# DoJ sues Sheriff Arpaio for civil-rights abuses; anyone care to take Arpaio's side here? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 12, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726 "2012-05-12T20:42:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/61 "2012-05-14T11:54:57Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Let’s see first you post about how you feel people should be harassed for an immutable charteristic, straw man human rights, and then post a bigoted thing about Hispanics. > > Reported for hate speech. What a bizarre post, could you translate it for me please ? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/62 "2012-05-14T12:00:29Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > What a bizarre post, could you translate it for me please ? Punctuation and grammar are your friends, **Tao**. Let me try to fix that: “Let’s see[:] first you post about how you feel people should be harassed for an immutable char[ac]teristic, [then you create a] straw man [about] human rights, and then [you] post a bigoted thing about Hispanics.” Which is an assessment of **Lust4Life** ’s post I don’t fundamentally disagree with, although I’m not sure I’d hit the “hate speech” button over it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/63 "2012-05-14T12:02:45Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > When English football fans go abroad en mass for international fixtures they are always targeted by the local LEAs. > > Police in riot gear, mounted officers etc. and they’re often coralled to and from the match. > > No doubt many of them are perfectly law abiding citizens, and have never commited an act of violence in their lives. > > So is this racist/countryist them being singled out for special treatment ? > > Shouldn’t American and Japanese tourists receive the same treatment ? > > I mean its only fair. > > Lets face it, you don’t pull over African Americans, Australians or Koreans, when you’re looking for illegal immigrants, or members of Mexican Drug Cartels; not too far away from the Mexican border. Yes, it’s racist, and, obviously, the way to fix this is to treat no one like they are evil outsiders. No civil rights activist advocates for discrimination against everyone to make it fair. And, yes, you sure as hell do pull over anyone. Otherwise, it becomes easy to just find the darker skinned Latinos who can pass as black. You are aware that Latinos do not all look the same, right? ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/64 "2012-05-14T12:14:10Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > Its not unknown for people who have a vested interest in abolishing this sort of targeting The police, namely. What would common sense tell you when looking for terrorists at an Israeli airport? What occurred on 30th of May 1972? > [@monstro](#): > > I’d actually be more concerned about a middle-class, educated illegal alien “stealing” jobs The entire notion of “stealing jobs” is absurd anyway. Markets respond to population growth (barring saturation) and there are more employment opportunities. Otherwise literally every other employed person in the country could be accused of stealing a job. Given saturation, the couple refusing to use contraception or abortion caused one’s job to be stolen. There is a nationalist argument that jobs “belong” to the people within the nation, but that form of protectionism is dead in the era of comparative advantage and globalisation. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/65 "2012-05-14T12:49:57Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > In the U.K. the police are regulated so as to record everyone that they pull over in the street for randoming questioning, and they have to ensure that the same number of ethnicities are questioned as well to ensure no racial bias. > > […] > > The I.R.A. and their supporters loved it, funnily enough the non Irish ethnicities didn’t. Good. Then maybe they could feel a little of the plight of all those people getting bothered by the police because they were born a Paddy O’Malley instead of a respectable John Smith like everyone decent. And then maybe, just maybe, they went on to protest against people getting questioned like they were from the IRA without any probable cause whatsoever. > [@](#): > > If you’re going after Yardies then you don’t pull over Chinese people, if you’re going after White Supremacists then you don’t pull over Pakistanis. And that’s shoddy police work that criminals can and do use to their advantage. > [@](#): > > Thats not being racist, thats being realist. That’s not thinking things through. > [@](#): > > Its not unknown for people who have a vested interest in abolishing this sort of targeting, to use the “Human Rights”, we’re campaigning out of our deep rooted liberal humanist views etc facade as a pretext to stop the actions that are disrupting their activities. when the fact is they are themselves illegal immigrants or petty criminals, or have friends and or family who are so. There you have it, folks. All those bleeding heart human rights campaigners ? Criminals. > [@](#): > > To say that profiling is going to result in a restoration of lynch law, etc in this day and age is absurd. Is it ? Because that’s pretty much what happens here in France, where the cops aren’t really tied down by anti-profiling laws and many of whom are openly racist. That’s how you get innocent kids shot in the head while inside a police station, handcuffed to a radiator. Which goes some ways towards explaining why the folks from our ghettos are perma-angry and riot every other year. To give you an example of what I mean: in France you’re required to have ID on your person at all times, and cops can stop you in the street and request you show it. They also routinely carry searches out in the streets (even though it’s technically illegal - but then if you protest they can haul you in and keep you in the drunk tank for 24 hours so…). I, white middle class guy, have been stopped like that once in my entire life (for smoking in the subway no less - an actual infraction in plain view). Buddy of mine in college however was a 3rd generation Algerian straight for the cités, tracksuit and all. His family was dirt poor, he’d gotten into this particular college via some scholarship program or other. He got stopped at least once a week by cops assuming that the only reason a kid from the projects would be seen around the campus was to sell drugs or commit mischief. Just good sense to search him over and over, right ? I think the worst thing about it all was that it didn’t even bother him any more - to him that was just how things were, that’s how they’d always been. If anything, it was worse back in the cité. