look at the instruction sheet. The deputy could find no such admonition. Kikes also claimed he was in a briefing before the operation, but his name did not appear on an attendance sheet that other deputies signed.
The contradictions in Kikes' testimony became more significant as Meraz and Nieto gave accounts of their stop and detention that directly conflicted with Kikes' statements. Kikes claimed he never used force with Nieto after stopping the siblings' SUV at the request of another deputy.
Kikes also said he never drew his weapon during the stop, but Meraz and Nieto testified that some deputies had their guns drawn.
At the end of each plaintiff's testimony, attorneys for the Sheriff's Office posed the same question: Has a sheriff's deputy pulled you over since the incident that led to your profiling claim? All have so far answered no, and the attorneys' point is clear: If the Sheriff's Office discriminated against Latinos, surely you would have been pulled over by now.
As the trial progressed Wednesday afternoon, preparations and instructions given to deputies before saturation patrols took precedence over their activities while on patrol.
Palmer testified that deputies participating in the operations are warned repeatedly against discriminating or using race as a factor when considering contacting drivers.
He also referenced instruction sheets where that admonition was in bold and underlined.
But under questioning from Cecillia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, Palmer said he could not provide data to show deputies were not contacting Hispanic drivers at disproportionate rates because those types of statistics are not available. Palmer answered that he trusts his subordinates.
He also said he did not hesitate to correct callers who phoned the sheriff's immigration hotline to report concerns that were related to race more than crime.
"If there wasn't any criminal matter present at the location they were describing, I would have no problem telling an individual that what they provided to me amounts to racial profiling," Palmer said. "In those instances, they fell into two categories: One category where they would be completely compliant and understanding ... the other one would yell, scream and swear at me."
Arpaio on Tuesday testified that the locations of the operations were not influenced by correspondence from citizens, some of whom cited Spanish-speaking fast-food workers as a reason for a potential immigration sweep.
Instead, the sheriff said he forwarded that information to staff members, including Deputy Chief Brian Sands, who oversees the human-smuggling unit, for their assessment.
Sands on Wednesday said some of that correspondence did influence where immigration sweeps took place, but he did not say which citizen requests prompted which raids.
Sands also said the fact that Arpaio responds to citizens isn't necessarily improper, once again setting up the position's need to balance the demands of a politician and police officer that Snow will have to weigh in his decision.
"I believe the sheriff can respond to his constituents how he feels he should," Sands said. "The way he responds to his constituents isn't necessarily the way I deal with it. I don't normally have to deal with a lot of that. It's not fair for me to put words in his mouth. ... If he wants to respond to it, he's the officeholder."
Sands is expected to continue his testimony today with other deputies and plaintiffs scheduled to follow.
The trial is scheduled to end next week.
Is Joe Arpaio more prop than cop?
This week, we learned that we should pay no attention to the man in the apparently empty uniform. It seems America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about.
Now, before your fire up your e-mail or start calling in those drive-by voicemails, read on. I’m not the one who said it.
One of Joe Arpaio’s own guys – a deputy chief, no less -- testified this week that there’s a "disconnect" between Arpaio and reality.
"When I say a disconnect, often times he doesn't understand what the rank-and-file deputies are doing out there," Deputy Chief Brian Sands, head of Arpaio’s human smuggling unit, told U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow.
Snow is the judge who must decide whether the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has been racially profiling Latinos as deputies sweep through the county, searching for broken taillights and cracked windshields.
The county’s legal strategy seems to be to throw the boss under his own mobile command station – the one he uses during his immigra, er, saturation patrols.
Clearly the county’s own lawyers are trying to put as much distance as they can between the deputies on the street and the sheriff who runs the place.
That is, the sheriff whose PR staff sends out press releases about targeting day laborers.
The sheriff who passes along to Sands the requests from constituents – at times little more than racist rants containing no evidence of criminal activity but asking Arpaio to arrest people who have dark skin and thus must be here illegally .
(“When I send these letters, it doesn’t mean I agree with them or to have anybody take action,” Arpaio testified.)
The sheriff who wrote a book that contains passages that say, among other things, that Mexican immigrants refuse to assimilate, have different “hopes and truths” than other immigrants and come here hoping to reconquer the southwest for Mexico.
(“My co-author wrote them,” Arpaio testified, evidently forgetting his previous pronouncements that he “very carefully” wrote Joes’s Law, “like I was testifying in court.”)
You begin to see why MCSO, faced with charges of institutional discrimination, wants to treat the sheriff as if has a bad odor.
Deputies this week took great pains to explain to Snow that Arpaio’s actions – his TV interviews explaining when they can ask about immigration status, the citizen complaints he passes along, even his illegal immigration “tipline” – have no real force within the agency he has headed for the last two decades.
Put another way, 80-year-old Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is really more prop than cop, like those blow-up dolls that drivers used to install in their passenger seat so they could sneak into the carpool lane.
A prop, that is, if you really believe that Arpaio’s not calling the shots on his signature issue -- if you really buy what they’re selling, that deputies aren’t influenced by the guy at the top.
Deputy County Attorney Tom Liddy, who with Tim Casey is defending the Sheriff’s Office, told me that Arpaio is neither a fall guy nor a prop. He is, Liddy says, simply a good a manager, delegating the operation of his office to his top commanders.
“The sheriff does not give operational orders to Chief Sands,” he said. “That would be micromanagement, like Jimmy Carter taking the schedule for the White House tennis court.”
I don’t know if U.S. presidents keep tabs on tennis but I would have guessed that local sheriffs who stake their celebrity and their legacy to chasing after illegal immigrants would at least know how they land in custody. But apparently not.
Liddy says that Arpaio, in TV interviews, seems at times “confused” about what it actually takes to initiate a human smuggling investigation. That, he says, is likely because Arpaio hasn’t undergone the Department of Homeland Security’s 287(g) training as have his deputies.
“But we want to make sure that the court understands there was no confusion in the minds of deputies, 90 percent of whom are Hispanic, when making the stops,” he said. “They are not anti-Hispanic bigots.”
Well, there certainly is confusion now in the minds of citizens.
For 20 years, we’ve been listening to Arpaio talk about himself in the third person. Now, suddenly, we’re to believe he’s nothing more than an inflatable cop?
If so, then I can already see the slogan for his coming campaign:
There’s an old, really old, sheriff in town and he’s full of hot air – literally.
Arpaio isn't both tough, oblivious
Jul. 31, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Try fooling the public a half dozen times or more about who really runs the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, and shame on Joe Arpaio.
It is a theme repeated time and again. Top aides to Arpaio avow under oath that their bombastic boss has virtually no connection to day-to-day police operations within his department.
And, time and again, those assurances are underscored by the man himself, who has sworn under oath that he hasn't read his own Mexican-bashing quotations in his own autobiography.
All the bluster, all the chest-thumping hyperbole about doing things his way: None of it, they avow, is real. Really.
Arpaio and his aides now are straining to convince U.S. District Judge Murray Snow of the boss's oblivion. Snow is presiding over a non-jury bench trial to determine if the sheriff's office, under direction of America's most notorious illegal-immigrant hunter, Joe Arpaio, racially profiled Hispanics in his zealous pursuit of illegals.
Said Deputy Chief Brian Sands, under oath: "Oftentimes, he doesn't understand what the rank-and-file deputies are doing out there."
The claims of Sands and other deputies mirror testimony in earlier investigations involving top aides like former Chief Deputy David Hendershott, who used his police power to terrorize county officials like Torquemada used Inquisition-era waterboarding.
Through it all, Arpaio knew nothing. Heard no screams for mercy.
Apologists for Arpaio must come to terms with the person they so zealously defend. Either he is America's toughest sheriff, or America's most oblivious sheriff.
Arpaio's attorneys contend that Arpaio's hermetically sealed existence in his own office is intended to avoid micromanagement of professional police work.
"It serves as an insulation against desires and impulses that might not be in the best interest of the community," said attorney Tim Casey.
That runs exactly counter to Arpaio's assertions, repeated endlessly, that his notorious, wasteful "crime-suppression sweeps" through largely Hispanic neighborhoods were conducted precisely because he deemed them in the community's best interests. The very existence of the sweeps was a political statement.
Arpaio and his acolytes either lied to the public about the purpose of those sweeps, or they are lying to the judge now.
As 12 News reporter Joe Dana observed in his blog last week, Arpaio claimed before Judge Snow that he doesn't agree with Mexican-bashing quotes in his own autobiography. The ghost writer said it, he says.
That is evidence of either breathtaking ignorance or mendacity. Whichever, it constitutes unimpeachable evidence that Arpaio is working either the court or the public like a honky-tonk piano.
Fool us once ...
Racial-profiling trial could extend into mid-August
by JJ Hensley - Jul. 31, 2012 10:59 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The racial profiling trial involving the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is scheduled to end within the next two days, but could be extended into the middle of next month depending on how U.S. District Judge Murray Snow wants attorneys to present their closing arguments.
As the trial moves into its third week, the plaintiffs, who accuse the Sheriff's Office of engaging in widespread discrimination against Latino residents, have repeatedly called sheriff's deputies to the stand to explain the planning that goes into saturation patrols. Those witnesses have been interspersed with victims who have testified about the impact of the patrols.
