Soooo WHEN exactly is the Justice Dept going to take down Arpaio? WTF does he have to DO?????

[the_future_modernes]

Are Your Papers in Order?

Tracked for nearly a mile by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies last May, when the Dodge still ran, Elaine [Sanchez] became alarmed, and then terrified, as the lawmen followed closely without ever turning on their lights. Her anxiety surpassed anything associated with an ordinary ticket; her family had already exchanged tales about this sort of enforcement.

For more Joe Arpaio's abuses of power, see our special report section. Elaine drove the van into her backyard. After banging on the back door and screaming for her own mother, she was wrestled to the ground by the sheriff's men. Sanchez's boys emerged from their home to find their mother flat in the dirt with a deputy's knee in her back as she was roughly handcuffed.The light over her license plate was out.
This is not an unknown crime in Elaine's neighborhood.

Indeed, Elaine Sanchez was no stranger to the sheriff's deputies who'd wrangled with her on the ground; one of them later volunteered that he recognized her from an earlier visit.
Sanchez and her family believe they have been targeted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's men as part of the fallout from the lawman's infamous anti-immigrant sweep in Guadalupe.

And here's the rub: In spite of their last name, none of the Sanchezes is Mexican. None of them is in the United States illegally. All members of the Sanchez family are Yaqui Indians. They are all American citizens. They are as legal as the sheriff's family. They are, however, brown.

On March 4, Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi) worried aloud that the 287(g) program — the enabling act that turns cops into immigration officers — was "using minor traffic violations instead of major crimes" to harass Hispanics.
Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has no idea. The genteel concerns of an uninformed Mississippi legislator are so beside the point as to be quaint.

Motorists in Maricopa County are confronted today by deputies in ski masks, guns drawn.
Ski masks.
The slightest pretext elicits the question: Are your papers in order?

With this article, we begin an occasional series to introduce the people swept up in this madness. The individuals you will meet in this installment are all Americans. But eventually, you will also shake hands with illegal aliens. Neighbors, one and all.And the WTFs keep coming

Hell why isn't this a national scandal, seeing as we are so post racial and all? These people are leaving in a motherfucking POLICE STATE. Are we going to wait until it takes over the WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY and is affecting us persoanlly to take fucking action??? HOW THE HELL IS HE NOT IN FUCKING JAIL AND HIS ENTIRE DEPT. DISMANTLED????

Comments

[nagasvoice]

In the case of politicians who would need to boot things into proceedings, that somebody has blackmail material to keep said action from taking place.
One just wonders who it is, and with what.
I don't think anybody would even blink that "what" was sheep, for instance.

[highways]

Re: your heading, seriously it's never going to happen, and he's going to keep winning his elections because white people fucking love him. I am personally waiting until he dies (which sounds horrible, but he's really really old, so!)

[nagasvoice]

This also brings up the question of what happens to all his pet monsters when he passes on. Do they ever clean out the mess he's left, or just assign another just like him?
I also notice that this kind of intimidation stuff is also handy for bullying people away from checking on corruption and finding things that weren't supposed to be uncovered, until you get arrogant enough to go too far, and everything blows skyhigh.
The white people who run things don't like that kind of thing, though.

[highways]

The white people seriously don't care what he does. SORRY I SOUND SO CYNICAL MAN I have just been living in Arizona for ages and waiting so long for something to happen to Arpaio. Everybody knows, nobody cares, and it's not like he's going to mess up and reveal himself or anything, because everybody knows already, there's nothing to give away and I don't see how he can get any more arrogant and blatant than he's already been. They've found corruption already! Doesn't matter.

Also his position is elected, not assigned. I am not mistaken, he typically wins by a lot.

I'm pretty sure that when he steps down people are going to come down hard on whoever tries to fill his shoes, though, they've been investigating that department for ages. I can dream, anyway.

[highways]

*if I am not mistaken

sorry, didn't mean to sound like the WORD OF GOD, there.

[nagasvoice]

No problem, I understood how angry it makes people. You know the situation, you've seen it playing out in the news etc.
What it reminds me of is the mess in New Orleans, plus the South on law enforcement, plus the entire country on all the harder prisons. That got posted here in politics also. Also not new-- one of the other political bloggers here on DW, twistedchick, has been known to post links on how lower-level inmates routinely get "lost" into higher level prisons where their families and attorneys can't track them down during an endless shuffle between prisons. ACLU probably has more on that one.
Also the AZ abuses are similar to the kind of racist stuff that was happening with the Los Angeles police some years back. They're such a huge force to themselves they might as well be a small country.

[dreadful_penny]

Indeed, Elaine Sanchez was no stranger to the sheriff's deputies who'd wrangled with her on the ground; one of them later volunteered that he recognized her from an earlier visit. Any earlier visit under what circumstances? That may answer your question as to the way she was treated.

...seeing as we are so post racial and all? Since when?!?

[the_future_modernes]

Check the rest of the story. They'll tell you why the earlier visit. And no, its doesn't exactly reflect well on Sheriff Arpaio's department. In any case, the usual practice is not to trail a woman home without lights, even if she was a serial killer, never mind doing this AND then shoving her down on the ground and handcuffing her... for the fact that the light over her license plate was out. That is SERIOUS overkill.

Also, was being sarcastic re: the post racial bit.:)