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/66 "2012-05-14T12:55:47Z")
Clue me in here: why is Arpaio being sued and not prosecuted? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/67 "2012-05-14T12:57:34Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > If you’re going after Yardies then you don’t pull over Chinese people, if you’re going after White Supremicists then you don’t pull over Pakistanis. Right, you go after the right-looking people whether or not they’re guilty. To make absolutely sure they don’t commit future crime, you follow them into tube stops and shoot them in the head. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/68 "2012-05-14T12:59:42Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Clue me in here: why is Arpaio being sued and not prosecuted? IANAL but I would guess it is Qualified Immunity: > [@](#): > > Qualified immunity is a doctrine in U.S. federal law that arises in cases brought against state officials under 42 U.S.C Section 1983 and against federal officials under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). Qualified immunity shields government officials from liability for the violation of an individual’s federal constitutional rights. This grant of immunity is available to state or federal employees performing discretionary functions where their actions, even if later found to be unlawful, did not violate “clearly established law.” > > SOURCE: [Qualified immunity - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity) ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/69 "2012-05-14T13:00:41Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Clue me in here: why is Arpaio being sued and not prosecuted? In general, the practices alleged either don’t rise to the level of criminal activity, or would be difficult to impute criminal liability directly to Arapio. In other words, not only would you have to provbe that a deputy lied to support a probable cause determination, but that Arapio ordered him to tell that lie. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/70 "2012-05-14T13:03:19Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > IANAL but I would guess it is Qualified Immunity: No, not really. In general, qualified immunity is a shield from civil liability, not criminal. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/71 "2012-05-14T13:12:20Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > To say that profiling is going to result in a restoration of lynch law, etc in this day and age is absurd. You’re perfectly free to argue that such tactics mnake sense. However, the question here seems to be: are such tactics _legal_? In other words, the OP discussed the impending DOJ lawsuit against Sheriff Arapio, which seeks to prove (1) That he did the acts alleged, and (2) They constitute a violation of the law. I don’t agree that these tactics are wise, but that’s not relevant, any more than your seeming agreement with the proposition that they are wise. The question is: did they happen, and were they legal? ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/72 "2012-05-14T13:15:10Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > In the U.K. the police are regulated so as to record everyone that they pull over in the street for randoming questioning, and they have to ensure that the same number of ethnicities are questioned as well to ensure no racial bias. > > So we had the ridiculous situation that when the I.R.A. were committing atrocities in London, the police had to waste valuable time and money questioning Asians, West Indians etc. to make sure that the quotas were similar in number. > > The I.R.A. and their supporters loved it, funnily enough the non Irish ethnicities didn’t. > > If you’re going after Yardies then you don’t pull over Chinese people, if you’re going after White Supremicists then you don’t pull over Pakistanis. > > Thats not being racist, thats being realist. > > And to suggest that you do otherwise in the interest of "fairness is nonsensical. > > Its not unknown for people who have a vested interest in abolishing this sort of targeting, to use the “Human Rights”, we’re campaigning out of our deep rooted liberal humanist views etc facade as a pretext to stop the actions that are disrupting their activities. when the fact is they are themselves illegal immigrants or petty criminals, or have friends and or family who are so. > > To say that profiling is going to result in a restoration of lynch law, etc in this day and age is absurd. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![AvenueB-dude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@AvenueB-dude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AvenueB-dude)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/73 "2012-05-14T13:30:26Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > You’re perfectly free to argue that such tactics mnake sense. > > However, the question here seems to be: are such tactics _legal_? In other words, the OP discussed the impending DOJ lawsuit against Sheriff Arapio, which seeks to prove (1) That he did the acts alleged, and (2) They constitute a violation of the law. > > I don’t agree that these tactics are wise, but that’s not relevant, any more than your seeming agreement with the proposition that they are wise. The question is: did they happen, and were they legal? Well Bricker I got to hand it to you. You dO this exact dickish legal thing which I hate even when you go against Republicans. You’re a consistent legalistic dick, not a partisan one. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/74 "2012-05-14T13:52:02Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > To say that profiling is going to result in a restoration of lynch law, etc in this day and age is absurd. I am not sure why this thread drifted away from Arpaio and into silly claims about racial profiling, but we already have evidence that racial or ethnic profiling fails while behavioral profiling works. (And lynching is pretty much the natural result of racial profiling, so it is not absurd by any reasonable definition.) [Salon.com: Why Racial profiling doesn’t work](http://www.salon.com/2005/08/22/racial_profiling/) > [@](#): > > Harris points to a study of New York’s “stop and frisk” campaign in the late 1990s, when police were stopping people in the streets on a regular basis in an effort to confiscate illegal weapons and reduce crime. The campaign created tension between the police and minority communities, who thought they were being unfairly targeted for frisks. It turned out they were