The case alleges that the sheriff's illegal-immigration enforcement priorities have resulted in discrimination against Latino residents. Over the past six years, Arpaio has made immigration enforcement his trademark. But those efforts have also been met by accusations -- by citizens, activists and the U.S. Justice Department -- that his agency has engaged in racial profiling and discrimination.
Lydia Guzman, a local immigration advocate, told the court Tuesday that the sheriff's immigration sweeps and saturation patrols had negatively affected her group, made up of individual volunteers and a variety of community organizations.
The sheriff's operations forced Guzman's group, Somos America, to devote more time to community outreach to ease the anxiety Latino residents felt when Arpaio began conducting the sweeps in 2007, Guzman said. The operations also led to more allegations of profiling, including one from Guzman herself, though she was not stopped or detained.
Guzman said she saw a sheriff's deputy during a 2009 saturation patrol in the West Valley, and the deputy followed her as she pulled out of a gas station, causing Guzman to get nervous.
"I thought to myself, 'He's going to stop me'," she said. "It was at that moment, I knew I'm racially profiled. This is happening."
The deputy pulled away from Guzman's car after a news van from a Hispanic television station passed Guzman and acknowledged her, she said.
Guzman later agreed with Tom Liddy, an attorney representing the Sheriff's Office, that she had never been stopped by a sheriff's deputy.
The most pressing concern in Tuesday morning's hearings concerned how the long-standing racial-profiling trial will end.
Snow gave each side 20 hours in which to present their cases during the hearings, and attorneys figured there were about 17 hours remaining when the session ended last week.
An attorney for Arpaio's office said last week that he planned to call five witnesses during his case, including a former police chief to serve as an expert on "best practices" and the director of research at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, who can refute conclusions of the plaintiff's statistical expert about data on traffic stops.
Plaintiffs are expected to conclude their case Tuesday after a sergeant from the sheriff's human-smuggling unit is excused.
Snow has not yet decided whether he wants the attorneys to submit their closing arguments in writing or in a hearing. Snow said he would rule later Tuesday. He could ask the arguments to be submitted in writing on a schedule with two-week intervals or, as the plaintiffs' attorneys proposed, hold a separate hearing on Aug. 13 for closing arguments.
With no jury in the case, it is snow who Snow will decide whether the Sheriff's Office participated in racial profiling. The case is unrelated to a U.S. Justice Department civil-rights lawsuit filed earlier this year, though its outcome could affect the Justice Department case.
The plaintiffs want the kind of injunctive relief that the Sheriff's Office has resisted in the past: A declaration that spells out what deputies may or may not do when stopping potential suspects and a court-appointed monitor to make sure the agency lives by those rules.
Conor Oberst lashes out at Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 'MariKKKopa'
by Ed Masley - Aug. 1, 2012 02:48 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, who is among the more vocal opponents of SB 1070 in the music world, has taken aim at Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a song called "MariKKKopa," a title inspired by Arpaio telling Lou Dobbs "I think it's an honor" to be compared to the Ku Klux Klan because "it means we're doing something."
The song ends with a sample of that interview, which aired on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN in 2007.
Recorded with Desaparecidos, the finds him sputtering, in character, "It's time we had some justice for the White race on this earth/This place is strange and getting stranger." Then the chorus hits on Oberst, still singing in characters, shouts, "We've gotta round them up/Door to door, tonight we're ready/Knock, knock, knock/Drag them from their beds/They've got some nerve to say they were here first."
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Oberst says of Arpaio: "For years, he has been a beacon of bigotry and intolerance for all the world to see. The list of human and civil-rights abuses he's committed in Maricopa County is long and well documented. His many 'crime suppression sweeps' are some of the most egregious affronts to American values and human dignity perpetrated in this century. What he does need is to be called out at every opportunity as the criminal that he is. There are many ways of doing that. The federal government's current law suit against him being one of them. I used the best means at my disposal to do it: a punk rock song."
Local rockers Jimmy Eat World fired back at Oberst via Twitter.
"Hey @comvb," they tweeted. "Not everyone (in) Maricopa County supports #SB1070 and @sheriffjoe. Your song title is unhelpful."
It's been more than a decade since Oberst has toured or recorded with Desaparecidos. "MariKKKopa" and another track, "Backsell," will be released Thursday, Aug. 2.
Which is the real Joe Arpaio?
Joe Arpaio has released his first campaign ad of the season, entitled “It’s time you met the real Joe Arpaio.”
I so agree.
In the ad, there are scenes from back in the day (that would be the 1970s), when Arpaio was a DEA agent. And there are scenes of Joe the family man.
Missing are scenes of Arpaio’s 1992 press conference when he announced that he was running for sheriff, vowing to serve one term and professionalize the office by working to turn it into an appointive post.
"I will demand effectiveness in the Sheriff's Office, increase citizen involvement and serve one term and take the office out of politics,” he said at the time.
Twenty years later, he's still there and I thought for the longest time that we knew him.
These days, however, I’m not quite sure who the real sheriff is.
Is it the tough talker who refers to himself as “the sheriff” and has long left the impression that he’s running the show? Except, of course, when he’s not. (Think 432 uninvestigated sex abuse cases, think Dave Hendershott’s reign of terror.)
Or is he a figurehead, as suggested by last week’s testimony from one of his deputy chiefs?
“Often times he doesn't understand what the rank-and-file deputies are doing out there," Brian Sands, head of Arpaio’s human smuggling unit, told U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow.
Which, I wonder, is the real Joe Arpaio in this, his 81st year?
And did he fulfill that long-ago pledge made to the people of Maricopa County?
No wonder Sheriff Joe and his round up all the Mexicans policy is
so popular with the private prison companies.
I wonder if Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews was also a welfare program for corporations in Nazi Germany?
Immigrants prove big business for prison companies
Aug. 2, 2012 09:50 AM
Associated Press
MIAMI -- The U.S. is locking up more illegal immigrants than ever, generating lucrative profits for the nation's largest prison companies, and an Associated Press review shows the businesses have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers and contributing to campaigns.
The cost to American taxpayers is on track to top $2 billion for this year, and the companies are expecting their biggest cut of that yet in the next few years thanks to government plans for new facilities to house the 400,000 immigrants detained annually.
After a decade of expansion, the sprawling, private system runs detention centers everywhere from a Denver suburb to an industrial area flanking Newark's airport, and is largely controlled by just three companies.
The growth is far from over, despite the sheer drop in illegal immigration in recent years.
In 2011, nearly half the beds in the nation's civil detention system were in private facilities with little federal oversight, up from just 10 percent a decade ago.
The companies also have raked in cash from subsidiaries that provide health care and transportation. And they are holding more immigrants convicted of federal crimes in their privately-run prisons.
The financial boom, which has helped save some of these companies from the brink of bankruptcy, has occurred even though federal officials acknowledge privatization isn't necessarily cheaper.
This seismic shift toward a privatized system happened quietly. While Congress' unsuccessful efforts to overhaul immigration laws drew headlines and sparked massive demonstrations, lawmakers' negotiations to boost detention dollars received far less attention.
The industry's giants -- Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp. -- have spent at least $45 million combined on campaign donations and lobbyists at the state and federal level in the last decade, the AP found.
CCA and GEO, who manage most private detention centers, insist they aren't trying to influence immigration policy to make more money, and their lobbying and campaign donations have been legal.
"As a matter of long-standing corporate policy, CCA does not lobby on issues that would determine the basis for an individual's detention or incarceration," CCA spokesman Steve Owen said in an email to the AP. The company has a website dedicated to debunking such allegations.
GEO, which was part of The Wackenhut Corp. security firm until 2003, and Management and Training Corp. declined repeated interview requests.
Advocates for immigrants are skeptical of claims that the lobbying is not meant to influence policy.
"That's a lot of money to listen quietly," said Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, who has helped lead a campaign to encourage large banks and mutual funds to divest from the prison companies.
The detention centers are located in cities and remote areas alike, often in low-slung buildings surrounded by chain-link fences and razor wire. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents detain men, women and children suspected of violating civil immigration laws at these facilities. Most of those held at the 250 sites nationwide are illegal immigrants awaiting deportation, but some green card holders, asylum seekers and others are also there.
The total average nightly cost to taxpayers to detain an illegal immigrant, including health care and guards' salaries, is about $166, ICE confirmed only after the AP calculated that figure and presented it to the agency.
That's up from $80 in 2004. ICE said the $80 didn't include all of the same costs but declined to provide details.
Pedro Guzman is among those who have passed through the private detention centers. He was brought to the U.S. by his Guatemalan mother at age 8. He was working and living here legally under temporary protected status but was detained after missing an appearance for an asylum application his mother had filed for him. Officials ordered him deported.
Although he was married to a U.S. citizen, ICE considered him a flight risk and locked him up in 2009: first at a private detention facility run by CCA in Gainesville, Ga., and eventually at CCA's Stewart Detention Center, south of Atlanta. Guzman spent 19 months in Stewart until he was finally granted legal permanent residency.
"It's a millionaire's business, and they are living off profits from each one of the people who go through there every single night," said Guzman, now a cable installer in Durham, N.C. "It's our money that we earn as taxpayers every day that goes to finance this."
