AZ-Sheriff Arpaio's chief airs gripes and excuses
Sheriff Arpaio's chief airs gripes and excuses
Sept. 4, 2008 12:00 AM
I hadn't planned to write about illegal immigrants, sheriff's deputies, civil rights or anything like that, at least not until Sheriff Joe Arpaio's chief of enforcement, Brian Sands, called me.
Sands wanted to complain about Sunday's column on Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who recently fended off a recall effort launched against him after he challenged Arpaio's immigration-enforcement policies.
Here are a few of the things that Chief Sands said about Gordon:
"He is dishonest." "He will speak about our operations without any information to back it up." "He is constantly berating us." "He likes to portray it like he's the mayor of the whole state."
Sands pointed out that a deputy had been injured by a suspected illegal immigrant during one recent Sheriff's Office raid and said that he was angry over Gordon's insinuation that some of the sheriff's operations violate suspects' civil rights.
Sands said that does not happen.
Since he brought it up, I asked the chief about something I had read in the East Valley Tribune this summer. The paper published a five-part series examining the impact that the sheriff's immigration-enforcement operations had on the rest of the department.
For one article, a Tribune reporter rode along with a sheriff's detective as he approached what he believed to be a vehicle containing illegal immigrants. The article describes a questionable assertion of "probable cause" used to pull over that vehicle. It reads in part:
Abruptly, the detective swerved into the left lane and, coming frighteningly close to the vehicle, used his front beams like search lights on the van's windows, illuminating a crowd of human shadows.
The detective switched on his dashboard's emergency lights. The sheriff's office had caught another load vehicle.
"Failure to signal," the detective said to a Tribune reporter seated beside him. "You saw that."
But the van had not switched lanes.
It seems like a little thing. It's not. Police need a legally justifiable reason to stop, search or arrest someone. I asked Sands about the article.
"The reporter was either asleep at the wheel, so to speak, or he made misstatements or lies," Sands told me. "A certain series of events can happen and you can mischaracterize it. You know that, E.J. He wasn't even near the scene when the actual occurrence happened."
But the article indicated that the reporter was in the car with the detective.
Sands then said that the Sheriff's Office has investigated the incident as it was reported and that the deputies have been exonerated.
Finally, he added, "I may be coming on too strong about it. When there are cars a long way down the road and the deputy, he sees one thing, maybe the reporter sees something else and it doesn't have anything to do with the suspect vehicle. You've dealt with witnesses, E.J. It's not always conclusive based on what someone thinks they saw."
The Tribune has printed no corrections related to the series. I spoke to the reporters involved and to their editor, Patti Epler.
She told me, "They (the Sheriff's Office) have not come to us with any specific factual inaccuracies, any specific things in the story that they think were misleading or where they thought we may have misinterpreted. They have not pointed out a single thing wrong with the series."
A few weeks back, Arpaio was asked about the Tribune's report and said, "You can't always believe what you read in newspapers."
We can argue over how police agencies should expend their resources when it comes to immigration enforcement. But no matter what a department's policy, its officers, unlike criminals, have to play by the rules. That's not just the law; it's what makes us better than the bad guys.
Later in the Tribune article about the traffic stop, the deputy involved is asked about "probable cause." When he pauses, another deputy is quoted as saying, "He's thinking of something to make up."
He was kidding, of course. It was a joke.
Just not the ha-ha kind.
Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... i0904.html
