Crank Calls Plague Racial Profiling Hotline
August 13th, 2007 @ 3:24pm
by Doug Ramsey/KTAR

The crank phone calls greatly outnumbered the legitimate ones today on a new racial profiling hotline.

Elias Bermudez of Immigrants Without Borders says of 100 calls, five complaints are being forwarded to attorneys as possible civil rights violations.

"We're just taking all the information. We are going to turn this over to attorneys who are going to be reviewing each one of these cases and they're going to be calling these people in for an interview. They're the ones who are going to make the legal decision to submit to the U.S. attorney's office," Bermudez said.

One involved a man stopped for no apparent reason.

"He was just stopped to check and see if he had a valid license then and they also asked him for legal status," Bermudez said.

The man was never told why he was stopped.

"He was not issued a report or a ticket," Bermudez said.

A total of four hotlines are being operated by Latino rights groups.

It's a reaction to a hotline established by Sheriff Joe Arpaio for reporting illegal immigrants.

Bermudez said the hotline has also received several angry calls from people who want all illegals to leave the state.

"We are very much afraid that this is going to escalate into a confrontational situation where we will have riots and we will have some violent reaction from our community and we don't want that," Bermudez said.


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