Welcome to today's episode of the "Sheriff Joe Apartheid Show" courtesy of Dennis Gilman at Humanleague002.
In today's episode we see more footage from the 1/09/09, 1/10/09 Buckeye "crime-suppression" sweep by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
The sweep utilized nearly 200 deputies and "volunteer posse" members, many clad in black ski masks and carrying assault rifles, who were ordered to look for any and all violations of the law, including traffic violations.
After two days, Sheriff Arpaio managed to net 14 suspected undocumented immigrants on minor traffic violations in an area he had characterized as a "hotbed of human smuggling traffic."
When asked about possible racial profiling, Joe also sited a rash of unsolved homicides from 2002-2003 that left 11 undocumented migrants dead as another reason for targeting this particular area.
Questioned how the random traffic stops might help solve seven year old murder cases, Arpaio claimed that many crimes are solved through traffic stops and perhaps his deputies would manage to simply "stumble onto one of the killers."
So there we have it. Joe claims he unleashed 200 heavily armed, masked deputies and "posse" to see if they could "stumble onto" some killers in a seven year old coldcase by randomly pulling over every Latino they could find.
Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times raises an excellent point about the idea of masked law enforcement randomly pulling over cars at traffic stops.
Having MCSO deputies pulling over cars for traffic stops in black masks like this is reminiscent of some South American dictatorship. It's meant to terrorize and to hide the faces of the guilty from scrutiny. There is absolutely no law enforcement rationale for it. None. But then again, Maricopa County, under the control of Sheriff Joe and Candy Thomas is more like a South American dictatorship than part of the United States of America.
As for Sheriff Joe; he hinted that more episodes of the "Apartheid Show" are on the way.
Arpaio hinted that similar sweeps are planned.
"Stay tuned," he said. "We'll be in other locations soon."
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