The Justice Department is going after birther Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his officers. They plan to sue over allegations of civil rights violations, including the racial profiling of Latinos.
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The U.S. Justice Department has been seeking an agreement requiring Arpaio’s dept. 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 there to also protect them.
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According to the Associated Press, 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.
DOJ officials informed a lawyer for Arpaio that the lawman’s refusal of a court-appointed monitor was a deal-breaker that would end settlement negotiations and result in a federal lawsuit.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Arpaio defended himself in the face of the pending lawsuit saying:
“If they sue, we’ll go to court. And then we’ll find out the real story. 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.”
Last December, the DOJ released a scathing report accusing Arpaio’s office of racially profiling Latinos, basing immigration enforcement on racially charged 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 self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America 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.
