Arpaio is a Rights Violator

It comes as no surprise to me that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office  has been found to have committed a variety of Arpaiorights violations against Latinos. The federal government issued a "scathing" report of his office's activities.  From this AP article on abcnews.com:

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 or keeping prisoners locked down in their jail pods for as long as 72 hours without a trip to the canteen area or making nonlegal phone calls.

The report said some jail officers used racial slurs for Latinos when talking among themselves and speaking to inmates.

And the list goes on and on. 

Fortunately, it looks like there will finally be some repercussions for Arpaio's actions:

If the sheriff's office doesn't turn around its policies and practices, the federal government could pull millions of dollars of federal funding.

Arpaio's office did not immediately respond to AP requests for comment.

The report will require Arpaio to set up effective policies against discrimination, improve training and make other changes that would be monitored for compliance by a judge. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement. If not, the federal government will sue him and let a judge decide the complaint.

Ouch. Arpaio's not going to like that, but the simple fact of them matter is, when you violate the individual rights of others, you deserve to be punished accordingly. Hopefully the federal grand jury that has also has been investigating Arpaio's office will be able to come up with the evidence it needs to put this angry, hateful man away for the rest of his life!

Comments (3)

I agree that Arpaio should be punished. Usually it is the voters that get rid of bad sheriffs, so that means a majority of the citizens either agree with him or are willfully ignorant and keep voting for him to stay in office. I don't have much hope that a grand jury will do anything.

David McBride

No doubt he has many supporters, but that doesn't mean they're moral or have any right to authorize Arpaio to violate the individual rights of others. (And I realize you likely agree, I just wanted to explicitly point that out for other readers.) I hope justice prevails, but we'll have to wait and see.

And I'm not sure what to think of this new story that came out this week about a man dying after being in Arpaio's department's custody. It's just adding fuel to the fire. http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/12/21/man-in-latest-sheriff-arpaio-scandal-dies-after-taken-off-life-support/

The Racists roots of immigration restriction.http://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/eugenics-population-control-and-racism-inside-numbers-usa-roy-beck-fair-john-tanton-pioneer-fund-and-planned-parenthood/

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