Thursday, December 15, 2011
Law Enforcement group responds to report on Sheriff Joe Arpaio
On Behalf of Police Who Care About Community Safety, Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative
Commends DOJ For Taking Arpaio To Task
Sheriff Joe’s Tactics May Have Been Headline Grabbing, But His Tactics Have Cause Serious Harm to Community Policing
Today, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division released the long-awaited results of its investigation into Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and officially confirmed what community-policing advocates have known for years: Arpaio could not be any farther from being a good role model for local or federal law enforcement, especially when it comes to immigration.
The report confirms that tactics like Arpaio’s are rooted in racial profiling: “Since roughly 2007, in the course of establishing its immigration enforcement program, MCSO has implemented practices that treat Latinos as if they are all undocumented, regardless of whether a legitimate factual basis exists to suspect that a person is undocumented” (page 6); that they damage law enforcement’s relationship with all Latinos in the community: a “wall of distrust between MCSO officers and Maricopa County Latino residents” (page 2); and that they have made it harder for law enforcement officers to fight crime, as expressed by the MCSO deputy who “bemoaned the impact of MCSO’s immigration-related operations, stressing that they ‘affect our ability to work in a community that hates you’” (page 16).
According to Arturo Venegas, founder and Project Director of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative (LEEI): “On behalf of my colleagues in law enforcement and everyone who cares about true public safety, I thank the Department of Justice for finally taking steps to hold Joe Arpaio accountable for his actions. Every day that Arpaio focused on terrorizing immigrant and Latino communities while serious criminals roamed the streets of Maricopa County made other law enforcement officials’ jobs harder across the nation. Unfortunately, Arpaio’s obsession with rounding up immigrants at the cost of community outreach and safety has spread to other sheriffs and become enshrined in several state laws. The Department of Homeland Security should be commended for limiting its cooperation with Arpaio, but until the racial profiling and aggressive tactics he championed are no longer encouraged by state laws like Alabama’s or tacitly condoned by federal programs like Secure Communities, we have not yet eradicated his legacy of fear. Unfortunately, Arpaio has flaunted his unconstitutional tactics with such vigor that, nothing short of a federal consent decree will get him to comply DOJ requests and change his behavior.”
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Torturing Women detained by ICE ( Immigration and Customs Enforcement ) : "It was very hard for me as a young 24-year-old woman to see the great inhumane treatment that such detention centers practice. Many people who were not able to speak English were treated differently by the officers; some were neglected and ignored".
ReplyDeleteImprisoning and Deporting People for Private Business - Some of them are American Citizens and some inmates are forgotten while making profits for Shark Entrepreneurs related to Republicans.
This Establishment of Jailer Businessmen gives a lot of Money for the Political Campaigns of Great Racists like Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona, former State Senator Russell Pearce ( already recalled ! ) and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Color Lines - News for Action
What If Nobody Told You Your Daughter Had Been Mistakenly Deported?
[Reader Forum]
by Channing Kennedy
Monday, January 9 2012
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/deportation_reader_forum.html
Some excerpts :
I have been in detention in Florida at the Broward Transitional Center In Pompano beach; it was a bitter experience. You are treated very inhumanely; if you are sick, you must fill out a request to see the doctor (it can take up to a week to see the doctor). A lot of the women detained suffered from excessive bleeding during their periods; some had stopped menstruating (a sign of psychological stress). There was an inmate who had tried to commit suicide; the doctor placed her under surveillance for one day and then released her back into the regular population. She was always drugged up with medication and spent the entire day in bed.
It was very hard for me as a young 24-year-old woman to see the great inhumane treatment that such detention centers practice. Many people who were not able to speak English were treated differently by the officers; some were neglected and ignored. There was an issue with bed bugs; a lot of women developed rashes. Once again, if you felt sick you would have to wait a week, which by then you will either feel better or worse. I remember always feeling watched over, even in my sleep. I had very bad headaches, always had nightmares. When we had to be counted around 2:00 AM, the officers will come in the cells yelling and waking us up. Sometimes they will come in at any given time in the wee hours of the night and will take some detainees, and we never saw them again. I didn’t know where they were taking them to and neither did they. It was scary to think that you could not even sleep due to being afraid and always thinking ” will I be taken away next?” “where will they take me to” …
I met great women in detention; their stories will forever be engraved in my heart. These women were undocumented, but they were all great souls. A lot of them ended up there due to lack of drivers licences. Many of them like myself had no criminal records yet still forced to be detained under “a threat to society” or “terrorism.” In the detention center where I was, we were supposed to have “Arts and Crafts” every other day; I never attended any of them - since I never witnessed such classes. The food at commissary was very unhealthy; milk had to be sipped quick since we had no fridge to store it. When we had a meeting with one of ICE’s top directors of the center we asked if we can please have healthier choices at commissary. We felt that since we had to pay for the food ourselves we might as well demand fruits and vegetables. The answer we received from him was: “Ladies, I did a lot regarding the food we provide you with - It was my idea to have salt and pepper provided during lunch and dinner meals” … .
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