Hmmm… Sheriff Joe is in Trouble?
Seems to me he’s in trouble for enforcing FEDERAL law, but we have several actual lawyers here that might explain this?
Justice Department: Arizona Sheriff Arpaio violated federal law
The Justice Department, following an often hostile three-year investigation, said Thursday the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in Phoenix under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio violated federal law and the Constitution in its handling of persons arrested and inmates held in its jail system.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who heads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said investigators concluded there was reasonable cause to believe that sheriff’s deputies engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct and violations of federal law that jeopardized the agency’s commitment to fair and effective law enforcement.
The not-unexpected decision said investigators found discriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos; unlawful retaliation against persons exercising their First Amendment right to criticize the agency’s policies or practices, including its discriminatory treatment of Latinos; and discriminatory jail practices against Latino inmates with limited English proficiency by punishing them and denying them critical services.
The language aspect is an interesting twist. My highlight.
Category: Geezer Alert!
Okay, I’ll bite. The brain hurdle to overcome is the mistaken but common notion that the Constitution does not apply to illegal aliens. Throw that view out. In part, the Constitution does apply to illegal aliens not as illegal aliens but because they are persons. Blame or applaud the 14th Amendment and various justices of the Supreme Court, if you like. The 14th Amendment provides, in part, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Voila! It does not say citizen. I know what you’re going to say, “But the lines that precede those in the 14th Amendment DO speak to citizens. Right you are. And this where the Supremes come in. Their reading of the amendment separates the citizen part from the person part, leaving illegal aliens–as persons–entitled to many constitutional protections. The business about the Latinos is pretty straight forward. The report cites Joe with targeting Latinos. That’s illegal notwithstanding the fact that it is also the best way to determine whether the Latinos are illegal aliens. The jail business is also straight forward. You gots to have interpreters if the jailed persons do not understand English and the jailers don’t speak the lingo. Is that also true if the person understands only Latvian? Yes. Please deposit your BUTS in the BUT CAN. Thanks.
Well put, AirCav.
If the feds want local law enforcement out of the enforcement of Federal laws, how about the local office of the Feeb’s goes down and investigates bank robberies, instead of letting the locals investigate under state statute of armed robbery, then swooping in to make arrests when it’ll get them headlines?
Now, far be it from me to ever cast an aspersion on the DoJ, but I find it extremely doubtful that no one in Sheriff Joe’s jails speaks Spanish. Maybe the DoJ is pissed that they aren’t “approved” interpreters? And, exactly what is a “discriminatory jail practice” and how were the inmates punished and denied “critical services”? One article I read complained of “cold” jail cells. Got news for the DoJ, most jails are regarded as “cold” by the inmates.
Of course, Big Janet piled on, immediately, “Homeland security officials also are restricting Arpaio’s office from using a program that uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify illegal immigrants”. Which is probably one of the aims of the probe, to begin with.
“Federal authorities will continue to investigate whether the sheriff’s office has limited the willingness of witnesses and victims to report crimes or talk to Arpaio’s office, also known as MCSO”. Which Federal law is being violated here? Other than the requirement that everyone feel good?
Arpaio violating federal law? So are the illegal aliens breaking into our country.
I think they should go after Arpaio when they go agter all of those federal law breakers.
Don’t know what the general consensus is re. Sheriff Arpaio round these here parts, but I thought I’d toss in my two cents. Sheriff Joke being in trouble is a good thing, generally speaking. Man needed to return to the private sector about two or three elections ago. Whether or not this ought to be the issue he takes the fall for, that’s another story. Mama and I eagerly voted for Joe the first time (1992), and probably the second time as well. What wasn’t to like?! The Sheriff’s Posse, Tent City, chain gangs, pink underwear and green baloney sandwiches, and no coffee or porno mags for the prisoners. The man wanted to make his jails a place that nobody ever wanted to be, or to be again. Then somewhere in there we started learning some disturbing stuff about the guy. 1. He volunteered for the pilot phase of the ATF’s “Project Lead,” in which local LEO’s would gather the serial nos. and owners’ info for firearms encountered during routine contacts with citizens. “Sir, I stopped you because you were doing 57 in a 45 zone. Before I run your license and registration, can I ask if you have any firearms in the vehicle? You do?” No surprise whatsoever, since AZ has been an “open carry” state since statehood, and it’s legal to have a loaded and holstered handgun in your vehicle. “Then do you mind if I run the numbers on it as well, just to verify that it hasn’t been reported stolen?” Upstanding citizen agrees, having “nothing to hide” and wanting to be co-operative. Deputy “runs the numbers” … and that data gets sent to the ATF to be entered into the federal firearms database. (You know, the one that they do not maintain because it’s against federal law.) Remember, Sheriff Joke was DEA for 25 years. Red State, Sonoran desert populism aside, the man is a dyed-in-the-wool fed and a statist at heart. The GOOD news was that, when word about Joke’s eagerness to participate in “Project Lead” got out to the AZ libertarians and gun-rights activists,… Read more »
Way to kill a thread.
