Administration sues Arizona Sheriff that investigated Obama birth certificate
“If they sue, we’ll go to court. And then we’ll find out the real story,” [Arpaio] said. “There’s lots of miscommunication emanating from Washington. They broke off communications.”
From The Americano / FOX News Latino
The U.S. Justice Department plans to sue Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office over allegations of civil rights violations, including the ethnic profiling of Latinos, after the federal agency ended settlement negotiations with the self-proclaimed “America’s toughest sheriff.”
DOJ officials told a lawyer for Arpaio on April 3 that the lawman’s refusal of a court-appointed monitor was a deal-breaker that would end negotiations and result in a federal lawsuit.
They’re telling me how to run my organization. I’d like to get this resolved, but I’m not going to give up my authority to the federal government. It’s as simple as that.
– Joe Arpaio, Arizona Sheriff
Federal authorities have been seeking an agreement requiring Arpaio’s office to train officers in how to make constitutional traffic stops, collect data on people arrested in traffic stops and reach out to Latinos to assure them that the department is also there to protect them.
Arpaio has denied the racial profiling allegations and has claimed that allowing a court monitor would mean that every policy decision would have to be cleared through an observer and would nullify his authority.
The “notice of intent to file civil action” came Wednesday from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez in a letter to an Arpaio lawyer.
Perez, who heads the DOJ’s civil rights division, noted that it’s been more than 100 days since the sheriff’s office received the DOJ’s findings report and federal authorities haven’t met with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office counsel since Feb. 6 to discuss the terms of a consent agreement.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Arpaio defended himself in the face of the pending lawsuit.
“If they sue, we’ll go to court. And then we’ll find out the real story,” he said. “There’s lots of miscommunication emanating from Washington. They broke off communications.”
“They’re telling me how to run my organization. I’d like to get this resolved, but I’m not going to give up my authority to the federal government. It’s as simple as that,” Arpaio added.
Last December, the DOJ released a scathing report accusing Arpaio’s office of profiling Latinos, basing immigration enforcement on citizen complaints and punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish in Arizona’s most populous county.
The DOJ also accused Arpaio of having a culture of disregard for basic constitutional rights.
The civil rights allegations have led some Arpaio critics to call for his resignation, including the National Council of La Raza, a prominent advocacy group for Latinos.
The sheriff’s office also is facing criticism over more than 400 sex-crimes investigations — including dozens of alleged child molestations — that hadn’t been investigated adequately or weren’t examined at all over a three-year period ending in 2007.
Arpaio has apologized for the botched cases, reopened 432 sex-crimes investigations and made 19 arrests.
Separate from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury has been investigating Arpaio’s office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009. That grand jury is examining the investigative work of the sheriff’s anti-public corruption squad.
Arpaio has been a national political fixture who has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration.
Based on reporting by the Associated Press.
Editor’s note:
After a six month investigation, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s has concluded that both Obama’s long form birth certificate and his Selective Service Registration Card could be fraudulent. The whole birth certificate issue is irrelevant at this point and yet the Obama administration has kept up the heat on Arpaio for being so vocal about the administration’s failure to control the border or enforce immigration laws.
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