Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio to Appeal Judge's Finding His Department Engaged in Racial
By ALYSSA NEWCOMB
abc news
May 25, 2013
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's attorneys said today they plan to appeal a federal judge's finding that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, helmed by Arpaio, racially profiled Latinos while on immigration patrols.
Complaints of deputies pulling over and singling out people who are dark skinned and speak Spanish to check their immigration status have long been levied against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
Tim Casey, the attorney representing Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said racial profiling has never been a policy of the department, but said deputies may have been given faulty training by federal authorities on immigration enforcement.
"The law clearly says you cannot do that, and this judge has clearly made it known that that is not the law,and ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) taught that, and that is not correct," he said.
Casey said the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office would appeal the judge's ruling in the next 30 days.
The lawsuit was brought against the department by a group of Latinos who alleged they were racially profiled by Arpaio's deputies for the purpose of immigration status checks.
The group did not seek monetary damages in the lawsuit and instead asked for a judge to declare the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office had engaged in racial profiling and to order policy changes.
"We were looking for a declaration from the court that these are unconstitutional practices as an important first step in stopping those practices," said Don Pochoda, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has championed the case.
The 142-page ruling was issued on Friday, more than eight months after a seven-day bench trial was held in the case.
U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow wrote that "the evidence introduced at trial establishes that, in the past, the MCSO has aggressively protected its right to engage in immigration and immigration-related enforcement operations even when it had no accurate legal basis for doing so."
A hearing has been set on June 14 in Phoenix to discuss how to carry out the orders in the ruling.
Arpaio, who will turn 81 in June, is serving his sixth consecutive term as sheriff of Arizona's most populous county, which includes Phoenix.
The self-styled "America's Toughest Sheriff" has made national headlines for everything from putting inmates in pink underwear to creating the nation's first all-female chain gang.
In February, he tapped actor Steven Seagal to lead members of the Arizona sheriff's volunteer posse through a simulated school shooting.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/arizona-she...5#.UaFzxpwtodw
Arizona sheriff Arpaio says he will appeal racial profiling ruling
By Tim Gaynor
PHOENIX | Wed May 29, 2013 4:47pm EDT
(Reuters) - Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who styles himself as "America's toughest sheriff," said on Wednesday he would appeal a federal court ruling that found his agency had engaged in racial profiling of Hispanic drivers in its zeal to crack down on illegal immigration.
"One hundred of my deputies were authorized and trained by the federal government ... to enforce federal immigration laws," the Maricopa County sheriff said in a video posted on YouTube.
"Now the federal court has ruled that federal training was unconstitutional and it led to racial profiling. We will appeal this ruling," Arpaio said.
Arpaio has been a lightning rod for controversy over his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona, which borders Mexico, and an investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama's U.S. birth certificate.
A federal judge ruled on Friday that Arpaio had violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers in his crackdown on illegal immigration, and ordered him to stop using race as a factor in law enforcement decisions.
The ruling came in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by Hispanic drivers that tested whether police could target illegal immigrants without racially profiling U.S. citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin.
U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow found that the sheriff and his office had violated the drivers' constitutional rights and ordered them to cease using race or ancestry as grounds to stop, detain or hold vehicle occupants.
Arpaio said in the statement that he had ordered his deputies to stop detaining people they believed to be in the country without authorization whom they could not arrest on state charges.
Counsel for the plaintiffs - five Latino drivers who said they had been stopped by deputies because of their ethnicity -hailed the ruling on Friday as "an important victory" that would resound far beyond Maricopa County.
Arpaio, who has always denied charges of racial profiling, has been the subject of other probes and lawsuits. In August, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona said it had closed a criminal investigation into accusations of financial misconduct by Arpaio, and it declined to bring charges.
A separate U.S. Justice Department investigation and lawsuit related to accusations of civil rights abuses by Arpaio's office is ongoing.
Arizona has been at the heart of a bitter national debate over immigration since Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed a 2010 crackdown on illegal immigration that was subsequently challenged by the federal government.
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to stand a part of the law that permits police to question people they stop about their immigration status.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...94S1BR20130529