The federal government stepped up detentions of illegal immigrants in the 1990s, as the number of people crossing the border soared. In 1996, Congress passed a law requiring many more illegal immigrants be locked up. But it wasn't until 2005 -- as the corrections companies' lobbying efforts reached their zenith -- that ICE got a major boost. Between 2005 and 2007, the agency's budget jumped from $3.5 billion to $4.7 billion, adding more than $5 million for custody operations.
Dora Schriro, who in 2009 reviewed the nation's detention system at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said nearly every aspect had been outsourced.
"ICE was always relying on others for responsibilities that are fundamentally those of the government," said Schriro, now the New York City Correction Commissioner. "If you don't have the competency to know what is a fair price to ask and negotiate the most favorable rates for the best service, then the likelihood that you are going to overspend is greater."
Private companies argue they can save Americans money by running the centers more cheaply.
Pablo Paez, a spokesman for Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO, said in an email his company supports public-private partnerships which "have been demonstrated to achieve significant cost savings for the taxpayers." He declined to answer specific questions.
But ICE Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations Gary Mead said the government has never studied whether privatizing immigrant detention saves money.
"They are not our most expensive, they are not our cheapest" facilities, he said. "At some point cost cannot be the only factor."
One fundamental difference between private detention facilities and their publicly-run counterparts is transparency. The private ones don't have to follow the same public records and access requirements.
President Barack Obama has asked for less detention money this year and encouraged the agency to look at alternatives to locking people up. He also ordered DHS to stop deporting young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally, which could reduce the number behind bars. Congress, however, can approve more detention spending than DHS requests.
Beyond civil detention centers, private companies are also making more money locking up non-citizens who commit federal crimes.
To deter illegal border crossers, federal prosecutors are increasingly charging immigrants with felonies for repeatedly entering the country without papers. That has led thousands of people convicted of illegal re-entry, as well as more serious federal offenses, to serve time in private prisons built just for them.
A decade ago, more than 3,300 criminal immigrants were sent to private prisons under two 10-year contracts the Federal Bureau of Prisons signed with CCA worth $760 million. Now, the agency is paying the private companies $5.1 billion to hold more than 23,000 criminal immigrants through 13 contracts of varying lengths.
CCA was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2000 due to lawsuits, management problems and dwindling contracts. Last year, the company reaped $162 million in net income. Federal contracts made up 43 percent of its total revenues, in part thanks to rising immigrant detention.
GEO, which cites the immigration agency as its largest client, saw its net income jump from $16.9 million to $78.6 million since 2000.
"Another factor driving growth ... for the private sector is in the area of immigration and illegal immigration specifically," Chief Financial Officer Brian Evans told investors in GEO's 2011 3rd quarter earnings call.
CCA warned in its 2011 annual earnings report that federal policy changes in "illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."
Utah-based Management and Training is not publicly held, so it does not post earnings.
At just the federal level, these companies, their political action committees and their employees have spent more than $32 million on lobbying and on campaign contributions since 2000 -- with the national political parties getting the largest campaign contributions.
An AP review of Federal Election Commission data found the prison companies and their employees gave to key congressional leaders who control how much money goes to run the nation's detention centers and who influence how many contracts go to the private sector.
James Thurber, head of American University's Center for Congressional & Presidential Studies, said amid the heated national debate over immigration, the companies have been savvy not to donate heavily to those sponsoring legislation, which could spark backlash.
There are more discrete and more powerful ways to influence policy, Thurber said.
"Follow the money," he said. "If the money is being increased significantly for illegal immigration, then that is a shift in policy ... a significant shift."
The top beneficiaries of the campaign contributions include:
-- The Republican Party. Its national and congressional committees received around $450,000. Democrats received less than half that.
-- Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. He received $71,000, mostly during his failed presidential bid against Obama, well after he dropped support for a bill that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and reduced detentions.
-- House Speaker John Boehner received $63,000.
--Kentucky U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers received about $59,000. Rogers chaired the first subcommittee on Homeland Security and heads the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He often criticizes ICE for not filling more detention beds.
-- Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He received $58,500. The lawmaker from Tennessee, where CCA is headquartered, led the Senate at the height of the nation's immigrant detention build up from 2003 to 2007.
More than campaign contributions, though, the private prison companies spent most of their money each year on lobbying in Washington, peaking in 2005 when they spent $5 million.
In just 2011, CCA paid the Washington firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld $280,000 in part to "monitor immigration reform," federal reports show.
They also lobbied heavily against a bill that would force them to comply with the same open records requirements governing public facilities.
Owen, the CCA spokesman, said the company ramped up lobbying to acquaint new lawmakers with the industry.
"In recent years, federal elections have been very volatile, resulting in a lot of new faces in Washington," he said. "The result of that volatility means a lot of people at the federal level who may not be familiar with the work we do."
The prison companies' influence at the state level mirrors that in Washington, although the money is even harder to track since many states, such as Arizona and Illinois, where the companies have won lucrative detention contracts, don't require corporations to disclose what they pay lobbyists.
The AP reviewed campaign contribution data from the three companies' political action committees and their employees over the last decade, compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. From 2003 to the first half of 2012, state candidates and political parties in the 50 states received more than $5.32 million.
In the 10 states where the companies' committees and employees contributed the most, the AP found they also spent at least $8 million more lobbying local officials in the last five years alone. It is impossible to know how much of this lobbying money was aimed only at immigrant-related contracts. But that money generally went to states along the border, such as Florida and Texas, which have high numbers of immigrants, as well as states such as Georgia and Louisiana, where large numbers of immigrants also are detained.
ICE has begun providing more oversight as part of the Obama administration's pledge to overhaul the nation's system for jailing immigration offenders. It recently scrapped plans for CCA to build a 1,500-bed immigrant detention center in a high-end Miami suburb following months of local protests.
But it remains committed to adding more private beds. Plans are on track to build or expand private immigration jails in Newark, N.J., in the suburbs of Chicago and along a lonely stretch of California's Mojave Desert.
Sheriff Arpaio deputy denies slamming pregnant woman
Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2012 5:39 pm
Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — Lawyers for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio mounted a defense Wednesday against allegations that he and his deputies racially profile Latinos, drawing testimony from an officer who denied slamming a pregnant Hispanic woman stomach-first into her car during a traffic stop.
Deputy Francisco Gamboa testified at a trial aimed at settling the discriminatory policing allegations that he never laid a hand on Lorena Escamilla and never slammed her into her car during the September 2009 stop in her driveway.
Escamilla says the deputy discriminated against her with an unjustified stop, but Gamboa, who is Hispanic, said race played no part in his decision to pull her over.
Gamboa said he made the stop because the light near Escamilla's license plate wasn't working and he wanted to see what she was doing in an area known for drug trafficking. "It's probable cause to speak with the driver," Gamboa said.
Escamilla's baby was born healthy in 2010.
Arpaio has repeatedly denied charges that his department discriminates against Latinos and says his deputies only make stops when they think a crime has been committed.
But the group of Latinos who filed the civil lawsuit says that Maricopa County sheriff's deputies pull over some vehicles only to make immigration status checks.
The plaintiffs aren't seeking money. They instead want a declaration stating that Arpaio's office engages in discriminatory practices and an order requiring the department to make policy changes.
The lawsuit marks the first case in which the sheriff's office has been accused of systematic racial profiling and will serve as a bellwether for a similar yet broader civil rights lawsuit filed against Arpaio and his agency by the U.S. Justice Department.
If Arpaio loses the case, he won't face jail time or fines. If he wins, it will undercut the upcoming federal case, which makes similar allegations.
Testimony is expected to wrap up Thursday. It's not known when U.S. District Judge Murray Snow will issue his decision.
In testimony last week, Escamilla said she was mistreated when she was pulled over while driving home from night classes. She had described Gamboa's demeanor as hostile when she refused to agree to a search of her car and said she didn't break any traffic laws that would have caused her to get pulled over.
Eventually, a drug-sniffing dog was brought in to search her car, but no drugs were found. She was cited for lacking proof of insurance and released, though she disputed the ticket. Escamilla said she was not aware if her license plate light had been out and was not ticketed for such a violation.
Gamboa characterized Escamilla's behavior as erratic, saying she initially failed to pull over once he turned on his sirens, wouldn't listen to his commands and kept asking why she was pulled over, even though he had already told her.
Gamboa couldn't recall why he called a drug dog to the scene and pointed out that he called emergency workers from the Phoenix Fire Department to tend to Escamilla because her breathing became heavier during the stop.
The good news is more people are starting to think Sheriff Joe sucks.
Poll: Arpaio's approval rating sinks to 53% amid birth-certificate probe
by JJ Hensley - Aug. 2, 2012 09:47 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's support waned after the recent revelations of his investigation into President Barack Obama's birth certificate, a poll released Thursday says.
The telephone poll of 600 likely voters concluded Arpaio's favorability rating dropped to 53 percent, and about 65 percent of respondents disapproved of the sheriff's investigating the president's birth certificate.
Arpaio continued to get high marks for being "tough on crime," with 76 percent of respondents approving of his work. But about 50 percent thought he did a poor job of keeping politics out of the Sheriff's Office and agency investigations.
The poll was commissioned by Citizens for a Better Arizona, whose leader, Randy Parraz, has been a consistent Arpaio critic, prompting Chad Willems, Arpaio's campaign consultant, to retort: "Of course he would put together a poll that would place the sheriff in a bad light."
The poll was conducted in early June. Arpaio's approval rating was more than 60 percent in 2008.
