Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio alleged Thursday that a national community activist organization is using federal and state funds to fight his efforts to enforce immigration law.
Arpaio sent subpoenas to the local chapter and national headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, asking for a wide array of records he says will connect the organization to a racial profiling lawsuit he is challenging in federal court.
That lawsuit was filed by the immigrant advocacy group Somos America and five Latinos, all of whom are U.S. citizens or are in the country legally, according to the suit.
They allege that Arpaio's deputies singled them out because of their skin color and that the agency has a policy, pattern and practice of racially profiling Latinos, especially during "crime suppression sweeps."
ACORN has been under fire recently after secret video revealed employees advising a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute to break tax laws and open a brothel for underaged girls.
I can't bring myself to post the link to the video because it's my belief that it was an underhanded and very calculated move by Fox. If it violates any rules, whip me with a wet noodle.
Four American citizens, a valid U.S. visa holder and a Latino activist group, filed the lawsuit against Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the county Wednesday morning. They allege that the Latino community is being unlawfully stopped and mistreated because of the color of their skin.
"I feel very comfortable on how we operate," Arpaio said. "We’ll see them in court and in the meantime I’ll continue my job - nothing’s stopping me."
Critics say the sheriff is dividing the community over a charged issue and has created a culture of fear among Latinos.
The experiences of the five individuals outlined in the lawsuit, they say, shows a clear pattern of discrimination.
As a native Arizonan I was a big fan of Arpaio's. He was sweeping the neighborhoods of unsavory criminals and putting the real criminals behind bars where they should have been. BUT....after citizens began filing literally thousands of lawsuits against the sheriff, the county and State of Arizona for unwarranted arrests....I looked further into his almost vendetta-like agenda towards minorities.
Sheriff Arpaio made me reflect back 10 years to a scandal that riddled the city of Tulia, Texas. A drug sting operation in this small town resulted in the arrest of 46 people, 40 of who were black. The remaining six individuals were either latinos or whites dating blacks. The drug bust incarcerated almost 15% of the black population and had been denounced as a form of "racial profiling" by the NAACP and the ACLU.
Those organizations filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and four years later, in 2003, the testimony of the key witness was deemed not credible and prosecutors agreed not to go to retrial.
All of the evidence presented against those arrested came from the uncorroborated testimony of Tom Coleman, a private informant hired by the Sheriff of Tulia to conduct the sting operation. Coleman supposedly sought to buy powder cocaine and other drugs from area residents. In choosing his sting targets, he used a list of 60 "known drug dealers" that the Sheriff had previously compiled during a racially motivated local drug scare. Agent Coleman worked alone and did not wear a wire during any of the alleged transactions.
In Tulia and around the country, many individual activists, family members, lawyers and advocacy organizations worked tirelessly for the freedom of the wrongly accused.
On August 22, 2003 - four years and one month after their arrests on trumped up criminal charges – Governor Perry pardoned 35 defendants.
Coleman was convicted on one count of aggravated perjury relating to a March 2003 writ of habeas corpus hearing where he told a judge he did not know of Cochran County theft charges against him prior to Aug. 7, 1998. He was acquitted of a second count of aggravated perjury relating to whether he knew he put gasoline into a private vehicle from a county-owned pump.
In the bleak and twisted world of criminal justice in Texas, this case was considered cause for celebration. Mr. Coleman was hailed as a hero and given the state's 'Lawman of the Year' award by then State Attorney General John Cornyn. Yes, that John Cornyn.
$5 Million Settlement Reached In Tulia Case
At the time of Governor Perry's pardons, the Tulia Thirty-Eight had cumulatively spent over 70 years wrongly imprisoned in Texas jails and prisons. The injustice of what was done to those innocent men and women is compounded by the fact that other than Tom Coleman, no one else involved in their wrongful convictions was likely to ever see the inside of a jail cell. Swisher County Prosecutor Terry McEachern, Judge Edward Self and Sheriff Larry Stewart were all home free, in spite of deserving to be investigated and possibly stand trial related to using their positions of trust and power to prey on nearly four dozen innocent men and women, and causing untold anguish to those people’s many hundreds of family members and friends. It is a telling commentary on deep rooted defects in this country’s judicial process that the legal lynching of the pardoned Tulia defendants will never be officially condemned by a court in this country. Yet the three ringleaders that orchestrated their wrongful convictions walk the streets as if they were respectable folks.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has also received numerous 'Lawman of the Year' awards. I'm sure most were deserving but now I have reason to wonder if we have another 'Tulia' brewing in Arizona.
After obtaining a copy of the subpoena, ACORN Arizona director Monica Sandschafer noted,
"The subpoena does not seek any of the information Arpaio listed in his press release, which focused on funding."
Sandschafer proudly confirmed,
"Arizona ACORN has been a leader in the campaign to end the racial profiling, civil rights abuses and harassment and intimidation being perpetrated on our Latino communities every day at the hands of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies in Maricopa County. In part, as a result of our work, Sheriff Arpaio is now under investigation by the US Justice Department."
Sandschafter said although her group is proud of their opposition to racial profiling policies, they are not affiliated with the civil rights lawsuit against Arpaio.
If you've lived in Arizona and followed the career of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, there is no doubt that you would also wonder if the lawman who rules in Maricopa County has finally gone to far.