Posted on 08/26/2010 12:12:08 PM PDT by jazusamo
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County, Arizona, man who calls himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” has until Sept. 10 to comply with a Justice Department request to explain his office’s “operations, policies and procedures” involving the arrest and detention of Hispanics, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.
The Department has been investigating the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for alleged civil rights violations. Officials set the deadline following a meeting Tuesday with Arpaio’s attorneys in Washington.
“If we do not receive clear and specific agreement for all of the [requests], we will conclude that completion cannot be achieved by voluntary means,” Judy Preston, acting chief of the agency’s Special Litigation Section, wrote to Sheriff’s Office attorney Robert Driscoll.
The Department has outlined 51 requests for documents and information on how the Sheriff's Office conducts traffic stops and searches, trains new recruits and treats prisoners held in county jails. Officials also asked for access to arrest records from Jan. 2008 and to interview officers and inmates at county facilities.
An attorney for the Sheriff’s Office said he is preparing a response to Preston’s request but reiterated complaints that the Department’s allegations of wrongdoing remain unclear.
“I now know after the meeting that they involve Hispanics, but they refuse to provide any specific allegations,” said Driscoll. “This case is pretty unusual, I think. They don’t seem to have any evidence.”
“They already have in their possession reams and reams and reams of materials on what we would speculate is the thrust of their investigation,” he added.
The Department is conducting the civil rights investigation under a federal provision that permits the government to scrutinize state agencies that receive federal funding. If the agency is deemed to have engaged in discriminatory behavior it could risk losing federal grants.
The Sheriff’s Office is also facing a separate, ongoing federal grand jury investigation in Arizona examining allegations of corruption allegations and mismanagement.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department increased pressure on Arpaio, demanding compliance with its investigation by Aug. 17, but attorneys had complained the demands were unclear.
Hang in there Sheriff Joe!
Sheriff Joe and JD are good men. Idiots in AZ voted for amnesty and Obama’s goon squad destroying AZ.
I couldn’t have said it better.
Anything he submits can and will be used against him.
Doesn’t a county sheriff trump federal officials?
Arrest the bastards if they show up in Maricopa County.
The Maricopa County crime rate, which dropped 19 percent between 2004 and 2008, is declining more than twice as quickly as the national average, County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced Sunday.
The most recent statistics, taken from the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, show an 8 percent decrease in the national crime rate from 2004 to 2008, Thomas said.
By all means, this man must be stopped! We can't allow these crime rates to be dropping like this. /s
we need Governor Brewer, to tuck him under her wing and tell the feds to FO......that AZ is a soverign state and that they will deal with lawbreakers in AZ.
Arizona Sheriff: ‘Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy’
Monday, August 02, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
Pinal County (Ariz.) Sheriff Paul Babeu is hopping mad at the federal government.
Babeu told CNSNews.com that rather than help law enforcement in Arizona stop the hundreds of thousands of people who come into the United States illegally, the federal government is targeting the state and its law enforcement personnel.
“What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU,” Babeu said.
...
“So who has partnered with the ACLU?” Babeu said in a telephone interview with CNSNews.com. “It’s the president and (Attorney General) Eric Holder himself. And that’s simply outrageous.”
Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/70324
Precisely my thoughts as I read the article.
I find this Sheriff to be one heck of a human being. God Bless him and everything he is doing to protect Americans and to save America. A true American hero!
Arpaio to Obama:
“This ain’t Chicago, fly-boy! So get lost!”
I would think it’s a state’s matter.
Let’s hope the traitors who’ve hijacked our government keep this up. All the more fodder for conservatives come November. Arpaio is merely enforcing the law, pure and simple.
The marxist Justice Department is about to find out that a sheriff is the most unencumbered office in the land. We need to keep it that way and vote accordingly for filling the office of sheriff.
This was news to me, but another Arizona sheriff informed a Tea Party gathering of the fact of the matter. Have I checked it out? nope, but he was pretty convincing, and Arpaio seems rather unafraid, as in the bring-it-on category.
And that the feds can go pound sand.
As for the Black Panthers and voter fraud, the Justice Department has no interest.
I believe so unless corruption can be proved by the feds and it looks like the feds want Arpaio to prove it for the in this case.
Federal Bureau of Intelligence? Sounds like an oxymoron, empahsis on the moron.
Absolutely!
I only learned recently that Sheriff Joe was in the DEA.
He served as a police officer in Las Vegas for six months before being appointed as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which later became part of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). During his 25-year tenure with the DEA, he was stationed in Argentina, Turkey and Mexico, and advanced through the ranks to the position of head of the DEA's Arizona branch
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