2-17,
Don’t whine. Just press on, with or without me.
More on statist Sheriff Joke Arpaio:
2. Planned “courtesy stops” on all highways coming in to Maricopa County. Another grandiose plan that, once it got leaked to the local liberty activists, was averted. The idea was simply to use the (dubious, IMO) legal rational for sobriety checkpoints, and expand it to allow “courtesy checks” — i.e., unwarranted intrusions, “fishing expeditions” — of motorists coming into Maricopa County. The plan was to station checkpoints on all major highways (interstates, US and state routes) coming in to Maricopa County, and randomly stopping inbound motorists.
Shot down in flames rather quickly, as I recall.
Boy, I wish those Paultards could be blocked. I can’t stand it when they just go on and on and on as if they are inescapably locked into a Joycean stream-of-consciousness episode. And if ever they are met with the slightest contrary points, they kick it into high gear and talk or write forever. Even they forget the point they’re trying to make. Whoever coined the expression, “Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile,” must have been talking about the Faithful Followers of Paul the Tard. They’re too much to bear. I can’t stand them. And blocking them is too much, wouldn’t it be nice if some sort of alert could be attached to their tags so that they can easily be known and bypassed by innocent commenters? Maybe a box formed with the repeated letters t-a-r-d.
@6. Now you have a whine.
This was the thing that irreversibly set me against Sheriff Joke:
3. The New River Uprising. The short story: In 1997, both the EPA and ATF arrived in New River AZ, a small rural community in the desert just north of Phoenix, and insisted on that they burn, on-site, a storeroom of allegedly unstable, volatile chemicals and explosives that was situated on the property of a licensed manufacturer of exotic (special forces and black ops) munitions. The owner said the chemicals were safe enough as they were that he could remove them in swim trunks and shower shoes, but that, if the feds tried to incinerate them, they would release toxic byproducts into both the atmosphere and the water table. New River residents pushed back, and demanded a redress of grievances from every government official they could reach, from the county commission up to congress.
And Sheriff Joe? The law-and-order populist elected twice to “protect and serve” the people of Maricopa county?
He sided with the feds, going so far as to threaten New River residents with physical removal if they didn’t obey his order to clear out voluntarily.
Thankfully, the feds eventually backed down — a year-and-a-half later.
There was lots of intrigue surrounding the feds’ possible motives for coming down on the munitions manufacturer, not the least of which was his assertion that the CIA had sold his munitions to “unauthorized recipients,” and that one of his devices was used to bring down Arrow Air Flight 1285 at Gander NF in December 1985. The crash killed all aboard: 248 members of the 101st Airborne who were returning to the US for Christmas, and all 8 crew members.
But intrigue aside, Sheriff Joke was on the wrong side of this conflict, plain and simple. When the feds come into your county with all manner of grandiose plans and zero consideration for the concerns of its residents, you take the side of your people, not the side of the feds.
2-17 @8:
“Paul … Tards … PaulTards … T-A-R-D … ”
For Pete’s sake, how on earth does this have anything to do with Ron Paul?
Focus, man. Focus.
“Now you have a whine.”
Understatement of the year.
This thread — and my comments — are about Joe Arpaio.
You got anything to say about him?
4. Joe Arpaio stubbornly refused to punish a deputy who leafed through a defense attorney’s confidential papers in court and had photocopies made of them.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/11/19/court-rules-against-arizona-deputy-on-swiping-lawyers-note-arpaio-to-defy-court/
(There. Short enough for you, Nancy?)
5. Sheriff Joke’s live “jailcam” webcam, that publicly broadcast women inmates using the jail toilets.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0912jailcam0912.html
@EK – Dude, I was sort of on your side with the knee-jerk “Paultard” pejoratives, but what’s with the dissertation?
6. Sheriff Joke’s abuse of power against journalists who criticized him:
” … Arpaio was angered after New Times published his home address — which was publicly available online — in a 2004 story about his real-estate investments. He then sought to have journalists at the newspaper prosecuted under a never-before-used Arizona law that makes it a crime to publish personal information about police online.
