According to the Feds, the East Haven police force is a “cancerous cadre,” proving yet again the limits of alliteration as a weapon against police misconduct. The indictment filed, however, may prove more effective. From the New York Times :
Following on the heels of a scathing Justice Department report in December that found the East Haven police had engaged in widespread “biased policing, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and the use of excessive force,” the indictment portrayed a harrowing picture of arbitrary justice for Hispanic residents.
“There is no place for excessive force in a police station or on the streets,” David B. Fein, the United States attorney for Connecticut, said in a news conference on Tuesday. “There is no place for false statements in police reports.”
“No person is above the law, and nobody — even a person arrested for a crime — is beneath its protection,” he added, saying there could be more arrests.
Strong words. If the allegations are true, well-deserved words. The government says that the graveyard shift of East Haven cops, called “Miller’s Boys” because the feds have long since learned that giving a name to any group of defendants makes it easier for the media to describe their wrongs and for the jury to think of them in gang-like terms, terrorized Latino immigrants.
Can you imagine that this happened in Connecticut, forcing the feds to pull out every platitude in the book?
I apologize if I appear flip about what these cops are accused of doing to Latinos in East Haven, Connecticut. It’s not funny. Not in the least. And if they’ve done what they’re accused of doing, and given the dynamics of federal indictments, it’s likely they did it, my hope is that they get nailed, and that they clean up their mess with extreme prejudice.
But the rhetoric of the United States Attorney made me think of sunnier climes. Like Maricopa County, Arizona, where a guy called Crazy Joe Arpaio remains in complete, unfettered power. The Arizona Republic has an editorial today entitled “Arpaio must end vengeful ‘sweeps’.”
The correspondence duel between Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez of the Civil Rights Division is becoming a classic of the genre.
The latest entry, sent by Perez to Arpaio’s attorney on Jan. 17, appears to be the first communication that suggests a resolution regarding Arpaio’s legally dubious “sweeps” for illegal immigrants may be under way.
In East Haven, the feds indict police. In Maricopa County, they send Crazy Joe a “22-page artillery barrage of federal fury.” Ew, scary. But Crazy Joe still sits in his office, directing his badged minions to do his bidding, and thinking of ways to tweak his enemies.
The sheriff’s Jan. 4 response was a tour de force of classic Arpaio defiance, chock-full of accusations of “political gamesmanship” and assurances the sheriff “will not cower at the threat of litigation.” Of course not. With the public paying the bills as always, why should he?
Why should he indeed? For all the great might of the United States government, sufficient to make the world cower, it can’t manage to do squat about one old man in Arizona. The impotence is deafening.
Curiously, the most serious racial-profiling evidence against the sheriff isn’t anything produced by the Justice Department. Indeed, the feds have yet to release evidence backing up their sensational claims of Latino drivers being stopped “four to nine times” more often than others.
Don’t they know how to call a press conference in Arizona? Did they forget the way to the grand jury room?
For years, the nation has known about Crazy Joe Arpaio’s refusal to adhere to the rules constraining what wacky sheriffs are allowed to do, particularly to Latinos and anyone else whose skin is a shade darker than others, or name ends in a vowel (like his, ironically), or whose English isn’t up to snuff. He does it with tanks and pink underwear. He crushes judges who question him and politicians who even think of being disagreeable.
And yet, he still sits in his chair without the slightest concern of a knock on the door in the early morning hours.
Arpaio was the focus of a blawgosphere for a while, after his deputy, Adam Stoddard, decided it was his right to rifle through a defense lawyer’s file while she was speaking to the judge, and it was caught on video. it was seen as a showdown, I went so far as to call Arpaio the lord of the flies, after the locals explained that we didn’t get it, the extent of control Arpaio wielded in Maricopa and the inability of anybody to stop him. They had a point.
That was November, 2009 when all the Crazy Joe Arpaio hoopla happened. As predicted, the blawgosphere lost interest and moved on to new horribles. Nobody wants to write, or read, about Crazy Joe all the time. For years. It’s the old SNL joke, that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Yet more than two years later, Crazy Joe is still in power and the federal government writes him nasty letters telling him he better change or else. Or else what? They’ll send him another nasty letter?
It’s good and right that the federal government has stepped in and indicted cops gone wrong in East Haven, where their treatment of Latinos violates our Constitution, their civil rights, and every precept of what we demand of police officers.
But that’s Connecticut, not Arizona. We’re one nation, or so the pledge says. We’re a nation of laws, not men, or so that platitude goes. The feds have this huge hammer, big enough that it can crush pretty much anyone who tells them to go screw themselves.
So why is the federal government completely incapable, disgracefully impotent, to stop Crazy Joe?
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at risk of sounding like a paranoid conspiracy nut, I think it might be likely that the Obama Administration is looking at Sheriff Joe and not going after him for political reasons.
First, having Sheriff Joe as one of the “leaders” of the Republicans and constantly in the right wing media helps discredit all Republicans among anyone who isn’t crazy – especially now that he’s continuing to push the discredited “birther” line.
Second, the federal government knows that as crazy as Sheriff Joe is, that he has the ultra right wing media in his corner and a large number of supporters. Thus, the administration has to know that a crack down on him would lead to calls that Obama is abusing power to go after one of his “enemies.”
I suspect you’re right, but then again, it’s very rare that an indictment of cops enjoys mainstream political popularity.
As I understand it, the reason that the administration won’t act is that the Sheriff has the “goods” on Sec. of Homeland Security Napolitano from when she was Governor of Arizona.
And you understand this how, other than the rumor being spread around the tin foil hat society?
My guess is that I understand it the same way you and Erika understand the theory she put forth.
Drawing reasonable inferences from well-established fact is different from raising a baseless accusation about an indentified individual. Or in other words, not even close.
I have no problem acknowledging being flip in an attempt at humor. But if you have access to facts showing that the Obama Administration is allowing a pattern civil rights violations to continue for its own political gain, I’d be glad to know what those facts are. (The letter asserts that the “racial profiling” is the most egregious that the DOJ’s unnamed expert has ever seen. If true, I find it hard to believe that the Obama Administration would fail to act solely for political gain. But I am open minded and would, as I said, be glad to see facts to support that allegation.)
I often see allegations similar to the one Erika made: the reason the Sheriff’s transgressions are going unpunished is that others are being derelict in their duties. Maybe that is true, and maybe the Sheriff is culpable. But I don’t think it out of line to request that the US Attorney’s Office provide the evidence it has in support of its scathing letter, which is what the Arizona Republic has done. (One columnist, Rob Robb, pointed out that the letter is internally inconsistent because it reports that the Sheriff’s Office does not keep records adequate to evaluate the basis of stops, but also concludes that there is statistical evidence of racial profiling in those stops.)
Arpaio’s political clout and popularity are well established. The rest is inference. If you have something substantive to say, that would be wonderful, but you didn’t and still don’t. And if you want to be taken seriously, don’t use a silly pseudonym.