Huffington Post and the Talking Points Memo both have stories up about the Department of Justice filing a civil lawsuit against Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson.
The SF Gate articleon the lawsuit describes some of the Sheriff's practices:
The Justice Department has said Johnson abused his authority granted under 287(g), ordering his deputies to arrest motorists who appeared Latino — even for minor traffic infractions — while letting white drivers off with warnings.
"If you stop a Mexican, don't write a citation, arrest him," the sheriff was quoted as telling supervisors within his department, according to federal investigators.
His deputies, in turn, were as much as 10 times more likely to stop Latino drivers than non-Latinos, according the federal review of the department's traffic stop records. Hispanics make up 11 percent of the population in Alamance County, which is about an hour's drive northwest of Raleigh.
According to federal officials, Johnson also referred to Latinos as "taco eaters" prone to drinking, drug dealing and other crimes. He ordered special roadblocks in neighborhoods where Latinos live, and those with brown skin were stopped while whites were waved through, according to a summary of the federal investigation.
Always great to see the DOJ doing what they're supposed to be doing and cracking down on law enforcement officials that abuse their powers and act racist. It's also the existence of crap like this is why we still need those civil rights protections of the 1960s like the Voting Rights Act. Perhaps news of actions like this by the DOJ will deter other law enforcement officials from adopting practices like those. I don't see any justification for a 10:1 ratio of traffic stops of Latinos to non-Latinos, and I am at least hopeful that this sheriff in North Carolina doesn't get another term. His term expires in 2014.