Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Senior Member zeezil's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    NC
    Posts
    16,593

    Justice Denied and Justice Served

    Justice denied — Free the Texas Three!
    Mark Alexander
    From Patriot Post Vol. 07 No. 29; Published 20 July 2007 | Print Email PDF

    Justice Denied -- Free the Texas Three "It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice." --Thomas Jefferson

    (This is the first in a two-part essay about frontier justice along our southern border. As a former uniformed law enforcement officer, I know that, sometimes, frontier outlaws are best deterred with frontier justice.)

    On 17 February 2005, two U.S. Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, were patrolling the El Paso County, Texas, frontier with Mexico in order to secure our border. Both men were experienced agents -- Ramos was a 10-year veteran and a former nominee for "Agent of the Year"; Compean had served for five years.

    At midday, Ramos and Compean attempted to stop a known drug smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, and check his vehicle. Aldrete-Davila fled from his vehicle and ran toward the Mexican border with the agents in hot pursuit on foot. Ramos and Compean fired 15 rounds at the smuggler at intervals when he turned toward them, but were unable to capture him before he crossed the border.

    Border Patrol supervisors responded to the scene, and the agents did not file a report on the shooting because they assumed Aldrete-Davila had not been injured. Upon inspection, it was determined that the vehicle Aldrete-Davila abandoned contained 743 pounds of marijuana.

    Two weeks later, Aldrete-Davila's mother called a friend in the U.S. and complained that her son had been shot. A Department of Homeland Security investigator, Christopher Sanchez, contacted Aldrete-Davila and learned that he indeed had been shot in the buttocks.

    Sanchez contacted Johnny Sutton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, and a Bush administration insider. He worked for then-Governor George Bush's General Counsel for five years before the President-elect asked him to be policy coordinator for the Bush-Cheney Transition Team in 2000. ("Policy coordinator" -- that explains why the Bush administration is sideways with everyone else in America on the immigration issue.) Sutton was appointed to his current U.S. Attorney post by President Bush on 25 October 2001.

    Second-guessing field agents from the comfort of his leather chair and air-conditioned office in El Paso, Sutton concluded that the agents had violated rules of engagement that require an officer to believe he is subject to threat of deadly assault before using deadly force. He then granted Aldrete-Davila a "humanitarian visa" and immunity from the drug-smuggling charge if he would return to the U.S. and testify against Ramos and Compean. Sutton then drew up criminal charges against the agents for assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting serious bodily injury and violating Aldrete-Davila's civil rights.

    "Civil rights," my buttocks. There was no ethnic, religious or racial motivation for this shooting. (It is worth noting that El Paso County is 80 percent Latino, and Ramos, Compean and Aldrete-Davila are all Latino.) This was a case of two agents, charged with securing our borders from the plague of illegal aliens (including those smuggling drugs), two agents trying to do their job against all odds.

    Aldrete-Davila accepted Sutton's offer and returned to the U.S. He received medical treatment at taxpayer expense from the William Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso.

    Adding insult to injury, according to concealed evidence from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Aldrete-Davila, while awaiting the trial of Ramos and Compean (and still subject to the immunity grant from Sutton), became, and remains, a prime suspect in the smuggling of 750 pounds of marijuana from Juarez, Mexico, to Clint, Texas. That evidence was not presented at the Ramos and Compean trial, however -- ostensibly so as not to tarnish the name of a known drug smuggler...

    To the dismay of their fellow agents and the nation, Sutton secured convictions against Ramos and Compean based on Aldrete-Davila's claim that he was unarmed. For the record, major drug dealers travel armed and dangerous, and any law-enforcement officer who wants to get home for dinner had better assume the same.

    Ramos and Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively, and began serving those sentences on 17 January 2007. Both men leave behind wives and three children, each.

    While the agents violated the law and agency policy by firing on the suspect, assuming Aldrete-Davila was telling the truth about being unarmed and assuming the agents did not believe he was armed -- even if both assumptions are correct -- the sentence does not fit the crime.

    Meanwhile, Aldrete-Davila, understandably emboldened by the lottery element of American justice, has filed a $5-million lawsuit against the U.S. government for violating his civil rights.

    Upon further investigation, it turns out that Ramos and Compean are not Sutton's only "uniformed victims."

    On 14 April 2005, Edwards County, Texas, Sheriff's Deputy Guillermo Hernandez stopped a vehicle for a traffic violation. Once Hernandez had exited his patrol car, the driver attempted to run him down and flee. Hernandez fired several shots at the vehicle, attempting to flatten a tire. One of those shots pierced the trunk of the car and wounded one of several illegal aliens whom the driver had concealed there. The Texas Rangers investigated the shooting and cleared Hernandez of any wrongdoing.

    A year later, however, Sutton reopened the case, and on 16 December 2006 he got a conviction against Hernandez for violating the civil rights of the injured illegal. Hernandez was sentenced to a year in prison and is now serving that sentence.

