Tag: Joe Arpaio
Posted on Thu Jul 17, 2008 at 11:07:31 AM EST
Tags: Joe Arpaio, immigrants (all tags)
Maricopa County (Phoenix, AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who instituted such ridiculous shaming punishments as forcing male inmates to wear pink underwear, making juveniles serve on chain gangs and bury the dead, and requiring inmates to sleep in tents, is the subject of a new class action lawsuit by the ACLU and others for racial profiling of Latinos.
The suit alleges Arpaio has been conducting "crime suppression sweeps" of Latinos in an effort to enforce federal immigration laws.
Claiming authority under a limited agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE that actually prohibits the practices challenged here, Defendants have launched a series of massive so-called "crime suppression sweeps" that show a law enforcement agency operating well beyond the bounds of the law.
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Posted on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 07:39:00 AM EST
Tags: Joe Arpaio, immigrants (all tags)
Earlier I wrote about Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio's latest shaming punishment for women inmates. Now I see the Sheriff has much bigger problems. The Mayor of Phoenix is asking the FBI to investigate his crackdowns on the undocumented.
In an April 4 letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, Mayor Phil Gordon asked the agency and the Justice Department’s civil rights division to examine what he called discriminatory harassment and improper stops, searches and arrests by sheriff’s deputies in Maricopa County, which encompasses the metropolitan area.
“Over the past few weeks, Sheriff Arpaio’s actions have infringed on the civil rights of our residents,” Mr. Gordon wrote. “They have put our residents’ well-being, and the well-being of law enforcement officers, at risk.”
Arpaio zings back: [More...]
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Posted on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 07:02:00 AM EST
Tags: Joe Arpaio, shaming (all tags)
Leave it to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio to come up with yet another shaming punishment. Forcing male inmates to wear pink underwear, and putting teens on chain gangs to bury the dead wasn't enough. Now there's this:
Women inmates in Maricopa County have been on chain gangs since 1996.
Now, 15 of them will wear T-shirts that say "I was a drug addict" as they clean trash from a Phoenix street on Monday.
What's wrong with shaming punishments? Everything. Here's Jonathan Turley in a terrific op-ed on the subject.
As I wrote here,
There are other alternative sentencing solutions out there that should be tried, and if they are lacking, then judges should spend their creative energy coming up with better ones that don't demean and further alienate the offender.
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Posted on Mon Dec 10, 2007 at 07:19:00 AM EST
Tags: Joe Arpaio, Phoenix, DUI (all tags)
Maybe it's something in the water down in Phoenix. Now in addition to their off-the-wall Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, they have a County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who's spending $700k on a DUI program that includes posting the mug shots of those arrested for driving under the influence on the web. Even MADD doesn't like it, and that's saying something.
The hall of shame is even worse for drunken drivers convicted of a felony. A select few will find their faces plastered on billboards around Phoenix with the banner headline: Drive drunk, see your mug shot here.
The Web site and billboards, which began last month, are the brainchildren of Andrew P. Thomas, the county attorney here who has served as the prosecutorial counterpart to the county’s hard-edged sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who has been known to force inmates into pink underwear.
Thomas is not without his critics. He's sometimes called "Little Joe" because of his closeness to Arpaio.
When he took office in January 2005, Thomas made it clear he was following Arpaio's playbook. Politics and retribution would be the order of the day.
Here's the first of 70 pages of misdemeanor mugs in Scottsdale.
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