Feds: Ariz. Sheriff Arpaio violated civil rights

In this May 24, 2011 file photo, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announces at a news conference that a Maricopa County Sheriff's deputy and two detention officers have been arrested in drug and human smuggling cases. / AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

Updated 8:09 PM ET

PHOENIX - The U.S. government said Thursday that the man who called himself the toughest sheriff in America ran an office that has committed wide-ranging civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged complaints.

Arpaio struck a defiant tone in response to the report, calling it a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration that will make Arizona unsafe by keeping illegal immigrants on the street. "Don't come here and use me as the whipping boy for a national and international problem," he said at a news conference.

The Justice Department's expert on measuring racial profiling said it is the most egregious case of profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature, said Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department's civil rights division.

"We found discriminatory policing that was deeply rooted in the culture of the department, a culture that breeds a systematic disregard for basic constitutional protections," Perez said.

The findings will force Arpaio's department to make major changes to carry out new policies against discrimination and improve training of staff and officers. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement to make the changes. If not, the federal government will sue him, possibly putting in jeopardy millions of dollars in federal funding for Maricopa County.

The fallout from the report was swift. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it is severing its ties with Arpaio, stripping his jail officers of their federal power to check whether inmates in county jails are in the county illegally, a move that was meant to speed up deportation.

Homeland security officials also are restricting Arpaio's office from using a program that uses fingerprints collected in local jails to identify illegal immigrants.

The scathing report on Arpaio, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release, marks the federal government's harshest rebuke of a man who rose to national prominence for his immigration crackdowns. Republican presidential candidates have competed for his endorsement.

Arpaio has long denied the racial profiling allegation. His office did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.

Arpaio has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration.

Cops: "Toughest sheriff" botched sex-crime cases

Apart from the civil rights investigation, a federal grand jury has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009.

The civil rights report criticized the sheriff's office for launching immigration patrols, known as "sweeps," based on complaints that Latinos were merely gathering near a business without committing crimes.

The report said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos. Deputies on the immigrant-smuggling squad stop and arrest Latino drivers without good cause, the investigation found.

A review found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio's immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops -- almost all involving Latino drivers -- that were done without reasonable suspicion. The stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.

Latinos who were in the U.S. legally were arrested or detained without cause during the sweeps, according to the report.

Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio's office.

The civil rights report also found that police supervisors often used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos to colleagues. One email had a photo of a mock driver's license for a fictional state called "Mexifornia."

Federal investigators also focused heavily on the language barriers in Arpaio's jails.

Latino inmates with limited English skills were punished for failing to understand commands in English by being put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day.

Detention officers refused to accept forms requesting basic daily services and reporting mistreatment when the documents were completed in Spanish, and they pressured Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms that implicated their legal rights without language assistance.

[SUZAMBA]

Who were the first boat people to come to America.? And we learned
this in class.??? It wasn't blacks or Hispanic's.
And in reading last week, it stated that whites were receiving more
handouts than any other race? Fuel for thought.
Were all in a sinking ship, no matter the race.

[UForgotPoland]

I'm a Democrat but I have no idea why the Federal Government insist on protecting illegals? They insist that it's a "civil rights issue" meanwhile they can wiretap your house and arrest you without a trial. This doesn't make sense to me and obviously there's a hidden agenda, that's either to get more votes for Obama or to keep companies that hire illegals happy either way the American people must be protected from these free loaders and the Feds aren't doing that!

[tesseractive]

Did you miss the part where 43% of the people arrested in "illegal immigration" sweeps were not actually illegal immigrants? Or that 20% of the traffic stops by the immigration patrol were done with no probable cause and rarely led to arrests -- i.e. they were basically just done because someone "looked Latino"? Law enforcement harassment of U.S. citizens based on race or ethnicity violates the rights of law-abiding Americans who are not illegally in this country.

If you think that harassing (and even arresting!) American citizens because they possibly look like they might be illegal immigrants is somehow OK, you have completely lost track of your moral compass.

[ammo17]

HOLDER WILL BE GOING TO JAIL BEFORE SHERIFF JOE IS PROSECUTED FOR UPHOLDING OUR LAWS.

[1stlttightwad]

Purely political.. Obama needs all the undocumented democrat votes he can get. Acorn would help but they only speak ebonics and not spanish. Now that the money for acorn has supposedly been taken away I guess they expect Obama to pay them out of his "stash"
Let's see now..the good sheriff can enforce fed laws on bank robbery, kidnapping, rape, post office robbery, interstate crime like transporting across state lines to committ statutory rape, he just can't keep illegals out. How do you like the "change" Obama has given you?

