OK – if this it “not an uncommon thing,” then it makes no sense that lawyers in the area would not be lining up to file contingent fee suits. I speak Spanish - maybe I should take the Ohio bar and get rich.
I’m sorry, but I’m virtually certain there’s more to the story than you were told (which, indeed, you acknowledge as possible).
My argument? I didn’t mention Trump. I was specifically arguing against the declaration that no police department would dare do obviously illegal things like rip up licenses because they have an omnipresent fear of being sued into oblivion by the people they abuse.
Don’t get me wrong - Trump is almost certainly “emboldening” the types of police that would engage in this kind of behavior, by pretty much saying that even if their victims did want to pursue legal action the executive branch would explicitly prevent any such efforts from getting off the ground. And I suppose that there are people who might have pursued such action before but now won’t bother because Trump has demonstrated that he’ll take a Trump on their cases if they do. But I was arguing for the existence of people who already don’t trust the justice system, and it’s not possible to get less likely to take it to court than %0.
OK, I mistook the thrust of your argument, or perhaps conflated it with someone else’s.
As to your point, even if you, personally, would never sue, and even if I grant that many others are similarly inhibited, it’s unclear to me how long the department could keep rolling the dice before it chances upon someone without such inhibitions.
I can’t speak for the specific offense of discarding legitimate driver’s licenses, but I’d say it’s pretty self-evident that there are plenty of cops out there who are racist in the line of duty. Since rational fear of being punished hasn’t stopped them by now, then either they’re not afraid of being punished, or racism doesn’t inspire rational behavior. Or a combination of the two.
Oh, sure! I wouldn’t have quibbled if the accusation had been more generic racism – I have every reason to accept that kind of story at face value. Even a story that involved manufacturing probable cause would not have raised my eyebrows; it happens enough that I’m prepared to credit an account as being true.
But it’s the specifics of this story that take it out of that realm. Throwing away a license, and then failing to verify lawful presence are a combination that can be so easily be verified independently. Was there a verification attempt? Why not? Or if there was, then what did it reveal?
See the problem? If the story was, “Yeah, he stopped me 'cause I’m Latino and searched me with no consent,” I believe it. “He threw away my ID and then kept me locked up for a week,” is not credible.
There is no depth of stupidity that I cannot believe a human will sink to. That an officer might do something pointlessly risky based solely on the strengh of the facts 1) authoritarian racists think they should be able to do anything, and 2) people with deportable family members tend not to make waves, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
It pretty much takes somebody dying for racist cops to make the news. With smaller stuff like this, a careless or uninformed officer may not even be aware he’s putting himself at risk. And if nobody has challenged him yet, it would only inspire more boldness, I would think.
The final nail in the credibility coffin was …and this is a common occurrence. I agree that almost anything is possible as a one-off, but you’re asking me to accept that this kind of rampant, easily-disproved grounds for detention is common?
No. That’s an extraordinary claim.
Last I heard was Arpaio was in legal trouble and could go to jail. How could Trump support a criminal?
Trump pardoned Arpaio.
How could he support a criminal? I suppose in the same general way that other Presidents have also pardoned convicted people, each one a criminal.
I think you would agree that in this specific case - Trump has gone out of his way to make his support of Arpaio well known. Please cite other cases where there has been similar rhetoric.
Well no wonder most of the world looks at America as backwards and not much better than the middle east.
Maybe you should. As I linked earlier, he has been sued on many occasions, and the plaintiffs have won against him on civil rights violations a couple of times.
When I went looking for lawyers in my area when I was setting up my business, I found that not a small number of them are pretty racist. Not saying that they would not represent a minority client, but I can certainly see how a hispanic would be turned off from the legal system if the lawyer that the are trying to deal with is treating them poorly.
I did find a lawyer who I did not find offensive in that regard, but we could use all the help we can get. Forgetting the hispanics for a sec, you could probably make a mint off the wrongful death suits that are likely to start cropping up here. Between refusing to allow his deputies to carry narcan, and stories I’ve heard from EMTs of deputies actually getting in the way and slowing down the EMT’s ability to administer the drug, that’s gonna probably be blowing up big here soon. He is sheriff over one of the current leading OD capitals of the country.
In the wake of the big Koch foods raid that you may have heard of back in 2007 (It was actually national headlines for a bit), the Sheriff’s office started raiding everybody. Construction sites, fast food restaurants, bistro restaurants, and probably other places that I didn’t work. He had a tip line, and if you called in a tip, officers would show up and ask anyone with brown skin for citizenship papers. I was in one of these raids, but I didn’t know what was going on until the next day, really, as I was not a person that they were interested in. Uniformed police officers showed up in the kitchen with the general manager, a few employees were directed to leave the line with them, and all of them came back 15 minutes later, as they were all legal citizens and had their paperwork to prove it. I know no details, and didn’t make out any words, but there were raised voice coming from the manager’s office, between the manager and the officers, I have the feeling that he probably kept them from being detained or harassed further. (He was one of my favorite managers, and one I try to emulate in my business.)
He spent taxpayer monies on billboards "warning"employers not to hire illegals. He put up a billboard next to the jail with a big arrow pointing at it, and it said “Illegals here”. Not that anything is necessarily illegal about that, just sayin where he is coming from.
Exactly the details of what happened, or exactly how common it is, I honestly do not know. I gave the details as I know of in this case, and was told that this sort of thing happens all the time. What I do know is that the hispanic community is terrified of him, even the ones who are here entirely legally, and have no illegal family even. I know of hispanic business owners who claim to be harassed by deputies coming in and asking to see documentation of themselves and their workers on a regular basis. I know of no hispanic business owner that does not call him a racist.
We’ll see how things play out over the next little bit. Butler county is only a tenth the size of Maricopa county, but it is also one of the fastest growing counties in the country both economically and population, so Jones’s relevance is increasing daily.
And, given how I feel that pardoning of Arpaio sends a message to the law enforcement community that they are no longer beholden to respecting civil rights, I expect the harassment of those who “look” like they are here illegally will increase.
As it happens, criminal law is more my wheelhouse, sadly. But I’m reasonably confident that there is no cause of action for a refusal to carry Narcan, but I suppose if someone could allege that a deputy prevents or inhibits an EMT from providing treatment, and that this delay or prevention was the proximate cause of a death, then that seems like fertile ground for a suit.
But I doubt very seriously that any such facts will be proved. That accusation makes no sense to me.
If, in two years, not one such case has emerged, would you be willing to acknowledge error on this point? If one does emerge, I certainly will.
IMHO the big issue is that pardons (at least the ones given to political types) have typically been given to people who are retired and no longer influencing current political events. The most obvious example is when Ford pardoned Nixon. Nixon was obviously not going to return to public life. Sheriff Joe, on the other hand, seems to be contemplating a run for the senate. That’s one of the big differences as I see it.