russell pearce

Race and the Rule of Law in Maricopa County

So many people are thinking it: Arpaio and his collaborators are putting the law into question, especially with the latest lawsuits and the disproportionate ways in which the laws have been enforced. After the stories on the singing protest of Arpaio that caused him to walk out on an interview, a news search for Arpaio will give you these stories: Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas are suing several judges and other county officials, and an MCSO officer recently got jail time for contempt of court for not apologizing for stealing files from a defense lawyers folder (and the resulting chaos involving a walk-out and a bomb threat, and the likelihood that the officer is in Arpaio's fancy jail for his allies).

When you hear statement after statement from the sheriff and county attorney and others that they're enforcing the law- that undocumented people are stopped/jailed because they're breaking the law, and then on top of that they all seem confused about what is actually legal or illegal and law-breaking cops get different treatment, you can't help but find that they are amazingly hypocritical.

What I'm getting at certainly isn't that we should be concerned that the sheriff and county attorney and others are making a mockery of law enforcement or the rule of law in general. The purpose of bringing these things up in relation to immigration is to point out that the rule of law is and always has been used to work in certain people's favor- those in power and with money, and to work against anyone who is a threat to holding onto that power and money. It's not quite as simple as that when you have a local sheriff giving a big middle finger to the federal and local governments- certainly they don't all work together.

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Beware of "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act"

I mentioned in an earlier post about Arpaio citing a fake law to justify his actions, that the anti-immigrant movement has been citing fake statistics such as the number of "Americans" killed each year (or day) by undocumented immigrants. Then I'm doing reading on Russell Pearce's newish efforts for legislation and see this statistic I discussed in a post long ago (Fake Death Statistics Prompt Anti-Immigrant Event). So the statistic is that 25 Americans are killed each day, and Russell Pearce wrote:

9,000 Americans killed each year, 25 each day, 12 by stabbings and shootings, 13 by DUI and related crimes (Congressional Report; Drawing a Line in the Sand).
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