When when it comes to the draconian laws that jail people for the victimless crime of using medical marijuana we did that and got Prop 203 passed, which legalized medical marijuana.
Of course the police and prosecutors don't like Prop 203 because it cuts into the "drug war" which is really a jobs program for overpaid and under worked cops and prosecutors.
Of course the cops and prosecutors are hypocrites who are not following the same advice they give us. Instead of attempting to repeal Prop 203 thru the system so they can continue arresting people for the victimless crime of marijuana use they simply asked Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to declare Prop 203 null and void.
I am sure Jan Brewer would comply with their illegal request, but
she already had her hand slapped after filing a frivolous lawsuit
trying to stop Prop 203 in Federal court.
Here is a copy of the letter the sheriffs sent to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
Arizona sheriffs ask Brewer to halt Ariz. medical-pot program
Mary K. Reinhart - Aug. 3, 2012 09:58 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Following in the footsteps of their top prosecutors, most of Arizona's county sheriffs are asking Gov. Jan Brewer to halt the state's medical-marijuana program.
Thirteen of the state's 15 sheriffs sent a letter to Brewer this week that's identical to the letter she received from 13 Arizona county attorneys days earlier.
Like the lawyers, the sheriffs argue that federal drug laws pre-empt Arizona's voter-approved medical-marijuana law and that state, county and local employees could risk prosecution if they implement it. Those signing the letter from Yavapai County Sheriff Scott Mascher, who is president of the Arizona Sheriffs Association, include Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.
The letters come as the state Department of Health Services prepares for Tuesday's lottery to select 99 out of 486 applicants to run marijuana dispensaries throughout the state. The department will stream the lottery live online at www.livestream.com/azdhs.
The letter also claims Arizona's newly appointed U.S. attorney John Leonardo "fully intends to prevent any dispensaries from operating in Arizona by seizing each and every one as it opens and commits violations of the (Controlled Substances Act)."
The same claim was made by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk in her July 24 letter to Brewer. A spokesman for Leonardo said the assertion by the county attorneys was inaccurate and that the U.S. Attorney's Office would -- as Department of Justice policy says -- focus on "significant drug traffickers, not seriously ill individuals and their caregivers who are in compliance with applicable state medical-marijuana statutes."
Brewer's office could not be reached for comment on the letter from the sheriffs. But in response to the similar letter from the county attorneys, the governor said that while she shares their concerns, she is required to implement the voter-approved law.
"Arizona voters ... cast ballots in sufficient numbers to enshrine this measure into Arizona law," Brewer wrote. "As such, I am duty-bound to implement (the act), and my agency will do so unless and until I am instructed otherwise by the courts or notified that state employees face imminent risk of prosecution due to their duties in administering this law."
Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.
According to these
article
Kyrsten Sinema wants to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
According to these
article
Kyrstin Sinema wants to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
Racial-profiling trial outcome hinges on hard data
Saturation-patrol numbers are key
by JJ Hensley - Aug. 4, 2012 09:29 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The clash over traffic-stop data in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's racial-profiling trial was evident from the moment the plaintiffs' statistical expert took the witness stand.
"Good to see you again," Deputy County Attorney Tom Liddy, representing the Sheriff's Office, told Temple University professor Ralph Taylor just three hours into the trial's first day.
"Wish I could say the same," Taylor deadpanned.
The intensity of the ensuing exchange highlighted the role statistical data is expected to play in a judge's upcoming decision in the case.
U.S. District Judge Murray Snow heard seven days of testimony that concluded Thursday. Now, he must decide if the Sheriff's Office systematically engages in widespread discrimination against Latinos in its enforcement activities.
The civil lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, was triggered by a traffic stop near Cave Creek in 2007, then expanded to a class-action suit involving numerous Latinos stopped by sheriff's deputies. The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages, but they want the court to impose oversight on the office to ensure that it does not discriminate.
By the time the trial ended, Snow had heard from 25 witnesses, including Hispanic drivers who testified about their negative encounters with the Sheriff's Office, and deputies who said they inherently trusted each other not to discriminate against Hispanic drivers.
But among the most contested elements introduced at the trial were the statistical analyses of the length of the office's traffic stops, and how regularly deputies checked Hispanic names -- vs. non-Hispanic names -- with dispatchers.
Boiled down, the data the plaintiffs' expert produced showed Hispanic drivers were more likely to get pulled over during the sheriff's "saturation" patrols; that they were more likely to have their names checked when stopped; and that their stops were likely to last more than two minutes longer than non-Hispanic drivers' stops, no matter the day the stop occurred.
Sheriff's attorneys took the view that "if you torture numbers, they can tell you anything." And they sicced Liddy on Taylor and his statistics in two sessions, with the attorney occasionally screaming at the soft-spoken professor.
Liddy attacked Taylor's report for not considering socioeconomic factors and for excluding certain traffic stops that resulted in arrests for drug possession or drunken driving, for example.
That line of attack mirrored an approach the sheriff's statistical expert, Steven Camarota, took in an analysis that sought to disprove Taylor's findings.
The attacks on Taylor's data were to be expected, according to experts. Among the three pieces vital to proving a racial-profiling case -- the intent of the agency, the impact on residents, and negative outcomes demonstrated with data -- statistics are critical.
"The data is very important, and whether or not the court accepts the data as it has been presented by the plaintiffs will be a key piece as to whether or not the plaintiffs succeed," said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh professor and national expert on racial-profiling.
Harris did not attend the trial but had access to the data.
"It's bolstered by a lot of the other evidence that the plaintiffs put in: Actions and so forth by the sheriff and the people who work for him, and the stories of the people who say this happened to them," said Harris. "But the stats standing alone, I think they're pretty good."
Taylor explored computerized data from more than 160,000 Sheriff's Office traffic stops over two years. The data fell into two key categories: tendency for Hispanic names to be checked on saturation-patrol days or by saturation-patrol officers, and the lengths of the stops of Hispanic drivers.
Saturation patrols are operations in which sheriff's deputies use traffic violations to make stops as a means to question drivers and passengers about their immigration status. Some have been done on a small scale in neighborhoods or on highways, others on a large-scale basis countywide.
Taylor concluded that on saturation-patrol days:
Hispanic drivers were 20 to 33 percent more likely to have their names checked with dispatchers than non-Hispanic drivers.
Hispanic drivers were 42 to 50 percent more likely to have their names checked if the deputy was active in the saturation patrol.
Those same deputies active in the saturation patrols were 57 to 67 percent more likely to check Hispanic names than deputies working on those same days outside of the patrol.
On stop lengths, Taylor found:
Stops with one or more Hispanic names checked ran two to three minutes longer than those in which no Hispanic names were checked with dispatchers.
Stops in which citations were issued and one or more Hispanic names were checked lasted up to 21/2 minutes longer.
"These are all highly statistically significant," Taylor told the court. "These results are highly unlikely to be chance patterns in this data."
Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank favoring increased immigration enforcement, was retained as the Sheriff's Office's expert to counter Taylor's findings. He characterized Taylor's data as weak, and he said it was difficult to draw any conclusions from the numbers because the Sheriff's Office has no internal method to reliably measure who deputies are contacting.
"There is no quality control with (automated-dispatch) data," he said. "The officers never review it ... no one is in charge of checking with the officer, there's no attempt by anyone to verify the accuracy of what's in there."
Camarota also took issue with Taylor's decision not to use Maricopa County census data to compare the size of the Hispanic population with the rate at which Hispanic drivers were stopped by deputies. Many experts say comparing traffic-stop rates among Hispanics to the overall Hispanic population can be misleading because it does not take into account the percentage of the Hispanic population that drives.
Camarota's biggest complaint about Taylor's findings was his failure to consider socioeconomic data on Arizona's Hispanic population.
Such factors might have influenced the plaintiffs' data, Camarota said, because Hispanic residents in Maricopa County are poorer, less educated and more likely to speak Spanish than non-Hispanic counterparts. That, he suggested, could translate into less-skilled drivers in beat-up cars, making them more likely to be stopped for moving or equipment violations. Such stops would naturally take longer, he said, for those who do not speak English and have trouble communicating with deputies.
"It's something you want to think a lot about because socioeconomic status is so highly correlated with being Hispanic," Camarota testified, citing poverty figures in the Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey. "In this case, why this is so relevant is these enormous differences between these two populations at issue."
Harris, the University of Pittsburgh racial-profiling expert, said such criticisms are common, but the plaintiffs need not rely solely on the data to make their case. Instead, he said, the data should bolster the underlying premise of the case.
"The name checking is more important than a lot of other factors because it's a reasonably good proxy for Hispanic heritage, and that's the basis for the claim," he said. "I don't want to overstate it: That's the thing that shows you there may be a focus on Latino drivers. Ultimately, the case begins with that if it doesn't end with that."
About one-third of witnesses in the trial were involved in traffic stops similar to the 2007 case that sparked the suit. In each, Hispanic drivers and passengers contended that sheriff's deputies targeted them because of their race.
About half of the witnesses called were current or former sheriff's deputies and administrators.
Although racial-profiling cases are difficult for plaintiffs to win, the testimony in this trial -- particularly that of Arpaio -- and evidence of saturation patrols being prompted by complaints about Hispanic laborers make the case against the Sheriff's Office appear slightly stronger, Harris said.
