Thread: AZ:group accuses TPD of racial profiling

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http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/police- ... 03286.html

http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/police- ... 03286.html

Crime deployment or immigration enforcement: group accuses TPD of racial profiling
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By Jamar Younger Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Friday, August 6, 2010 10:44 pm |


The Tucson Police Department set up a command post Friday evening at Rudy Garcia Park, 5001 S. Nogales Highway, with one goal in mind: to deter crime in the area.
However, members of a group that has kept an eye on law enforcement during the SB 1070 debate says the police patrolled the nearby south side neighborhoods to look for illegal immigrants.
The deployment was the fourth one of the summer, said Sgt. Eric Hickman of TPD's Community Response Team.
The purpose of the operation was to go into the area and reduce crime that tends to happen during the summer, Hickman said.
"The goal is not to address immigration issues. It has nothing to do with immigration," he said.
Octavio Fuentes disagreed.
"There is no reason TPD should be collaborating with Border Patrol," Fuentes said.
Fuentes and other members of his group, Midra Patrol and Cop Watch, conducted their own patrol, recording traffic stops with their portable video cameras.
Midra is slang for border.
Fuentes said he witnessed one traffic stop where South Tucson police called the U.S. Border Patrol to detain a suspect.
He saw another where TPD officers pulled over a pickup truck with Mexican license plates, he said.
The officer did not tell the passengers what they did wrong until after they showed him their papers, he said.
"After they showed their papers, the officer said it was for an illegal lane change," he said.
In one incident, two TPD officers called Border Patrol to detain a suspect on south 12th Avenue, north of Irvington Road.
One of the officers later said the man had a federal deportation warrant.
TPD has had other deployments throughout the years in other parts of the city, Hickson said.
"The deployments are not always the same. It changes up," he said. "The goal is to reduce crime in the summer time."
In the meantime, Fuentes and his group will stay on the lookout for possible racial profiling.
"We want TPD to know the streets are watching," he said.
Posted in Police-beat on Friday, August 6, 2010 10:44 pm Updated: 11:30 pm.

A murder case was shown on TV news yesterday here in greater Phoenix area. It looked like a drug cartel slaying but of course nothing was said to even state the name of the victim or national origin or anything like that. The video however, was telling. The camera-person took film of the exterior of the property that the victim was living at. The trucks' licence plate clearly said Sonora Mexico (blurred but still legible.) There was a pile of trash visible from the street and it included cases of Budweiser beer, Cindy McCain's brand. So despite no verbal identification the visuals basically stated - no worries here - if you aren't in a cartel you won't have this problem. I was surprised because I view our local media as total sell-outs but hey, obviously the camera-man isn't and somebody approved it to go on air.

Right, pull the race card if you have nothing else to contribute to the conversation.

Regarding above article - the activist is saying that TPD has no cause to interact or interface with BP? Why not?

I suppose that officers can pull someone over for an alleged traffic violation and that is a concern. However one would think that they have more important things to do than to create issues where there are none. And the watcher doubtfully has as much insight to the criminal population as TPD does. The guy they did give to BP obviously was known to them already.

In my area it is true that the officers have done much to create mistrust in the community. They actually targeted teenage boys that I know and would pull them over just for walking, handcuff them and make them sit on the curb where everybody they knew could see them as they drove by. The boys had never done anything wrong so I don't know why the police were targeting them that way. It was pure torture. These were all boys who wanted to be police officers when they grew up. Now they view the police as bullies and they want no part of that organization. Some of these kids I have known since they were toddlers and they still had the dream of being a police officer. But no, the police harassed these underage boys to the point that these kids are at risk of turning towards the bad life due to no jobs and police harassment to the extreme.

I happened to mention it at a school meeting because I was trying to explain to administration that they have no idea of the stressors on these kids. Turned out that one of the school staff took my point - that if this neighborhood was solely African-American, or solely Hispanic, the community would be up in arms about it and would have a confrontation with the PD. But since this neighborhood is mixed the police could not be accused of racial profiling - but they should have been accused of harassment. Anyway it stopped thanks to school staff having connections at the PD. Then after pulling my Mexican descent husband over weekly for DWB all these years - we just don't have the trust that we would like with our PD. We are hoping that they are correcting themselves permanently now that they are under the microscope.

Sounds like these activists want to bring Mexican lawlessness to the USA .