“Arpaio eventually persuaded Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, a political ally, to go after the newspaper. Thomas appointed former law partner Dennis Wilenchik as a special prosecutor to investigate the case.
“When Wilenchik issued subpoenas — later discovered to be from a grand jury that never existed — to New Times in 2007, Lacey and Larkin published the contents of the subpoenas. Sheriff’s deputies then arrested them for an alleged violation of grand-jury secrecy.”
~ Joe Arpaio’s Lawyer Grilled by Ninth Circuit About Why Sheriff Should Remain Exempt from New Times’ False-Arrest Lawsuit, 14 December 2011
CI,
What dissertation? Where? 4? 10?
I’m making my case for why Sheriff Joke needs to be returned to the private sector. Sometimes it takes a little background to explain.
But maybe in an environment where name-calling often seems to take the place of rational discussion, my doing so is unwelcome?
Incidentally, I meant to mention this earlier:
Thank you, 2-17, for pointing out @1 that Creator-endowed, unalienable rights apply to all people, not just citizens.
Eagle Keeper #18: unalienable rights apply to all people, not just citizens. The word is inalienable.
Dance with who ya brung, but don’t piss on my foot and tell me it’s just rain.
Guess it’s a bit late in this game to point out that invading forces, no matter how unorganized, whose sole purpose seems to be to drain the economy of a sovereign nation are not welcome. It really is OK to protect a society from such forces.
So, other than ignoring this invasion, just how do you folks who think that applying regular US laws to illegal aliens is somehow unconstitutional propose to deal with the issue?
Why should those who violate US law to enter this country be treated with hospitality? And while you are there, please point out in the US Constitution where it says that anyone who enters our country illegally should be granted special privileges??
@18. That was not what I said. The rights endowed by our Creator do not include the right to illegally cross into the United States and establish residence here or, without a work permit, to take a job here. What I was responding to was Zero’s request for comment. Whether I was, in fact, responsive is Zero’s determination and he ain’t sayin’ and I ain’t askin’. Water yopur skin and add some flour: It needs thickening.
2-17 AC #21: Since you’ve read something into my post? I don’t normally respond to trolls. I don’t mind pointing out a non-trivial misspelling, but I feel no/zero/nil obligation to otherwise engage them.
Zero Ponsdorf (19): The word is inalienable.
Frank: You know what’s really funny? I almost wrote “inalienable,” but then I Googled it just to be sure.
It really is unalienable.
Zero Ponsdorf (19): Dance with who ya brung, but don’t piss on my foot and tell me it’s just rain.
Frank: Once more … in English please?
(You’re not named after Beetle Baily’s buddy, by any chance?)
@22. Yeah, he showed his colors in a prior thread or two. He’s kind of funny, in a peculiar sort of way, but now I shall close the door.
Frank (18): Thank you, 2-17, for pointing out @1 that Creator-endowed, unalienable rights apply to all people, not just citizens.
2-17 AirCav (21): That was not what I said.
Frank (18): I’m sorry, but that’s how I took your remark at (1) [my bold]:
“… the mistaken but common notion that the Constitution does not apply to illegal aliens. Throw that view out. In part, the Constitution does apply to illegal aliens not as illegal aliens but because they are persons. Blame or applaud the 14th Amendment and various justices of the Supreme Court, if you like. The 14th Amendment provides, in part, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Voila! It does not say citizen.”
So what’s the difference between what you said, and what I said you said?
2-17 AirCav (21): The rights endowed by our Creator do not include the right to illegally cross into the United States and establish residence here or, without a work permit, to take a job here.
Frank: And I never said they do, did I? That’s because I agree with your comment. (And OWB’s at (20).)
What did I say that made you think I don’t?
Or was it just my tremendous dislike for Sheriff Joke?
2-17 AirCav: Water yopur skin and add some flour: It needs thickening.
Frank: Uhh … right. 🙄
Damn, the hillbilly wit does flow thick around here sometimes …
2-17 AirCav,
I retract that last remark, starting with “Damn …” I’m sorry.
What I should have said was this:
Highly ironic — your suggestion that I thicken my skin — considering that, after I agreed with you (that constitutional rights applying to all persons and not just citizens), you get all testy with me.
Physician, heal thyself.
@22 So, other than that, how are things going with ya, Zero? Been a pretty good day here, talking with friends. swapping stories with a couple of buds.
OWB: Do you hear that buzzing or is it just me?
Seems to be resonating here as well. Foolish little sound.
Yeah, my kids did that.
When they were seven … 🙄
2-17 AirCav and OWB