Among other things, Arpaio, who is running for re-election to a sixth term in November, was put on the defensive about public statements he has made criticizing illegal immigration and vowing to crack down on it.
"It's fairly unique, because in a good case you'd usually get two of these: the plaintiffs' stories or your statistics," Harris said. "What make this case better ... is these statements, the back and forth between the sheriff and members of the public, what the sheriff has said publicly about his approach, communication between the sheriff and his deputies -- those things make this a stronger case than I think you'd usually see."
But Arpaio's attorneys are not willing to concede that Arpaio's statements have helped make the plaintiffs' case, nor that complaints he received from constituents played any role in enforcement decisions made by his office.
Arpaio attorney Tim Casey said the plaintiffs' case was largely circumstantial. When data failed to supply the overwhelming evidence of profiling they desired, Casey said, the plaintiffs increasingly parsed Arpaio's statements and those of his deputies.
"Plaintiffs have transferred (the case) from what's going on operationally to the sheriff's comments ... arguing that those comments permeate down and influence law-enforcement decisions," Casey said as the first week of the trial wrapped up. "Our view is, the plaintiffs' attorneys -- led by the ACLU -- have created a false hysteria about things that are supposedly happening but aren't. That's why the deputies want this trial: to be able to say, 'Here's what we do. Here's what we don't do.' "
Snow will weigh the data, the statements and the testimony to determine whether sheriff's deputies violated the U.S. Constitution. He will issue a decision sometime after final briefs in the case are filed in mid-August.
Sheriff Joe: reward for catching political sign vandals
Posted: Sunday, August 5, 2012 8:29 am | Updated: 2:57 pm, Sun Aug 5, 2012.
Tribune
As the election season heats up, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is offering a $5,000 reward to those who offer up information leading to the arrest of those who have damaged or may continue to damage his campaign signs.
Defacing a political sign is a misdemeanor and punishable by up to four months in jail, a $700 fine and up to two years probation, according to information from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
So far, during the 2012 sheriff election season, Arpaio’s camp said that more than 200 signs have needed to be replaced due to damage.
Arpaio said in a statement that since he has raised more than $7 million for his re-election campaign, he can easily afford to pay such a reward so the money wouldn’t be paid by taxpayer dollars.
Letter: Do Arpaio signs break political rules?
Posted: Thursday, August 9, 2012 7:17 am
Letter to the Editor
So Sheriff Joe is offering a reward (Aug. 5 Tribune) to catch whomever is vandalizing his “Elect Arpaio” signs he placed everywhere on taxpayer-owned public right-of-way. Who’s responsible for fining Joe for violating state laws ARS 9-500.14 and ARS 15-511, which forbid ALL electioneering on government-controlled property? One law forbids all election signs on city-controlled easement, where most of his signs are. The second with a per sign fine, forbids such signs on school district-owned easement, where politicians love to put their sign graffiti. Doesn’t anyone care about the annual sign mess?
Ron Burda
Gilbert
Arpaio sweeps now irrelevant
At some point, Judge Murray Snow will render a decision in the civil rights lawsuit brought against Sheriff Joe Arpaio by the American Civil Liberties Union.
After the ruling, there will be a political explosion. Arpaio will either have been vindicated in eyes of his supporters or proven a bigot in the eyes of his critics. Before the explosion renders dispassionate analysis entirely useless, it’s worth taking a look at the issues in the case. They are not as monumental as the political explosion will make them out to be.
This case is primarily about the immigration sweeps Arpaio used to conduct. In those sweeps, Arpaio’s deputies would flood a geographical location and stop as many cars as possible for the sort of technical violations, such as a cracked windshield, that cops usually overlook.
In the trial and in other forums, Arpaio’s office has tried to say that the sweeps were about other things than just trying to find as many illegal immigrants as possible. But that’s a silly waste of time and disingenuous. The sweeps were clearly about using traffic stops as a pretext to find illegal immigrants. That’s the way Arpaio’s office kept score, as undisputedly established by the triumphant press releases it would issue after the sweeps were conducted.
According to the plaintiff’s statistical expert, sheriff deputies working the immigration sweeps were 50 percent more likely to stop Latinos than deputies working the same day someplace else. Arpaio’s lawyers tried to discredit the conclusion, but that again seems like a waste of time. The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants in Arizona are from Mexico and Latin America. If the object is to find as many illegal immigrants as possible, and it was, it makes sense to conduct the sweeps where there are larger concentrations of Latinos.
I have condemned these sweeps from the beginning. They violate a founding principle of the United States, that people shouldn’t be subject to disproportionate scrutiny by the government because of who they are, rather than for what they do. During these sweeps, lawful Latino residents were more likely to have the condition of their cars and their driving habits flyspecked by sheriff deputies than non-Latinos. That ain’t right.
But because it isn’t right doesn’t mean that it is unconstitutional or illegal. Disparate effect isn’t the end of the legal inquiry.
I leave it to Snow to sort through the confused muddle the courts have made of where the line lies between a lawful and an unlawful stop. What I will say is this: Arpaio’s sweeps are now irrelevant.
Arpaio has been stripped of his federal immigration authority. So, his office can no longer directly check the immigration status of those stopped. And under the Obama administration’s new enforcement guidelines, nothing is going to happen to illegal immigrants who haven’t committed serious crimes even if Arpaio’s deputies find them.
The futility of the sweeps is presumably why Arpaio hasn’t conducted one in quite a while.
The lawsuit alleges discriminatory action outside the sweeps, but the claims are thin gruel. There are some allegations by some individuals of discriminatory treatment, but they are vigorously disputed by the deputies involved.
The plaintiff’s statistical expert says that deputies who are involved in the sweeps are more likely to stop Latinos afterwards and that stops of Latinos tend to take longer.
Approximately 30 percent of all stops by the sheriff’s office are of Latinos, roughly proportional to their percentage of the population. If officers who participate in sweeps are 15 percent more likely to stop Latinos later, as the expert asserts, that means that 35 percent of their subsequent stops are of Latinos. And the average stop for Latinos is just two and a half minutes longer than for non-Latinos, and less than 15 minutes in both cases.
None of this adds up to Arpaio being the new Bull Connor.
What it does add up to is a sheriff who is indifferent to harassing legal Latinos and non-Latinos in his sweeps and indifferent to well-founded concerns of minorities in general about being subjected to disproportionate law enforcement scrutiny.
Those are things for voters to weigh irrespective of how Snow rules.
Arpaio says Craigslist ignoring his concerns over bestiality postings
Posted: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 8:19 pm
By Garin Groff, Tribune
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is again pressing Craigslist to police its personal sections after deputies arrested another bestiality suspect who sought illegal sex with a dog through the website.
Arpaio has now pushed Craigslist three times to change its self-policing protocol for advertising on the site.
The sheriff’s letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster stated Arpaio hadn’t received a response to two other letters dating as far back as March 2011. In two previous letters, Arpaio informed Craigslist that deputies had arrested suspects for attempting to commit bestiality. Five people have been convicted through investigations that began in 2010.
Arpaio’s letter said suspects had posted specific descriptions of criminal acts.
“It is clear that the 'self-policing' protocol Craigslist relies upon to prevent this activity is inadequate,” Arpaio wrote in one letter. “While Craigslist may not be committing a criminal act, you are undoubtedly providing a mechanism to facilitate obvious criminal activity.”
The sheriff’s most recent letter asked if Buckmaster would continue to “ignore” him, while offering to meet with the CEO to prevent similar ads from being posted again.
Contact writer: (480) 898-6548 or ggroff@evtrib.com
At the Chandler-Gilbert Community College wanna be cops have to take 139 hours of instruction on guns and fighting compared to a 44 hours of instruction on criminal law.
Ex-inmate files $6.2 million claim against MCSO
Ex-inmate alleges jail officials left her with bag over head
by JJ Hensley - Aug. 28, 2012 10:16 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A woman who sat in a jail cell for more than 40 minutes with a garbage bag over her head before any deputy took action has filed a $6.2 million notice of claim against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and county administrators.
Angela Chavez-Metzger, 44, claims sheriff's detention officers were negligent, that they showed deliberate indifference to her medical needs and that sheriff's personnel intentionally subjected her to substandard treatment during her late-February jail stay because she is Hispanic.
Sheriff's Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre said a review of the incident left sheriff's officials with the impression that Chavez-Metzger was using the garbage bag for warmth, and he criticized the decision of Chavez-Metzger's attorney to "play the race card" when the bag would have obscured her ethnicity. [If you ask me I would think that anybody that is putting a plastic bag over their head is attempting to commit suicide. Why didn't Sheriff Joe's goons try to stop her for that reason???]
"She's forgetting that her client was inside a trash bag and reported her name to be Metzger," MacIntyre said. "This is not a little plastic bag that fits snugly over the head, it's a 25- to 30-gallon plastic bag that, from everything we saw, she used to keep warm." [From what I know about physics those plastic garbage bags don't keep you warm. When we have a cold wave people are told NOT to use plastic bags to cover their plants because they do not retain heat]
Chavez-Metzger had been booked into the jail late in the evening of Feb. 28 on suspicion of assaulting her husband. She concedes she was under the influence of prescription pills and says she believes she told Phoenix police and firefighters that she was suicidal. The assault charge was dismissed last month.