    El Paso has strong cultural and economic ties to Mexico, so strong that Latino juries are willing to convict Latino law enforcement officers who pursue Latino illegals. Clearly, however, justice has not been served in either of these cases.

    In the Ramos and Compean case, California Reps. Duncan Hunter and Dana Rohrabacher have vigorously defended the agents and called on President Bush to commute the sentences prior to incarceration.

    "This is the worst betrayal of American defenders I have ever seen.... [President Bush] obviously thinks more about his agreements with Mexico than the lives of American people and backing up his defenders," said Mr. Rohrabacher. "Our border agents risk their lives daily to uphold our immigration laws and defend our borders. If the conviction of Ramos and Compean is an indication of how our government will repay them, we can be certain good men and women will soon flee the ranks of Border Patrol service."

    Mr. Hunter added, "This is the most severe injustice I've ever seen with respect to the treatment of U.S. Border Patrol agents or, I might add, the treatment of any uniformed officers."

    Yet President Bush has refused to consider a commutation, fearing he might offend some of his Latino constituents. Consequently this week, 180 days after Ramos and Compean surrendered to U.S. Marshals to serve their sentences, Senate Republicans and Democrats responded to the national outrage and held hearings on the case.

    At the conclusion of those hearings, liberal Sen. Dianne Feinstein and conservative Sen. John Cornyn called on President Bush to commute the agents' sentences, noting that the hearings "confirmed the concerns raised by many members of the public: that this penalty levied on these agents is excessive and that they deserve the immediate exercise of your executive-clemency powers."

    President Bush says he will review the case prosecuted by his "dear friend" Sutton but has not committed to commute the sentences of Ramos and Compean.

    PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Please take a moment to sign Free the Texas Three and Secure our Borders ( http://patriotpetitions.us/borders/ ), a national petition calling on President Bush to commute the sentences of both former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, and their colleague, former Sheriff's Deputy Guillermo Hernandez; asking Congress to insist that the DEA prosecute Mexican national Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila on felony drug distribution charges; and demanding that Congress and the Bush administration secure our borders.
    http://patriotpost.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=543

    Justice served: The Joe Arpaio Model
    Mark Alexander
    From Patriot Post Vol. 07 No. 30; Published 27 July 2007


    Sheriff Joe Arpaio advertising "Vacancy" outside his tent-city jail. "The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice." --George Washington

    (This is the second in a two-part essay about frontier justice along our southern border. Part one, "Justice denied", addressed a mockery of justice perpetuated against law-enforcement officers attempting to secure that all-too-porous border. Please join the nearly 52,000 Patriots who have already signed our petition, Free the Texas Three.)

    As a former uniformed law-enforcement officer, I know that frontier outlaws are sometimes best deterred with frontier justice. Even the most leftward of the Lefties are willing to concede this point.

    Just last week, in fact, San Francisco's own Sen. Dianne Feinstein got a bit testy when hearing the testimony of Luis Barker, former chief Border Patrol agent for the El Paso region. Feinstein asked Barker what measures a Border Patrol agent should take when attempting to stop a fleeing Mexican drug smuggler.

    "Measures other than deadly force," Barker replied. Feinstein fired back, "No wonder we have so many drugs coming over the border."

    There is a region near our southwest border, however, that the wisest traficantes de la droga tend to avoid.

    Why?

    Because Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is there -- and he's bound and determined by oath to uphold the law.

    Maricopa County is the fourth most populated county in the nation (3,768,123 U.S. citizens), with Phoenix as its county seat. In 1992, the good citizens of Maricopa County saw fit to elect an Army veteran and career federal drug-enforcement agent as their sheriff, on the promise that he would treat those convicted of crimes like criminals, rather than a social-welfare constituency. Since then, Sheriff Arpaio has been re-elected every time he faced the voters, because he and his 3,000 employees are keeping that promise.

    Here is a sample of justice served at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) -- a good model for the rest of the nation.

    Criminals in Maricopa County Jail can no longer smoke or drink coffee. "This isn't the Ritz-Carlton," Sheriff Joe informed his indignant inmates. "If you don't like it, don't come back." The Sheriff also discontinued inmate subscriptions for pornography. He revised the jail menu offerings, reducing the cost of meals to 40 cents per serving -- and requires that the inmates pay for them. When they complained that he feeds his police dogs better, Sheriff Arpaio responded with characteristic compassion: "The dogs never committed a crime and they are working for a living."

    The jailhouse weight rooms are gone, too, but there's plenty of exercise to be had on one of Sheriff Joe's chain gangs. These include chain gangs for women, so Arpaio can't be called a chauvinist or sued for discrimination. "Crime knows no gender," he says, "and neither should punishment." MCSO chain gangs clean streets, remove graffiti and bury the indigent.

