October 05, 2008 |
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Sheriff's Office says race plays no role in who gets pulled over
by Daniel González - Oct. 5, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Arrest records from crime sweeps conducted by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office add substantial weight to claims that deputies used racial profiling to pull Latino motorists over to search for illegal immigrants.

The records show that most people arrested were Latinos, even when the sweeps were held in predominantly White areas. The sweeps frequently targeted heavily Latino areas or day-labor corridors, and most of those arrested during highly discretionary stops for reasons such as cracked windshields were Latinos, the records show. Immigration enforcement also seemed to be a main goal of the operations, which is prohibited: In five of the eight sweeps, immigration arrests outnumbered other types of arrests, the records show.

The Arizona Republic examined arrest records released by the Sheriff's Office for eight crime-suppression patrols held between March and July.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has vehemently denied that deputies were profiling. While he has trumpeted the arrests of illegal immigrants during the sweeps, he also has argued that the main purpose was to suppress crime, not go after immigrants.

The arrest records do not prove racial profiling. One reason is the lack of records on drivers who were ticketed or given a warning and allowed to drive on.

But some experts say the arrest records raise strong suspicions that racial profiling was prevalent. The records could give momentum to civil-rights groups and community leaders who have sued or condemned the Sheriff's Office alleging deputies in the sweeps targeted Latinos while looking for illegal immigrants.

Federal officials have said they have found no violations of the agreement that allows deputies to enforce immigration law.

One driver who believes he and his passengers were targeted because of ethnicity is José Romero of Phoenix. On June 26, Romero and two other landscapers had just finished their last job of the day as they drove through Mesa in a beat-up pickup truck hauling a trailer filled with lawn equipment.

Romero, 27, said he noticed an unmarked SUV with colored headlights come up behind. He said the SUV zoomed up alongside until the two vehicles were window to window, with the deputy looking over, and then the SUV drove on ahead. The SUV's siren didn't come on until Romero turned left at the next intersection.

The Maricopa County deputy in the SUV told Romero he was being stopped for a faulty brake light. One of the trailer's brake lights was burned out, Romero said, but he thinks the landscapers were pulled over for another reason: They looked Mexican.

"We are all brown-skinned, and that seemed to be the first thing he looked at," said Romero, a U.S. citizen who, along with the other landscapers, was handcuffed while the deputy searched the pickup.

The landscapers were stopped as part of a two-day crime-suppression patrol the Sheriff's Office launched in late June in Mesa. Romero's two passengers, one of whom was 17, were taken into custody on open-container violations. The adult was later deported.

Capt. Paul Chagolla, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, disputed Romero's allegation that the landscapers were pulled over because the deputy was looking for illegal immigrants based on their skin color. Officers have the right to pull over vehicles for broken taillights.


Records cast doubt

Arpaio's sweeps typically last two days and usually involve dozens of deputies in marked and unmarked vehicles saturating an area of the Valley to conduct traffic stops.

An agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that permits the Sheriff's Office to enforce federal immigration laws prohibits racial profiling, which violates constitutional rights.

The arrest logs show that deputies arrested more Latinos than non-Latinos during each of the eight crime sweeps. Several of the patrols were conducted in largely Hispanic areas of the Valley or in areas where Latino day laborers congregate, such as 32nd Street and Thomas Road, Bell and Cave Creek roads in Phoenix and the town of Guadalupe.

But even when the patrols were held in mostly White areas such as Fountain Hills and Cave Creek, deputies arrested more Latinos than non-Latinos, the records show. In fact, deputies arrested among the highest percentage of Latinos when patrols were conducted in mostly White areas.

On the arrest records, deputies frequently cited minor traffic violations such as cracked windshields and non-working taillights as the reason to stop drivers.

In addition, deputies arrested Latinos in greater numbers than non-Latinos following minor traffic violations, records show.