The claim briefly mentions Chavez-Metzger's interaction with Phoenix police and notes that her medical conditions should have been known to sheriff's detention staff members because she told them about negative reactions to medication during prior stays in Maricopa County jails.
County administrators for years have been trying to purchase and install an electronic-health-records system that would automatically provide information about inmates and their medications to employees of Correctional Health Services, the taxpayer-funded agency responsible for providing health care in the jails.
Those efforts are part of the county's attempt to get out from under the court-ordered oversight that has been in place since U.S. District Judge Neil Wake issued a ruling in 2008 that found conditions in the jails fell short of constitutional standards that prohibit cruel and unusual punishment.
Chavez-Metzger's claim takes those efforts into account along with the U.S. Justice Department's findings that the Sheriff's Office engages in discrimination to draw a picture of an agency that consistently falls short of accepted standards in law enforcement. [On the other hand when it comes to abusing people and violating their Constitutional rights Sheriff Joe's goons get an A+]
Chavez-Metzger's attorney, Joy Bertrand, also represents the family of an inmate who died in the sheriff's custody earlier this year. A medical examiner's report into the cause and manner of Raymond Anthony Farinas' death is pending, but Bertrand said there is a pattern of mistreatment in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jails that is not hard to discern.
"The first thing is that all my clients in these circumstances are Hispanic, and the next thing would be this indifference to the needs of these human beings in their custody," Bertrand said. "The jail is making a pretty consistent record that they treat their inmates worse than Joe treats his police dogs."
Chavez-Metzger was unresponsive when detention officers and medical personnel discovered and began to treat her, but a sheriff's administrator said she was breathing and had a pulse when she was taken to the hospital.
MacIntyre pointed out that Chavez-Metzger was released from the hospital after a short stay and had no injuries.
Bertrand said the damages to her client were evident enough to warrant a claim.
News execs can sue Arpaio for arrest, court rules
Aug. 29, 2012 12:10 PM
Associated Press
Two newspaper executives who were arrested by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office after a series of critical articles can sue the man who calls himself America's toughest sheriff.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned a lower court ruling that Phoenix New Times co-owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin could not sue authorities for the 2007 arrest. The men were arrested after revealing that Arpaio's allies in the Maricopa County attorney's office obtained a grand jury subpoena to identify sources for articles about the sheriff. Arpaio and the prosecutors eventually backed off.
The court ruled the executives could sue Arpaio for false arrest and violations of their First and 14th Amendment rights, among other claims.
New Times is an alternative weekly that is part of Village Voice Media.
I am putting all the
articles
about the New Times lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio
which includes the lawsuits of Michael Lacey & Jim Larkin
against Sheriff Joe Arpaio into this
URL.
Of course all those lawsuits will also include
articles
about the New Times lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
which includes the lawsuits of Michael Lacey & Jim Larkin
against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
When there is a slim chance that Obama could win the election in Arizona Emperor Obama is certainly not going to press charges against the most popular politician in Arizona, who is also the biggest criminal in Arizona.
Feds shut down criminal investigation of Arpaio, Thomas; no charges to be filed
by Dennis Wagner, JJ Hensley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez - Aug. 31, 2012 11:52 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Federal prosecutors closed an exhaustive four-year FBI criminal investigation and grand-jury probe targeting Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former County Attorney Andrew Thomas and their top deputies, saying there will be no indictments.
Ann Birmingham Scheel, acting on behalf of U.S. Attorney John Leonardo, announced the decision in a three-paragraph news release distributed at 5 p.m. Friday. Neither she nor anyone else from the office was available to comment.
However, in a letter to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, Scheel listed the allegations that were investigated -- civil-rights violations, misuse of public money, perjury -- and said prosecution was declined because of a lack of evidence or an insurmountable burden of proof.
Arpaio, a Republican who is running for a sixth term in November, said he anticipated the outcome: "I never had any doubt. ... Once again, I send my appreciation to the federal government for their hard work in clearing my office.
"If I did something wrong, there would be indictments floating all over the place," Arpaio said.
Paul Penzone, Arpaio's Democratic challenger, said the outcome is hardly vindication, nor does it exonerate Arpaio for "lost dollars, failed investigations and at best questionable practices."
"This is not something that law enforcement should celebrate, it's something of great concern," said Penzone. "There are obvious failings in the Sheriff's Office. The fact that they did not rise to a level of criminal indictment does not lessen that they are failings."
Thomas, who resigned as county attorney and was later disbarred for ethical misconduct, issued a written statement saying, "The Justice Department acknowledged the obvious: A jury of citizens simply would not indict a prosecutor who had done his job. ... The real losers in the political witch hunt that just ended are the people of Arizona. Prosecutors no longer attempt to fight corruption or illegal immigration in Arizona because they fear being targeted and disbarred."
In her letter to Montgomery, Scheel said the "comprehensive investigation" failed to uncover sufficient evidence for criminal charges, which require a judge or jury to find defendants guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
She emphasized that her inquiry has no bearing on a racial-profiling case filed against the Sheriff's Office in May by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. A verdict in that case, which focuses on alleged discriminatory practices in county jails and in sweeps aimed at undocumented immigrants, would be based on the civil standard, a preponderance of evidence, rather than more rigorous "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard used in criminal cases.
Mitchell Rivard, a DOJ spokesman, echoed that point. "The announcement of the U.S. Attorney of the closure of the criminal case has nothing to do with the civil case that the department has brought," he said.
The federal investigation began in 2008 after former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and other local officials expressed concerns about Arpaio abusing his power to the local FBI head. Nearly two years later, the probe expanded when, at the request of Maricopa County Supervisors, the federal agents were cross-deputized to investigate potential state crimes. Among the issues investigated and the prosecutorial conclusions:
Credit cards: County supervisors sought a probe of possible misuse of so-called P Cards used by members of the Sheriff's Office. Scheel said investigators found "no evidence or allegation of MCSO employees stealing county funds," although financial records indicated expenditures were not properly documented.
Jail funds: County supervisors reported evidence that the Sheriff's Office was using up to $84 million earmarked for jails to pay expenses and salaries not related to the detention program. Scheel said because there was no evidence that any sheriff's employee personally profited from the "misspending," prosecutors would not be able to prove criminal intent.
Perjury: Thomas and one of his attorneys, Lisa Aubuchon, were accused of committing perjury when they asked a sheriff's official to swear out a complaint accusing Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe of hindrance, obstruction and bribery in an attempt to prevent him from holding a hearing tied to the appointment of special prosecutors to work county corruption cases. Though the state Bar disbarred Thomas and Aubuchon, Scheel said federal prosecutors would not be able to prove they knowingly lied in the court papers.
Civil-rights violations: Scheel concluded that it "is not enough to show that Judge Donahoe was subjected to conduct that was abusive or even unconstitutional" because the Justice Department also would have to show beyond reasonable doubt that Thomas and Aubuchon specifically intended to violate his rights.
Scheel said investigators also considered charges against Thomas and Aubuchon for depriving Donahoe of his profession or livelihood, but could not meet "the heavy burden of proof necessary to obtain a criminal conviction."
Moreover, Scheel suggested, civil court and the state Bar are appropriate venues to deal with Thomas' alleged abuse of power for political purposes. "The criminal process is not the proper vehicle to address the conduct that (was) brought to our attention."
Reaction to the decision was swift and furious.
A spokesman for the Arizona Republican Party, on behalf of chairman Tom Morrissey said, "It is good to see this witch hunt has come to an end. I find it bizarre when a man is hounded for doing his job by those who refuse to do theirs."
However Colorado attorney John Gleason, who conducted the ethics investigation of Thomas and Aubuchon for the state Bar, said he was disappointed in federal prosecutors.
"We believe that the work that we did and the testimony that was presented presents a strong case that crimes were committed," he said.
Aubuchon expressed relief that the probe was over: "I'm glad they understand what perjury is -- unlike the Bar witch hunt that ensued -- and that they realized that this was just disagreement about the charges."
Randy Parraz, head of Citizens for a Better Arizona, which launched a "Joe's Got to Go" campaign to defeat Arpaio in November, said he was disappointed in the outcome.
"People's lives have been damaged and hurt and violated by the sheriff, and it is unfortunate that they are going to walk away and not pursue any of these things," he said. "It sends the wrong message that they haven't done anything wrong, which serves him (Arpaio) well in an election year."
In addition to the still outstanding Justice Department civil-rights complaint, the Sheriff's Office faces a lawsuit filed by Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist who was arrested and detained for nine hours while visiting the U.S. legally. Melendres' allegation of racial profiling became a class-action lawsuit covering every Latino driver stopped by sheriff's deputies in the past five years. Plaintiffs and defendants submitted closing arguments earlier this month, but U.S. District Judge Murray Snow has not yet reached a verdict.
Arpaio and Thomas also were defendants in 10 federal lawsuits filed by elected county supervisors, county administrators and retired judges, four of which are still pending.
The lawsuits stemmed from so-called government-corruption investigations in 2008 and 2009 by the sheriff and prosecutor, who had filed criminal cases and a federal racketeering lawsuit against the officials. Plaintiffs claim they were wronged by those investigations and charges.
Five plaintiffs obtained settlements ranging from $75,000 and $500,000 each.
A $975,000 settlement for county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox remains in dispute and has not yet been paid. If the court approves her settlement amount, the final payment would be well over $1 million with attorney's fees and interest.
