Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
When testimony in the trial began last Thursday, Sheriff's Deputy Louis DiPietro took the stand as plaintiffs' attorneys zeroed in on his motivation for stopping Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist in the U.S. legally, who was stopped outside a church in Cave Creek where day laborers were known to gather. Melendres was the passenger in a car driven by a White driver.
Melendres claims that deputies detained him for nine hours and that the detention was unlawful. (This plainly would violate the "stop" conditions for SB 1070 laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court recently in Arizona v. U.S.) Attorneys for the plaintiffs have long contended that the Sheriff's Office conflates being Hispanic and being a day laborer with being an undocumented immigrant. DiPietro said as much in his testimony. Racial profiling trial: Ruling to be based on current conditions.
When testimony resumed on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow directed questions to Deputy Louis DiPietro. Arpaio's words used against him at racial-profiling case:
[Judge] Snow focused in on the background, training and experience of Deputy Louis DiPietro, who stopped a car in Cave Creek that had just picked up a group of day laborers, including Manuel de Jesus Ortega-Melendres. Ortega-Melendres is a named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Of particular interest to Snow was a statement DiPietro made last week regarding his opinion that most day laborers are in the country illegally. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have long contended that the Sheriff's Office conflates being Hispanic and being a day laborer with being an undocumented immigrant.
DiPietro said he formed that opinion based on the stop he made in Cave Creek nearly five years ago.
"Is there any other basis other than that day on which you have now formed that opinion," Snow asked.
"The fact that that type of work doesn't require any type of, um, you don't have to show an ID, um, it would be easier, that type of work would be easier for, um, a person in this country illegally to, um, get because they wouldn't have the proper paperwork for other types of employment," DiPietro replied.
After a little more than an hour on the stand, DiPietro was excused.
On to the main event Tuesday. Crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio took the witness stand next.
Arpaio told the court at the start of Tuesday's proceedings that he had a "touch of the flu." I can tell you from experience that this is a euphemism for an upset bowel due to an anxiety attack. I have seen witnesses lose it, and have known attorneys who suffer from anxiety attacks as well.
Arpaio previously cited a "touch of the flu" during his testimony last year in disciplinary hearings involving former County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Arpaio's words used against him at racial-profiling case:
Within minutes of Sheriff Joe Arpaio taking the witness stand in the racial-profiling case involving his office, attorneys for the plaintiffs began using the sheriff's own public statements, press releases and books to paint the five-term sheriff as a law-enforcement officer whose zeal on immigration enforcement is based on the requests of racist groups and rooted in discriminatory practices.
* * *
Stanley Young, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the sheriff's immigration-enforcement plan was conceived in November 2005 after Arpaio received a letter from the Minutemen group asking why law enforcement agencies in Arizona refused to question day laborers about their immigration status.
Arpaio's response, according to his handwritten note in the margins of the Minutemen letter, was to have a meeting within the Sheriff's Office to decide how to respond.
Young then played a video clip from a 2007 news conference where Arpaio described the sheriff's immigration-enforcement efforts as a "pure program" designed to target illegal immigrants regardless of whether they had violated Arizona law.
"I'm not afraid to say that, you go after them and you lock them up," Arpaio said during the news conference.
The sheriff tried to clarify his stance on the witness stand Tuesday.
"Under the 287g agreement (with Immigration and Customs Enforcement) when we enforce the laws and stop someone for violating the laws, under that agreement we have the authority to enforce the federal immigration laws even though they were not connected with any state crime," Arpaio explained.
This is not entirely correct. This is why the Department of Homeland Security recenty announced a partial termination of its 287(g) program — which deputizes state and local police to function as federal immigration enforcement agents — in Arizona. The DHS announcement was widely misreported in the media as marking the end of 287(g) in Arizona. Reading the Fine Print: DHS Has Not Ended 287(g) in Arizona (ACLU):
DHS has terminated only one type of 287(g) agreement in Arizona, the “task force” model, while keeping all its “jail enforcement” agreements intact. “Task force” models involve roving police officers empowered to act as immigration agents, while “jail” models involve police officers screening people arrested and booked into jail. (Those jurisdictions are the Counties of Mesa, Phoenix, Florence, Pima, Pinal, and Yavapai, as well as the Arizona Department of Corrections and Arizona Department of Public Safety.
Even after Monday’s Supreme Court decision, DHS’s 287(g) jail enforcement agreements remain in full force in Arizona.
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The 287(g) jail enforcement agreements incentivize state and local police to engage in racial profiling and discriminatory policing. A series of critical reports by the DHS Office of Inspector General in 2010 and 2011 demonstrated fundamental flaws with the 287(g) program as a whole, finding that more than one half of the immigrants identified through the 287(g) program were arrested for misdemeanors, primarily traffic offenses. The OIG expressed a complete lack of confidence that the program’s "resources are being appropriately targeted toward aliens who pose the greatest risk to public safety and the community."
Plaintiff's attorney Stanley Young then quickly moved through other statements Arpaio made through the years regarding immigration enforcement, some of which were contained in the sheriff's press releases and others from his 2008 autobiography.
But Arpaio, as he had done in countless depositions and sworn statements through the years, attempted to deflect responsibility for some of those statements on to his staff members and the co-author of his autobiography.
* * *
Arpaio's recollection on Tuesday was sound, but he refused to take credit for some of the statements attributed to him, and claimed others were taken out of context.
"I don't get involved in those operations," Arpaio said when asked about one of the sheriff's immigration sweeps. "I'm not there on the street patrolling and making arrests."
So to sum up Crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio's testimony this morning:
- I'm not responsible for the MCSO, I don't know what the hell my deputies are doing
- Did I say that? I didn't really say that, did I?
- It's everyone elses fault! I'm innocent, I tell ya!
So much for taking personal responsibility, and the officer in charge being accountable for the actions of those under his command. Crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio is "large and in charge" only when he is playing a cartoon villain to the TV cameras, but he is not in charge and everyone else is at fault when legal liability attaches to his actions. Arpaio is a coward ready to crap his pants once he is in the witness stand.
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