[marinasboat]

I totally agree. For the first time in many years, this guy is doing his job. When is the rest of the country going to do what they swore to do when they took these positions? I love this guy!

[LawyersGuns-n-Money001]

I wonder how many people in AZ get profiled for looking suspiciously European?

[1stlttightwad]

Drive to work this morning and see if you can guess the race of the person in the car ahead of you. With all cars having some degree of window tint it is IMPOSSIBLE..so this so called profiling the illegals for police stops is nonsense. They, you, and I only get stopped if we are breaking the law. If the occupant doesn't have a drivers license, insurance, registration and speaks NO english there is a pretty good idea he is ILLEGAL..ain't it. Sneak into France, Germany or Russia, break the law and the cops are going to do some serious questioning, aren't they. After you go to jail you are then deported...at your expense. Got a better idea. Sneak into Mexico and see what THEY do..I can assure you, it ain't pretty. No call to your lawyer, and NO bail.

[Mortar1SG29]

How many European-looking people are crossing our southern border illegally?

[VictorAshesLoveChild]

HAW
HAW
HAW
Right-wing extremists are finally on the run in my country, and it's about dam time. You thugs don't like it in my country, take your dollies and dishes and hawl bawlz.
HAW
HAW
HAW

Check out Fat Boy's slim, girlish wrists and quadruple chins. Fat Boy Joe goes to Federal prison he'll be in four-inch heels and a rubber peignoir in forty-eight hours.

GHOD I hate artificial tough guys. Fits in perfectly in Aridzona, though, home of the Pretend Cowboy.

[IBBuckshot]

Whew VictorAshes, It sounds like you have spent some time in pink panties in the desert.

[Mortar1SG29]

Actually, Victor...you are a lib...which means it isnt your country. Liberalism (modern) is antithetical to our founding and to our core beliefs.

I gather you would feel more at home in Europe or maybe even Canada.

[douxs]

Joe "Let the Justice Department prove those charges in court," Arpaio said. "I'm going to continue enforcing the immigration laws in Maricopa County whether or not the Justice Department wants those laws enforced."

[Mortar1SG29]

Beautiful!

[marinasboat]

Key word: LAWS. He is doing his job people. If you don't like the LAWS leave this country.

[smittyc]

Wonder why they keep electing him? His reelections quite clearly contradict this article. The public does not elect thugs, who does this reporter think he is kidding?

[dzaffina]

In Arizona, an investigative report found that ALEC significantly helped one of its clients, the Corrections Corporations of America (CCA), influence the state's new immigration law. The CCA is a for-profit prison company whose "executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market," and thought that a law which "could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants" to prison would "mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them." As a dues-paying member of ALEC, the CCA was able to write, present and lobby Arizona policymakers for a draconian immigration bill at an ALEC-hosted conference. "Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law," and many of the bill's cosponsors later received significant campaign contributions from the CCA. ALEC also helped the CCA by pushing "truth in sentencing" laws that restrict parole eligibility for felons, and consequently increase the number of prisoners.
American Legislation Exchange Council... go to ALECwatch.org.

[douxs]

Joe Arpaio further affirmed that his office will proceed with the Cold Case Posse investigation into the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate and his eligibility to be president, which is scheduled to release preliminary findings in February.

Arpaio's investigative team has amassed hundreds of pages of documentation and taken testimony from dozens of experts in preparation for a final phase of field investigation.

"President Obama has just put a welcome sign on the U.S. border with Mexico," Arpaio told WND in response to the complaint.

Read more: Sheriff Joe to Obama: I'll keep doing my job http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=377865#ixzz1gfFnNwCC

[dzaffina]

WorldNetDaily has emerged as a leading outlet publicizing conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship status, claiming that Obama is not a natural-born American citizen and is thus not eligible to serve as president.[23][24][25] Such claims are considered unsubstantiated or debunked by most news sources. After the 2008 presidential campaign, WND began an online petition to have Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate released to the public. The website also unsuccessfully urged Supreme Court justices to hear several lawsuits aiming to release Obama's birth certificate.[26...................................www.wnd.com is 100% rightwing propaganda............................

[hawkman1001-2009]

Any investigation by Arpaio into the birther issue just shows how little credibility this guy has. The sooner Arpaio is thrown out of his job on federal civil rights charges, the better off everybody in Arizona will be, whether they want to believe it or not.