Lawsuits filed by Donahoe, Supervisor Don Stapley, Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson and businessman Conley Wolfswinkel remain unresolved.
As of April, Maricopa County had spent at least $3.2 million in litigation costs and settlements relating to these federal lawsuits, according to a Republic analysis of county spending.
Wilcox expressed shock at the U.S. attorney's decision, stammering for words. "I can't believe it. I can't imagine why they would do that, when there's so much evidence there, particularly from the Thomas case," she said. "I just am floored."
Retired Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Mundell said that a 2009 civil racketeering suit brought against her by Arpaio and Thomas was meant to "intimidate, harass, discredit and humiliate." Mundell, who settled her counter-lawsuit for $500,000 earlier this year, declined comment on the U.S. attorney's decision.
Former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who came out of retirement briefly to replace Thomas, worked with the U.S. Attorney's Office on the case, providing them records and access to key witnesses.
Romley said he was "truly puzzled" by the decision not to prosecute. "To say there was insufficient evidence, with the amount of information that we sent their way, sends a horrible message."
Susan Schuerman, executive assistant to Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley, suggested the decision is an injustice to all who see themselves as victims of an abuse of power by the sheriff.
"Having lived through this and witnessed all of these outrageous behaviors ... I'm shocked that no charges would be brought," she said. "It's all politics. I think this is bigger than they are (the Justice Department). I think the Justice Department was inept in their handling of this, and I have almost no faith left."
Reporters Michael Kiefer and Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this story
The Feds Proved Themselves a Cage of Cowardly Lions in the Arpaio Investigation
By Stephen Lemons Thursday, Sep 6 2012
At the conclusion of her four-page letter to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, explaining the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office's rationale for dropping its criminal investigation into Sheriff Joe Arpaio's and ex-County Attorney Andrew Thomas' offices, Ann Birmingham Scheel offered an incredibly lame summation of four years of inaction and incompetence by federal authorities.
"[If] there is one lesson to be drawn from the arrests, investigations, and lawsuits of the past few years," the assistant U.S. attorney wrote, "it is that prosecutors, in seeking justice, must exercise their charging discretion with great care."
Lovely sentiment, Ann. And we're glad to see that your office is tiptoeing through the legal niceties — leaving Arpaio, if he sees fit, to sink his fangs into more innocent victims.
But I, and others, are drawing another conclusion from your cowardly letter, and the craven way your office announced that it was washing its hands of its long probe into Arpaio and Thomas' blatant and unconstitutional abuses of power.
That is, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, and the Justice Department are worthless at holding accountable law enforcement agencies run amok. They cannot be trusted to protect us when local tyrants — no better than mobsters — operate illegally under the color of law to harass, intimidate, falsely charge, arrest, and imprison anybody from undocumented corn vendors to judges to county supervisors to reporters and newspaper editors.
Ironically, when it comes to the really small fry, the big, bad feds will throw the book at 'em — and then some.
For example, local white-collar perp and former state Representative Richard Miranda recently pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud. Miranda was sentenced to 27 months in the federal pen for ripping off hundreds of thousands of dollars from two nonprofits he headed.
Sure, that's bad, but what if you're Sheriff Joe, and you grab $100 million in protected taxpayer funds for jail enhancement, using the money illegally to finance pet projects, such as anti-immigrant sweeps and vindictive investigations of your political enemies?
Well, then, the feds don't even bother to wag a finger at you.
"[T]he funds were simply shifted from one law enforcement purpose to another," Scheel shrugs of the $100 million in her letter to Montgomery.
Scheel goes on to claim there was "insufficient evidence of criminal intent" and "no evidence of false statements from . . . Arpaio or [his] former chief deputy David Hendershott."
What a colossal load. You'll recall that Arpaio falsely told the press that the swiped $100 million was because of a "computer-type glitch."
But Arpaio's former chief financial officer Loretta Barkell countered that claim, telling Channel 12 that she had informed both Hendershott and Arpaio "every single year for the past 10 years" that the MCSO was violating the law by siphoning cash from the jail-enhancement fund.
According to Barkell, Arpaio "waved his hand and said he was not allowing the bean counters to manage his operations."
The feds are aware of what Barkell has to say because she testified before a federal grand jury looking into Arpaio in 2010. Moreover, her testimony can be backed up with records galore from the county, as well as from the testimony of other county officials.
Keep in mind that several assistant U.S. attorneys were cross-deputized as "special deputy county attorneys" by the county Board of Supervisors in 2010. By Scheel's own admission, the U.S. Attorney's Office had "broad" investigatory powers to look into federal and state allegations.
Nonetheless, Arpaio, Hendershott, and their willing minions skate.
Meanwhile, state Representative Ben Arredondo was indicted this year on bribery and other charges, allegedly for taking $6,000 in sports-event tickets as a bribe from a fake FBI front company.
Arredondo pleaded not guilty to the charges stemming from a three-year undercover investigation while the Republican turned Democrat was still a Tempe city councilman.
As with Miranda, I'm not saying such charges are not serious. But they are dwarfed by the mountainous misdeeds of Thomas, Arpaio, Hendershott, and their fellow co-conspirators.
Scheel's excuse seems to be that it's just so hard to make the case against the really bad criminals. You know, the ones who use their authority as cops and prosecutors to gin up charges against critics and foes, to investigate them as a form of harassment, and to arrest and imprison them in an effort to destroy them.
Such activities are violations of federal statute 18 USC Section 242, which makes it a crime for law enforcement officials to deprive someone of his or her constitutional rights "under the color of law."
And if two or more people are involved such wrongdoing, they can be charged under federal code 18 USC Section 241, which makes it illegal to conspire to abridge someone's rights under the constitution.
A comprehensive list of those who have been the targets of criminal acts pursuant to 18 USC Section 241 and 242 by Thomas' County Attorney's Office or Arpaio's Sheriff's Office perhaps could fill this column.
A few of the most well-known victims of Thomas and Arpaio's threats, intimidation, and frame-ups include county supervisors Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox, county workers Sandi Wilson and Susan Schuerman, ex-Superior Court judges Barbara Mundell and Anna Baca, former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, civil rights activist Sal Reza, former state Attorney General Terry Goddard, and Village Voice Media Executive Editor Michael Lacey and CEO Jim Larkin.
And yet, none of these men and women rate a mention by Scheel in her letter. The only victim she deigns to discuss is former Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe, whom Thomas, his accomplice ex-Deputy County Attorney Lisa Aubuchon, Hendershott, and Arpaio conspired to falsely charge with bribery. This, because they anticipated Donahoe would rule against them in a hearing in his court.
Because Arizona Supreme Court Presiding Disciplinary Judge William O'Neil — writing earlier this year on behalf of the panel that disbarred Thomas and Aubuchon and suspended Thomas' pawn, former Deputy County Attorney Rachel Alexander — concluded that Thomas and Aubuchon had committed perjury by bringing a false criminal complaint against Donahoe.
Moreover, O'Neil found that Aubuchon and Thomas, in conspiring to deprive Donahoe of his rights, were guilty of 18 USC Section 241.
"Were this a criminal case, we are confident that the evidence would establish this conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt," O'Neil wrote.
Also, O'Neil made it abundantly clear that Hendershott and Arpaio were part of this conspiracy. O'Neil noted that Hendershott told others it was Arpaio's idea to charge Donahoe.
And yet Scheel states in her missive that the U.S. Attorney's Office "cannot bear the heavy burden of proof necessary to obtain a criminal conviction" of this passel of rogue prosecutors and cops.
Thing is, if Scheel really believes this, why will neither she nor anyone else at the federal office appear before the press and the public to answer questions about its decisions?
Remember, Scheel dropped her bomb with a three-paragraph press release just before the Labor Day weekend began, and even the office flack has been forbidden to answer press inquiries about the decision.
Scheel's letter to Montgomery only surfaced after the fact; it was not part of the Friday release, which broadly stated that the U.S. Attorney's Office was "closing its investigation into allegations of criminal conduct by current and former members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office."
The simple answer to the question posed above is that the feds' move to end this four-year probe, which began under the George W. Bush administration, is indefensible.
Recently appointed U.S. Attorney John Leonardo recused himself from the Arpaio probe last month, which probably is why Scheel, who had been acting U.S. Attorney until her new boss was sworn in, became the bearer of bad news.
Why did Leonardo recuse himself?
In 2010, when Leonardo still was a Pima County judge, he ruled on bogus charges brought against Supervisor Wilcox, finding that County Attorney Thomas had formed an "alliance with the Maricopa County Sheriff who misused the power of his office to target members of the [Board of Supervisors] for criminal investigation."
Which, obviously, sounds like a violation of 18 USC Section 241.
Former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, when presented with similar abuse-of-power allegations against Sheriff Arpaio in 2009 by Channel 5's Morgan Loew, said, "I would go to a grand jury."
The Republican continued, "I would work very closely with the civil rights criminal division in Washington, D.C. And, based on the information that I have, I would seek an indictment."
Chad Snow, co-founder of Citizens for a Better Arizona, the group responsible for recalling ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce and which now is targeting Arpaio in the November election, noted that numerous other current and former law enforcement officials publicly have accused Arpaio and Thomas of wrongdoing.
