Sheriff's office racial profiling campaign
by chaparral Sunday, Mar. 23, 2008 at 3:28 PM

Sheriff's office racial profiling campaign

3/22/08

For the second evening in a row, the sheriff's office is saturating an area of phoenix in order to pull over and arrest as many undocumented immigrants as they can. Last night and tonight, the sheriff's set up a large area in the parking lot of big lots on thomas with a command unit, stadium lights, and other large vehicles. Although they will say that they are only pulling over people committing crimes such as traffic violations, it can't be more blatant that they are going after specific people. For one, just read the press release the sheriff's office put out the other day, below.

Last night, one car that was stopped was pulled over for not having adequate lighting on their license plate. The driver was arrested and taken away.

I also heard that rusty childress was deputized as a posse member by sheriff joe. This is not the first anti-immigrant organizer to be part of his posse. Please see the article, MCSO Posse Member 's Hate Speech Against Immigrants. The sheriff allegedly spoke at one of the united for sovereign americans meeting the other day. It is rumored also that rusty childress was also caught prank calling a supporter of the local day laborers.

The press release below mentions written requests for police presence, which i heard that buffalo rick (the one who peed in public and got caught) was behind gathering support for this campaign. The mayor has said that the area the sheriff's office is targetting is not higher in crime than other areas of phoenix. There has also been another published study that shows undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens.

Written requests for additional police presence and protection were sent to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio this week from business owners in two separate areas of Phoenix. Owners are complaining of increases in crime and other problems largely related to illegal immigrants and day laborers there.

As a result, Sheriff Arpaio is sending hundreds of volunteer armed posse men and women along with several ICE trained deputies to saturate the two areas beginning Friday, March 21, 2008.

“Businesses owners is these two parts of Phoenix have indicated to me that they are extremely frustrated with the growing problems associated with illegal immigration,” Arpaio says. “They say they feel that only this Sheriff’s Office will provide the kind of law enforcement help they want and need to reduce the problems.”

Arpaio says nearly 200 Sheriff’s posse men and deputies will patrol the areas looking for any and all criminal activity there. It is a repeat of the Thomas Road operations that occurred late last year when owners of the Pruitt’s Furniture Store appealed to the Sheriff for help with their day laborer related problems. Over the duration of that operation, Arpaio says, over 134 of people were arrested and booked into jail, 94 of whom were determined to be illegal aliens.

“Any illegal immigrant whom we come across in the course of our crime suppression program in these two valley areas will be arrested and taken directly to jail,” Arpaio says. (Source).

03/23/08

Last night the sheriff's patrols were shorter than the night before.

Because i wrote my last post quickly, i wanted to add a couple things. One was that there were a few dozen people at the sheriff's department's staging area in a sort of protest. The primary objective was to let the people who were being brought in know that they have a right to a lawyer and they shouldn't say anything. There were people shouting these things by bullhorn. The people who were arrested were being taken to this area, and therefore could possibly see the signs or hear the shouts.

People were also shouting shame to the police officers for being part of this blatant racial profiling. Another thing i left out was that there was a lot of media there and of course arpaio was there for that particularly earlier on. I have been unable to check out any of the media coverage so far.

www.deletetheborder.org/chaparral

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