In my 29-year career as a police officer and detective with the Madison Police Department, in Madison, Wisconsin, I have witnessed and experienced many instances of hatred, violence and racism. In most cases, those negative things were not initiated by law enforcement; sometimes, unfortunately, they were.
The 95% of us who sincerely strive to "serve and protect" are tarnished by the 5% of us who intentionally "disserve and destroy." Nowhere is this more apparent in current American law enforcement than in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has taken the law into his own hands, at the expense of the Constitution, professional ethics, and proper police conduct. Earlier this year, the mayor of Phoenix wrote a letter to the U.S. attorney general's office, asking the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division to investigate Arpaio's aggressive illegal immigration crackdowns. Mayor Phil Brown wrote that Arpaio's sweeps show "a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests."
Using local law enforcement to enforce Federal immigration laws, as Sheriff Arpaio is doing, weakens the very community links local police and sheriffs' departments work so hard daily to maintain and build upon. Having community members who are afraid of local police should not be the goal of a department; instead, a far more wide-reaching and positive effect is gained by police-community trust, interaction and collaboration.
This might sound too much like social work to Sheriff Arpaio, whose top-down, dictatorial methods favor humiliation, degradation, prisoner abuse, racial profiling, terrorizing Latino residents, and cavorting with local neo-Nazi groups. And according to a 2008 policy report on effective law enforcement by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian-leaning watchdog group based in Phoenix, Sheriff Arpaio's department "falls seriously short of fulfilling its mission." The report found that Maricopa County has "diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration."
As we all know, police need the community's trust to help solve crime and make our country stronger and safer for everyone living here, regardless of immigration status. I'm sure Sheriff Arpaio's department is having a terrible time finding Latino witnesses and victims of crimes willing to report incidents or testify, but that supposes that he cares about them enough to take reports or help develop their cases for court in the first place. Dehumanizing is another strategy used by Sheriff Arpaio, parading inmates through the streets in funky clothes, "sheltering" them in sweltering desert tents, treating them like vermin, forgetting that he is as bound to them by a universal bond of humanity as much as he is bent on eradicating them.
When chief executives of local law enforcement agencies effectively target subgroups of persons who are not committing crimes, they not only alienate the community, they make it much harder for their agencies to recruit high caliber persons with integrity who reflect the faces of the community to take on the very hard job of policing. A sheriff like Joe Arpaio must have the hardest of times making those hires, and the more the world hears about him, the harder it is for more grounded, public spirited police agencies to hire the best of the best.
American law enforcement must demand the removal of Sheriff Arpaio from duty. He is truly a menace to the residents of Arizona, and our country. Simply stated, Sheriff Arpaio has marred the reputation of law enforcement for generations to come.
His warped sense of "justice" has no place in our society, unless we support Japanese internment camps, the ghetto-ization of African-Americans, and the deaths of countless Latinos attempting to survive their own countries' destruction at the hands of US foreign and economic policies by struggling to come here to live, work and protect their families. I call upon the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as well as the US Department of Justice, to work diligently to remove him from the office he has squandered with racism and hate. Those of us in law enforcement working hard to build bridges of respect and trust with our communities don't need another Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor erasing our progress.
Originally posted on Imagine2050, by Detective Alix Olson, Madison Police Department, Wisconsin
Cross-posted from Race-Talk. (via Imagine2050)
Dawn Teo: Protest Against America's Toughest Sheriff Turns Violent in Arizona
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The author has obviously forgotten that the first role of an officer is to protect the community. Sheriff Arpaio is doing just that! He keeps the streets clean of our number one source of criminal behavior in the south, which is illegal aliens.
The author also seems to think that blacks are being forced into ghettos, as was the case with Jews through many centuries. This couldn't be further from the truth. Black Americans have the same option as all others, which is to get an education, and get out of the poor neighborho
Sheriff Arpaio has been investigat
Semper fi
He is not a disgrace, but rather a shining example.
Semper fi
Excuse me, but last time I checked, local law enforcemen
Sorry Det. Olson, but this law enforcemen
As for those who have disagreed with you so far in the comments, I find their logic faulty. They fail to argue against your main points; prisoner abuse, diversion of resources, failure to maintain good community relations, thereby damaging law enforcemen
It is good to see that the Justice Department is looking into the Sheriff's Dept. This latest ploy of Arpaio's is hopefully the dying gasp of a dictator.
Thank God for Sheriff Joe who doesn't think illegals should be in our country.
There are easily 30 million illegals in our country, costing taxpayers 100's of billions of dollars each year
Det. Alix Olson works for the people
she is required to uphold our laws
it is against our laws for illegals to be in our country
uphold ALL of our laws, Det. Olson
now be a good girl, and help Sheriff Joe
Healthcare fraud, alone, is said to cost
U.S. (us) taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year
and to think
that simply E-Verifyin
for unemployme
will save substantia
and E-Verifyin
will help secure our country
and E-Verifyin
will generate 8.3 million jobs
currently held
by known illegals
all recipients
federal, or state
must be E-Verified to eliminate most fraud
and preferably Bio-ID'd to eliminate all fraud
Save 1 Trillion Dollars a year
actually even more
http://bit
Do you realize this the worst Recession in U.S. History began at the exact same time as the Deportatio
Do you realize that Phoenix for example now has approx: 30% less TAX BASE then as counted all along by the U.S. Census Bureau to base the size of our Government services on?
Do you realize that besides Crashing our Banking System, and putting a massive hole in the "Real Estate Bubble". These hard working Immigrants now vacated dwellings have made Phoenix approx: 30% overbuilt, causing Const./Gro
Do you realize that now you can take your Colledge Degree to the feilds and if you are really lucky you can DEMAND to make $5.00 an hour with no benifits?
Be Proud! It is the idiots like your self that have caused this Recession!
Job well done!
To: Liberty, Prosperity
8.3 Million
"There are 8.3 million illegal immigrants working in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. With the national unemployme
8,300,000 - the number of known illegals, using invalid SS numbers, working at known places of employment
As of Nov. 30, unemployme
As for "Sheriff Joe", the issue, among many, ultimately
Illegal Latino immigratio
Maricopa County is not the United States of America and it should not be allowed to represent the majority of Americans.
To disguise bigotry, hatred and abuse of power behind a badge... and worst of all, to have a few Americans support that type of behavior is something that must be stopped at its roots.
Fortunatel
I don't think however, that he will be placed in jail for the heinous crimes he committed, against a group of mostly helpless human beings, that should not be in the United States, but should also not be the steps of a ladder that ends in a successful career of what I consider a bigoted criminal.
I say let the D.O.J. complete their investigat
To: Justice for All!
No one is above the Law!