Tag Archives: Maricopa Sheriff

Uncategorized

21st Century Bull Connor: Shameless Intransigence

This is from the “Have They No Shame?” department. For the past couple of months I’ve been talking about the abuses going on in Maricopa County, Arizona  (that’s where the fine city of Phoenix is located) at the hands of the local sheriff there, Joe Arpaio.  

Arpaio’s officers have arrested people who disagree with his policies just for clapping. In the face of Sheriff Arpaio’s abuses, including police brutality, forced family separation, racial profiling, slow emergency response times, unjustified arrests, inmate abuses and more, ACORN members and allied community groups recently delivered a petition to Congress asking for an investigation of Arpaio, and then we sent petitions to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Find out Arpaio’s response on the flip.

Congress has responded.  So has the Justice Department.

So what was his response? To take a long hard look at these policies and perhaps focus on reducing crime rather than deciding who is and who isn’t an American based on their skin color or first language?

Nope.

It was intransigence. He sent around a press release stating that he is “even more determined even as criticism mounts.” This is from a sheriff facing more than 2,700 lawsuits, many citing civil rights violations.  

Arizona ACORN members have been protesting his brutal police tactics, most shockingly his recent publicity stunt of separating out 200 inmates from the county jail who are undocumented immigrants and marching them in chains to a separate “tent city” surrounded by an electric fence.

But, on March 10, Acting Assistant Atty. Gen. Loretta King sent a letter to Sheriff Arpaio informing him that the Justice Department was initiating an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO).  

The very next day, U.S. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), along with three other members of the House Judiciary Committee – Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Immigration; Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights; and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security – announced that they will conduct a Congressional hearing into Sheriff Arpaio’s alleged civil rights abuses.

These four representatives also have sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, asking that her office investigate Arpaio’s actions too. Secretary Napolitano’s office has yet to call for an investigation.  

That’s where you come in.

We need to ask her to take a stand, the same way that Attorney General Eric Holder has and the Congressfolk listed above have.

This is why she has juice here: Sheriff Arpaio’s office boasts the largest “287(g)” agreement with DHS. This agreement outsources enforcement of federal immigration laws to local policing organizations. Sheriff Arpaio has 160 officers on the project but none chasing the 70,000+ outstanding warrants in the County.

Under this agreement, Sheriff Arpaio and his officers may demand to see the papers of anyone they apprehend for any violation, even something as small as a broken tail light.    

If you don’t have the right papers with you, you can be arrested and detained without charge for up to 10 days, even if you are a US citizen. I mean, who carries their birth certificate with them to the store?

Join us in writing to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano asking that DHS:

1.  Stop the raids in Maricopa County.

2.  Suspend Sheriff Arpaio’s 287(g) agreement.

Thousands of immigrant families are living in terror under Sheriff Arpaio’s reign.  We can’t let his racist policing continue. Please take action!  

Diaries & Misc.

Sheriff Arpaio – The Bull Connor of the 21st Century

Friends, there are some things that cannot go unchallenged. They are affronts to human dignity and to what it means to live in America.

Yesterday one of those things happened in Maricopa County, Arizona, the mega-county that contains Phoenix. In a move that smacks of the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and that harks back to the days of the chain gang in the South, the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, is clustering 200 undocumented inmates of the County Jail in their own special tent city. The tent city is surrounded by an electric fence, further bringing home the treatment of human being as chattel. The Phoenix New Times has a compelling story detailing yesterdays outrage.

We cannot let this stand. We are circulating a petition that asks Congressman John Conyers, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to hold hearings into this latest outrage and the long history of abuse carried out by Sheriff Arpaio.

What makes this move especially troubling is the Sheriff’s determination to expand his tent city to accommodate up to 2500 prisoners, an indication of the scope of his determination to continue his devastating policies of racial profiling, retaliatory arrests aimed at silencing critics, and forced family separation.

These actions are an affront to anyone who cares about human rights and are the logical outcome of a police state mentality that sees the only solution to our immigration challenge coming at the end of a gun.

Therefore, we at ACORN, through our Arizona ACORN members, are taking a stand against this action and the on-going immigration enforcement policies of the Sheriff that have resulted not just in this indefensible move, but in widespread human rights abuses of American citizens and our immigrant cousins.

We are following the lead of community leaders like AZ ACORN Board Member Alicia Russell who said, “This march is an extremely callous and inhumane move, aimed directly at degrading undocumented immigrants. In claiming to justify this action as a way to improve”budget savings”, Arpaio is degrading these immigrants, violating their civil rights, and overreaching his jurisdiction”, the entire Maricopa County town of Guadalupe, and Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability (MCSA) who recently staged a “Death of Democracy” funeral procession protesting the Sheriff’s actions.

We are answering the call of local leaders like Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon who has demanded a federal probe into Arpaio’s recent crime sweeps in Hispanic neighborhoods using tactics that are tantamount to racial-profiling and reflect poorly on all Arizonans, regardless of their ethnic heritage. We are answering the call of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who said, “We treat people equally in America. I think it’s wrong.”

Even the conservative Goldwater Institute calls Apraio’s policies “ineffective” in a report released in December. “[He] has diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration and in reducing crime generally[.]”

Help us take a stand by asking Rep. Conyers to lead an investigation into these tactics. America needs to stand for justice under the law, not the law of “just us”.