"Every other finder of fact or law enforcement professional who has looked at Arpaio's actions has concluded that there is ample evidence of criminality," he explained on the eve of a CBA demonstration in front of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix over the federal inaction. "What did all of those people see that Ann Birmingham Scheel didn't?"
Indeed, Scheel's announcement sends a dangerous message to all prosecutors and law enforcement: Trample the Constitution at will, and there will be no criminal consequences for your actions.
"If I did something wrong, there would be indictments floating all over the place," Arpaio stated at a press conference after the announcement, where he thanked the feds for ending the investigation. "The bottom line is that we were cleared."
Not cleared. Not innocent. Just un-indicted.
Worse even than the feds showing themselves to be gutless is the colossal present they've given Arpaio two months before the election.
Did I honestly expect them to perp-walk Arpaio, Thomas, Hendershott and all of the rest of these KGB-wanna-bes?
I had fun fantasizing about that, but no. I'm far too cynical to think that law enforcement will go after law enforcement as it should, when necessary.
But the least the Obama administration could have done is wait until after the election to throw Arpaio this big, wet kiss. After all, the feds sat on their hands for four years! Would it have killed them to wait two more months, to have given Democrat Paul Penzone a better shot at ousting this tyrant?
Decision not to charge Arpaio isn't the end
Sept. 7, 2012 05:31 PM
Associated Press
The federal abuse-of-power investigation into America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff may have been closed without criminal charges but Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's legal troubles are far from over.
A civil case brought by a small group of Latinos who accuse Arpaio's office of systematically racially profiling is awaiting a verdict from an Arizona-based federal judge.
The U.S. Department of Justice has also sued the sheriff for alleged constitutional violations including racial profiling, retaliating against Arpaio critics, punishing Latino jail inmates with limited English skills for speaking Spanish and failing to adequately investigate a large number of sex-crimes cases. No trial date in that case has been set.
The Justice Department announced late Friday that it would not pursue criminal charges against the sheriff or his office, or against former Maricopa County top prosecutor Andrew Thomas and a top Thomas aide, Lisa Aubuchon, for abuse of power.
Thomas and Aubuchon were disbarred by the state Supreme Court earlier this year after an ethics panel decided they brought criminal charges against two county officials and a judge in December 2009 with the purpose of embarrassing them. The cases were investigated by Arpaio's now-closed anti-public corruption squad.
Thomas was a longtime Arpaio ally.
Authorities were investigating Arpaio for his part in failed public corruption cases against officials who were odds with him. The sheriff brought cases against a judge and two county officials in 2009 and Thomas prosecuted them.
Federal authorities also said Friday that they have decided to not prosecute matters tied to alleged misuse of county credit cards by sheriff's officials, alleged misspending of jail-enhancement funds and other matters.
The yearslong probe by the FBI and federal prosecutors into Arpaio, Thomas and their offices began during the tenure of President George W. Bush, although Arpaio, a fellow Republican, has since called it politically motivated since.
"If I did something wrong there would be indictments floating all over the place," Arpaio said at a news conference called late Friday night. "I'm not going to get into all the details whether it's political, a witchhunt or whatever you have. The bottom line is we were cleared and we should stay with that and not get into all the politics involved."
Arpaio critics reacted with dismay to the decision not to seek criminal charges, saying they had hoped the Justice Department would finally act against what they call an out-of-control sheriff's office.
"It's an understandable reaction," said Paul Charlton, a former U.S. attorney in Arizona who has worked for one of the county supervisors who was charged. "I can see how after so many years and so much misconduct by Joe Arpaio you would have that feeling.
Charlton said prosecutors had to measure the likelihood of proving any criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt.
"You have to have a reasonable likelihood of success and I trust they made this decision based upon the facts and the law."
But the sheriff will have a different challenge in the civil cases he now faces.
"As a practical and a legal matter it means nothing," Charlton said of the decision not to pursue criminal cases. "This is a different venue and a different standard of proof. It is one that many of Joe Arpaio's critics, including myself, would have liked to have seen come out differently.
"But the end of Joe Arpaio's legal troubles is a long, long way away. He already has lost many legal fights. He has been found to have committed significant misconduct, not the least of which was the finding in the state bar proceeding regarding Andrew Thomas. And I think we will see more of those findings in the future."
Arpaio, 80, is seeking re-election to a sixth term in November. He has a multi-million dollar campaign account on hand to repel two challengers seeking his seat.
And
here
are even some more
articles on Sheriff Joe and this thugs
in Phoenix, Arizona and Maricopa County, Arizona.
Sheriff Joe's trial begins
But don't expect the govenrment to put Sheriff Joe in prison for his
crimes or give him anything but a very weak slap on the wrist.
It ain't gonna happen.
When cops commit crimes they are rarely punished.
Sheriff Joe to
Never heard a cop testilie? Check out today's trial of Sheriff Joe. On the other hand the only thing Sheriff Joe may say is "I don't recall".
commit perjury testify today
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's words used against him at racial-profiling case
This is really odd, every time Sheriff Joe gets
accused of illegal, criminal or unconstitutional actions
and gets forced to testify in court he magically gets the flu.
Arpaio also told the court at the start of Tuesday's proceedings that he had a touch of the flu. He cited suffering a similar illness during testimony last year in disciplinary hearings involving former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, when Arpaio failed to recall certain key meetings with the former prosecutor.
Is Sheriff Joe committing perjury and making it up, or
does he actually have the flu.
Within minutes of Sheriff Joe Arpaio taking the witness stand in the racial-profiling case involving his office, attorneys for the plaintiffs began using the sheriff's own public statements, press releases and books to paint the five-term sheriff as a law-enforcement officer whose zeal on immigration enforcement is based on the requests of racist groups and rooted in discriminatory practices.
Sheriff Joe shovels the BS in court testimony!!!
Source
Personal stories take forefront at Arpaio trial
Source
Sheriff Joe doesn't know what his piggies are doing????
Sheriff Joe doesn't know jack sh*t about what his cops are doing???? - Deputy Chief Brian Sands
Head of Arpaio's immigration unit admits errors
I got a gun and a badge and anything I say is the law. Sadly that's how many cops think and this article seems to says Sheriff Joe isn't any different then those police terrorists - "It was later learned that the law Arpaio cited did not exist"
Is Joe Arpaio more prop than cop?
Source
Sheriff Joe - Don't blame me, I'm not in charge???
Sadly Sheriff Joe is a typical politician who wants to take credit for anything good that happens when he is in office and wants to deny responsibility for anything bad that happens.
Racial-profiling trial could extend into mid-August
Source
Conor Oberst lashes out at Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 'MariKKKopa'
Source
Which is the real Joe Arpaio?
Source
Government welfare program for private prison companies
A government welfare program for private prison companies!
And of course the Congressmen and Senators that pass
these racist laws get bribes, opps, I mean campaign contributions
from the companies that get the contracts.
Sheriff Arpaio deputy denies slamming pregnant woman
Source
Poll: Arpaio's approval rating sinks to 53% amid birth-certificate probe
Sadly despite being one of the worst police state terrorists
in America, Sheriff Joe is still the most popular politician in Arizona.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a hypocrites on Prop 203
When we complain to the cops and prosecutors that the laws are unfair, unjust and unconstitutional and demand that they stop enforcing them. They always give us the line that "the law is the law", and that we must obey it. That if we don't like the law we should use the system to change it.
www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/arizona-sheriffs-letter-brewer.pdf
It was signed by:
Source
Yavapai County
Apache County
Yuma County
Graham County
La Paz County
Mohave County
Pima County
Cochise County
Gila County
Greenelee County
Maricopa County
Maricopa County
Navajo County
Pinal County
Kyrsten Sinema wants to slap a 300% tax on medical marijuana
If you are against the drug war, you should vote against Kyrsten Sinema.
Kyrstin Sinema wants to slap a 300% tax on medical marijuana
If you are against the drug war, you should vote against Kyrstin Sinema.
Kyrsten Sinema's 300 percent tax on medical marijuana
This
web page
lists a whole bunch of
articles
about Kyrsten Sinema's outrageous 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
Kyrstin Sinema's 300 percent tax on medical marijuana
This
web page
lists a whole bunch of
articles
about Kyrstin Sinema's outrageous 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
Racial-profiling trial outcome hinges on hard data
Source
Somebody is trashing Sheriff Joe's campaign signs!!!!
Wonder why somebody is trashing Sheriff Joe's campaign signs??? OK, I probably know!
Letter: Do Arpaio signs break political rules?
Source
Arpaio sweeps now irrelevant
Source
Sheriff Joe finds out he doesn't own Craigslist
Gee Sheriff Joe, don't you have any real criminals to hunt down. You know like robbers, muggers and murderers! Criminals that hurt people.
The police are mostly trained on how to use physical force & violence
From this
article
it sounds like cops are trained mostly on how to use physical force & violence along with a little bit on laws.
Ex-inmate files $6.2 million claim against MCSO
Source
New Times can sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio for false arrest
Source
Feds - No charges to be filed against Sheriff Joe & Andrew Thomas
Did you expect anything different???
Feds won't arrest Sheriff Joe for his crimes
Source
Decision not to charge Arpaio isn't the end
Source
Previous Articles about Sheriff Joe
Here are some previous
articles
about Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arapio, who most folks
in Maricopa County consider the worst sheriff on the planet.