Arpaio has touted the crime-suppression sweeps as crackdowns on high-crime areas, countering accusations that he is conducting immigration raids masked as crime sweeps. ICE officials have defended Arpaio's claim that he is enforcing state laws first and, in the process, arresting illegal immigrants, which is permitted under the ICE agreement.

But arrest records cast doubt on that assertion. They show that arrests for immigration violations outnumbered arrests for other reasons during five of the eight patrols.

Arpaio refused a request for an interview for this story. Chagolla, the office's spokesman, defended the patrols.

"We have the proper training and procedures in place to ensure that we are not racially profiling," Chagolla said.

He was referring to the training of some deputies by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. Deputies are taught they cannot use race as a reason to question someone's immigration status.


Claims of profiling

The deputy who stopped the three landscapers driving through Mesa on June 26 wrote in his report that the trailer's brake lights didn't work. He also wrote that after he stopped the pickup, he saw beer bottles on the floor and smelled marijuana.

The deputy, Jason Schweizer Jr., wrote that for his own safety he handcuffed the driver first and then the two other occupants, Pedro Marquina-Romero, 17, and Rodrigo Palafox-Sanchez, 26.

The deputy wrote that he asked the passengers for identification, but Marquina-Romero said his ID was at home and Palafox-Sanchez showed him a Mexican ID. The deputy did not ask about their legal status, Romero said. The two passengers were taken into custody and later charged with open-container violations, the report says. Police rarely arrest anyone for only an open container offense, but instead usually ticket and release them, said Joey Hamby, a Phoenix defense attorney who has practiced for 14 years.

Romero, the driver, said he believes the deputy stopped them because he was out looking for illegal immigrants. The deputy's report does not mention possible immigration violations.

Romero is an American citizen born in the United States. He said he believes the deputy didn't arrest or ticket him because he spoke English and showed the deputy his Arizona driver's license. The other two landscapers spoke only Spanish, and Romero translated for them.

"He didn't want anything to do with me. Pretty much it was them he was after," said Romero.

Romero denied the landscapers were drinking beer when they were stopped. He said the beer cans were trash that the landscapers had collected at their jobs. He admitted that the deputy found a small marijuana butt stuffed under the arm rest of the driver's door but said the landscapers were not smoking it when they were pulled over.

Deputies trained to enforce immigration laws face limits in stopping and questioning people, according to a sheriff's action plan for the June 26-27 crime sweep in Mesa. They can't stop people only because they think they are here illegally. Deputies must have probable cause that someone has violated the law before they can ask questions about immigration status.

Also, deputies who are not trained to enforce immigration laws can call only trained deputies to come to their traffic stops when certain indicators exist. Those include not having valid identification and not speaking English. Race can't be a reason.

Chagolla, the Sheriff's Office spokesman, said Schweizer, the deputy who stopped the landscapers, is not trained to enforce immigration laws. Chagolla said the two passengers in the pickup were taken into custody because of the open-container violations, which he said were Class 1 misdemeanors, not because the deputy suspected they were in the country illegally. Sheriff's officials check the immigration status of every person booked into jail under an agreement with ICE.

Romero said that one of the landscapers taken into custody is his cousin, Marquina-Romero. Marquina-Romero was born in Mexico but earlier this year received his green card, making him a legal permanent resident of the U.S., Romero said.

Romero said deputies detained his cousin for eight hours until he was able to prove he is not an illegal immigrant. Romero learned from Palafox-Sanchez's wife that he had been deported.


Patterns emerge

David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said the arrest records alone don't provide enough information to prove racial profiling. But he said the records raise some troubling questions that call for further investigation.

"This isn't proof positive that they are doing this, but it is a strong indication that further critical examination is required," Harris said

Harris said most police don't bother to stop drivers for what he called "high discretionary" types of violations, such as cracked windshields. But the arrest records from the sweeps show that deputies frequently cited such violations as the probable cause for stopping motorists.