    He also started juvenile chain gangs for youthful gang bangers and launched rehab programs like "Hard Knocks High," the only accredited high school run by a Sheriff in an American jail, and "ALPHA," an anti-substance-abuse program that has greatly reduced recidivism -- the rate of reconvictions.

    The Sheriff disconnected the MCSO jail's cable TVs until criminal lawyers pointed out that he might be in violation of a federal-court order. So he hooked the cable up again, but piped in only the Disney and Weather channels. Asked by a reporter why he chose the Weather Channel, he replied, "So they will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs."

    Sheriff Arpaio also used canteen funds to purchase former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich's history lecture series on DVD, which he shows in the jail. Asked by a reporter if he provided equal time to Democrats, Sheriff Arpaio said, "Some might say these guys already got enough of those ideas."

    Additionally, on Friday nights, inmates are treated to classic "G"-rated movies, and recently, the Sheriff launched KJOE radio, an in-house broadcast station, which plays classical and patriotic music, as well as educational programs.

    Sheriff Joe has even posted a "Hall of Shame" Web page dedicated to deadbeat parents, which lists photos and descriptions of parents who owe back child support, etc.

    But Arpaio is probably best known by convicts, and most loathed by them, for establishing a "tent-city jail." When he first took office, non-violent offenders were routinely released in order to alleviate prison overcrowding, but the new Sheriff put a stop to that, which swelled the ranks of inmates. On behalf of taxpayers, Arpaio opened a tent-city jail in order to avoid building an expensive jail annex.

    The tent city, surrounded by razor wire, houses thousands of inmates, most of whom get a bit uncomfortable in the 115-degree summer heat. Arpaio gave the inmates permission to dress down to their boxer shorts -- shorts which, like socks and towels, are dyed pink so as not to be stolen. Of course, some of the longer-term inmates complained, but Sheriff Arpaio responded, "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents, too, and they have to wear full battle gear, but they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths!"

    In 2005, responding to limited federal enforcement resources to secure our borders, Arizona passed a law making it a felony (punishable by up to two years in prison) to smuggle anyone across the border. In addition, the Maricopa County Attorney issued a legal opinion that anyone being smuggled can be charged under the same law as a co-conspirator. (At last count, 14 other states are revising state legislation and stepping up their prosecution of illegal aliens.)

    Consequently, Sheriff Arpaio issued instructions to his deputies and civilian posse to round up illegal aliens. "My message is clear: If you come here and I catch you, you're going straight to jail. ... I'm not going to turn these people over to federal authorities so they can have a free ride back to Mexico. I'll give them a free ride to my jail. I'm going to put them on chain gangs, in tents and feed them bologna sandwiches."

    The Sheriff also gives his inmates, who do not speak English, a two-week basic language course built around American history. He explains, "These inmates happen to be incarcerated in the United States of America. In Maricopa County where I run the jails, we speak English." At the end of the course, they are required to sing "God Bless America" and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

    Lately, Sheriff Arpaio's detractors have been turning up the heat on him.

    Last week, Arpaio set up a hotline that allows citizens to report suspected illegal aliens to the sheriff's office. Predictably, Latino leaders voiced their displeasure: "What right does he have," inquired Phoenix attorney Antonio Bustamante, "to investigate people based on the color of their skin, or their accent or the way they look?" Added Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, "We feel the chances of being racially profiled just went up dramatically."

    Of course, Arpaio is opening investigations only on the basis of a suspected felony violation, not race or ethnicity. "There's nothing unconstitutional about putting up a hotline," Arpaio said, pointing out that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have similar hotlines.

    There are other legal challenges to the Sheriff's "unorthodox" methods for dealing with criminals -- challenges that emanate from the Left's preference to view criminals as victims. Not one to shy away from a fight, Arpaio has said he will go "all the way to the Supreme Court" to fight those challenges. "I'm going to keep locking them up," he says.

    "Justice," in the words of James Madison, "is the end of government. It is the end of civil society." Thank God that there are still men among us like Joe Arpaio -- those still willing to dispense justice and defend civil society.

    (Sheriff Arpaio and his wife of 48 years, Ava, have two children and four grandchildren -- all residents of Phoenix. Earlier this year, he accepted an appointment as honorary state chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sheriff Arpaio has retained his sense of humor. In May, after Hollywonk Paris Hilton's conviction, he contacted Los Angeles authorities and asked if they would like to transfer her to Maricopa County jail to serve out her sentence. They "respectfully declined," he notes.)
    http://patriotpost.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=544
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  2. #2
    Senior Member Paige's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Salt Lake City Utah
    Posts
    2,847
    Done! It looks like they may have to wait a year to get out of prison. Bush is evil.
    <div>''Life's tough......it's even tougher if you're stupid.''
    -- John Wayne</div>

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •