Arpaio Awaits Justice as Election Looms

"Yes."

"And you gave it to him without regard to whether it was correct or not, is that right?"

Chris Whetzel

www.msco.org

Joe Arpaio: "Well, you know, they call you KKK. They did me. I think it's an honor."

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More About

• Joe Arpaio
• Lorena Escamilla
• Brian Sands
• Immigration
• Illegal Immigration and Deportation

"It says FBI. I presume it may have been correct."

"You didn't do anything to verify whether any of this information was correct? Is that right?"

"I did not."

It is difficult to believe the sheriff. The document he circulated, purportedly from the FBI and the INS, was dated 2006.

The INS has not existed since 2003.

INS was replaced by ICE, the agency particularly well-known to the sheriff because it licensed his 287(g) enforcement.

So if the sheriff did not care what he circulated, why would Sergeant Palmer?

Palmer's rapport with his troops was such that they felt free to e-mail him racist jokes. "Mexican Yoga" was portrayed as a bunch of Mexicans passed out with a bottle of tequila. A "rare" picture of a Mexican Navy SEAL was a photo of a Chihuahua in scuba gear.

This, then, was the management tone inside the law enforcement agency where voters furious about Mexicans sent their letters of frustration.

One outraged letter writer asked Sheriff Arpaio: "Lastly, we would like to know why the Mexicans are allowed to park on the corner of 99th and Broadway peddling their corn, peanuts, et cetera. I know they do not have a permit. It is not fair we have to see them every day driving into our complex."

The sheriff sent a note to his constituent and passed the letter to Chief Sands.

In court, an attorney pointed out that there was no suggestion that the peddlers were illegal aliens, just Hispanic.

But the sheriff was defiant.

"I think we were talking about not having a permit, which is a violation of the law regardless who they are. She was complaining about corn vendors with no permit to operate."

And so immigration officers pursue permit-less corn vendors?

"We do have drop houses where food is stored," snapped Arpaio. "People are selling goods without a permit, which is a health problem."

Another correspondent offered Sheriff Arpaio a lesson in geopolitics.

The letter cited the "dysfunction of Hispanic countries and their governments, and the fact that their governments allow their citizens to run amuck like wild feral animals in all that land area."

The sheriff was so impressed with this exposition that he ordered three copies for his private file.

Then he forwarded the letter to Chief Sands.

Why?

"I thought that since it's written to Congressman [John] Conyers, who was head of the Judiciary Committee, with copies to the president and Attorney General [Eric] Holder, that he [Sands] might be interested in someone writing these government officials, regardless of what the content was."

The saturation patrols that rounded up undocumented people were exercises in terror. There were dozens upon dozens of deputies and posse volunteers in full military regalia. The lawmen often did not look at all like cops. You had deputies with automatic weapons, dogs, and balaclavas pulling over people with cracked windshields. After more than three dozen raids from 2007 to 2009, there was concern that the values behind these roundups now informed the average deputy's daily duties.

And from the start, Mexican-Americans — citizens who have fought in wars, paid taxes, voted in elections, and lived peaceably for generations in the Southwest — have asked a basic question: Because I and my family look like Mexican nationals, how do we avoid harassment?

Consider Lorena Escamilla, an American citizen who was pulled over about 10 p.m. on September 2, 2009. Arpaio and his deputies do not comment when their behavior is questioned. So the trial provided the sworn testimony of the officer for the first time.

Escamilla was driving in the opposite direction of the officer. In the rear-view mirror on his door, Deputy Francisco Gamboa managed to notice that the light on her rear license plate was not illuminated.

Throughout the trial, Arpaio's attorneys and his deputies maintained that they never noticed the race of drivers. They maintained that darkened windows and other conditions made it impossible to observe anything about the drivers until vehicles were stopped.

So even a deputy proceeding in the opposite direction did not notice Escamilla was brown. What he saw in the rear-view mirror on his car door was a license plate that was not fully illuminated.

Deputy Gamboa made a U-turn and followed Escamilla.

"My beat partner and I, we had discussed about going into the area because he works off-duty there in the HOA, which is a housing association," said Gamboa. "And he had the intel that there was a lot of high-volume drugs going on in there in that neighborhood."

Law enforcement officers do not pass along gossip. They pass along "intel."

Gamboa turned on his flashing lights "because it's probable cause to speak to the driver."

Why was that necessary?

"To see what they're doing, see what they're doing in that area. See if they even live in that area. There's numerous contributing factors that we look for at night, as opposed to during the day, while you're on patrol looking for probable cause to pull over a vehicle."