The frequency of highly discretionary stops, coupled with the large shares of people with Hispanic surnames who were arrested for immigration violations, suggest deputies were using minor traffic stops as a pretext to question Latinos about their immigration status, Harris said.

For instance, during a two-day crime-suppression patrol conducted March 27-28 near the Palomino neighborhood of northeast Phoenix near Cave Creek and Bell roads, deputies made a total of 54 arrests. Of those, 37, or 69 percent, had Hispanic surnames, and 28, or 52 percent, were arrested for immigration violations, records show. The area targeted for the sweep is 45 percent Hispanic, according to data from Claritas, a market-research firm.

The records show that 26 of the 54 people arrested were stopped for violations that Harris classified as highly discretionary, such as cracked windshields, no visible license plate and broken taillights. Fifteen were for cracked windshields.

Of the 26 stopped for such violations, 19, or 73 percent, had Hispanic surnames, the arrest records show.

"These are penny-ante offenses that (police) almost always ignore. This is telling you this is being used to get at something else, and I think that something else is immigration enforcement against Hispanic people," Harris said.

Harris cautioned that the arrest data is not enough to conclusively prove racial profiling. Missing is important information such as the total numbers of drivers stopped during the patrols, as well as the names of drivers cited and the names of those let go without being cited. The Arizona Republic asked the Sheriff's Office to provide that information, but Chagolla, the sheriff's spokesman, said the office does not keep records on motorists stopped but not cited or arrested. The office declined to gather copies of citations issued during the sweeps, saying they would have to be culled from scores of deputies' files at Valley sheriff's stations.

Republic reporters traveled to sheriff's stations in Mesa, Fountain Hills, Avondale, Surprise, Cave Creek Queen Creek and south Phoenix looking for citations issued during the June 26-27 crime sweep in Mesa. The search turned up at least 26 citations. Of those, six had Hispanic surnames and 13 had non-Hispanic surnames. The copies for the remaining seven provided by the Sheriff's Office were too light to be legible.

"The whole thing stinks, but there is only a few things you can say," Harris said. "(One) is that they seem to be using traffic enforcement for a totally different purpose."

Several other racial-profiling experts concurred with Harris that the arrest records, although not conclusive, suggest deputies are looking for illegal immigrants based on race and using minor traffic stops as a reason to question Latinos about their citizenship.

"It's alarming in the sense that certain people of Latino ancestry are being placed in harm's way of the law in ways that Whites and other groups are not," said Mary Romero, a sociologist at Arizona State University's School of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry. She is no relation to José Romero.

Mary Romero said the arrest records suggest that deputies are looking for illegal immigrants by targeting older cars or vehicles such as pickups typically driven by Latino laborers.

"That is racial profiling. But the way they hide that is to follow that car until probable cause is made," Romero said.

Brian Withrow, an associate professor of criminal justice at Wichita State University, said racial profiling is very difficult to prove.

States have thousands of traffic laws on the books, so police can almost always find a reason to stop someone. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police can legally use minor traffic violations as a "pretext" to stop someone they suspect of other crimes. Withrow said the only way to prove racial profiling is by looking at large numbers of traffic stops to see if "patterns and practices" of selective enforcement exist. Otherwise, it's difficult to tell whether police are stopping motorists for legitimate reasons or merely based on race or ethnicity.

Withrow agreed that the arrest records alone are inconclusive. But he found it troubling that they show that Latinos were arrested more frequently than non-Latinos even when the patrols took place in mostly White areas such as Fountain Hills.

"That tells me that that is who is being targeted," Withrow said.

Chagolla discounted claims by the experts that the arrest records suggest deputies may be illegally profiling during crime sweeps. He said the records only show who was arrested, not who was stopped, and therefore any suggestion that deputies may be profiling amounted to "a faulty premise."

He also said he did not think the data warranted further investigation to make sure deputies are not profiling.


Reporters JJ Hensley, Beth Duckett and Robert Anglen contributed to this article. Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8312.

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