right. > > . . . New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer ordered a study of 175,000 “stop and frisk” records and found that although African-Americans composed only 25 percent of New York City’s population at the time, they made up 50 percent of the people who were stopped. Latinos were roughly 23 percent of the population and 33 percent of those stopped, while whites were 43 percent of the population and 13 percent of those stopped. > > Those findings interested Harris less than what the statistics indicated about the results: Police were going to a lot of trouble for little reward, especially when the people they stopped were African-Americans. > > Harris looked at what he called “hit rates” – the percentage of stops in which the police found drugs, a gun or something else that led to an arrest – and noted that the number of hits in general was very low for the number of stops that police made. But more interesting was that the rate for African-Americans was much lower than the rate for Caucasians. Police had a hit rate of 12.6 percent when they stopped Caucasians and only 10.5 percent when they stopped African-Americans. The hit rate for Latinos was 11.5 percent. > > “You might say that we have a difference of 2.1 percent between blacks and whites. But it’s actually a difference of 20 percent when you do the math right,” Harris says. And “the difference between whites and Latinos is about 10 percent.” > > Essentially, police were stopping more African-Americans than Caucasians but finding fewer criminals among the former. Why? Not because blacks commit proportionately fewer crimes than whites do (the data vary according to the type of crime and other factors) but because police were looking at the wrong factors when they stopped people, Harris says. > > “They’re focusing on appearance when they should be focusing on behavior,” he says. “When they’re not distracted by race, they’re actually doing a more accurate job” of picking out the right people. I have no idea whther SCOTUS will eventually strike down or uphold the Arizona law, but the folks in robes are interested in the application of Law, not the effectiveness of police work. To the extent that racial profiling creates antagonism between people and the police while failing to actually accomplish a goal of protecting the public, it is just stupid. > [@Lust4Life](#): > > Its not unknown for people who have a vested interest in abolishing this sort of targeting, to use the “Human Rights”, we’re campaigning out of our deep rooted liberal humanist views etc facade as a pretext to stop the actions that are disrupting their activities. when the fact is they are themselves illegal immigrants or petty criminals, or have friends and or family who are so. And this is the sort of silly racist nonsense that is used to support failed policies, where you imply that all the people who match the description of your targeted ethnic group are “illegal immigrants or petty criminals, or have friends and or family who are so,” despite the fact that, in Arizona, nearly 30% of the population falls into the category most likely to be searched. You implication is that nearly 1.9 million people (out of about 6.3 million), are “illegal immigrants or petty criminals, or have friends and or family who are so” based on nothing more than their appearance. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/75 "2012-05-14T14:29:36Z")
> [@AvenueB-dude](#): > > Well Bricker I got to hand it to you. You dO this exact dickish legal thing which I hate even when you go against Republicans. You’re a consistent legalistic dick, not a partisan one. Ummm… thanks? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/76 "2012-05-14T14:38:22Z")
> [@AvenueB-dude](#): > > Well Bricker I got to hand it to you. You dO this exact dickish legal thing which I hate even when you go against Republicans. You’re a consistent legalistic dick, not a partisan one. Even as a left-handed compliment, this does not belong in Grerat Debates. Leave the insults for The Pit. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/77 "2012-05-14T16:24:45Z")
I don’t actually recall saying that everyone who claims to be a liberal is actually criminally involved with the people who are the subjects of the actions people are complaining about. But I am saying that people who don’t have a liberal bone in their bodies do routinely jump on the bandwagon and cry crocodile tears to further their own agendas. And as to the incredible sensitivity by proxy displayed by some people… For a time I was street homeless, everywhere I went I was looked at suspiciously or with contempt by ordinary members of the public, if I went into a shop I was watched like a hawk in case I stole something, if I approached someone for any reason at all, they’d walk away because they thought that I was going to ask them for money. As to the police, god knows how many times I was questioned, made to empty my pockets, or moved on, not because I’d actually done anything but because I fell into the image of someone who was likely to perform some sort of criminal behaviour, was looking for the opportunity to do so, or most likely had done so in the past. The fact is I never begged or stole during my time of misfortune, but I didn’t get all upset and hurt feelings, and whine about my being selected well above the average for police attention. Because in the first place I’m a big boy now, so I sucked it up, and secondly the fact was that most, if not all of my street bretheren who I got to know really well, would steal at any opportunity, and on ocassion actually rob. Mostly to pay for their habits, drugs and/ or booze, but some who didn’t actually have a habit, but were in the same boat, did so anyway. This was a result of profiling, there was no racism involved,it was equal opportunities treatment, us white tramps received exactly the same amount of police “attention” as everyone else. Which is why I can’t feel an incredible amount of sympathy when people start boo hooing about what a cruel world they live in. And if you really think that the police should stop West Indians in the street when they’re clamping down on White Supremacists because otherwise then they’re being racist ? Well I’ll say nothing more about that. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/78 "2012-05-14T16:37:36Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > As to the police, god knows how many times I was questioned, made to empty my pockets, or moved on, not because I’d actually done anything but because I fell into the image of someone who was likely to perform some sort of criminal behaviour, was looking for the opportunity to do so, or most likely had done so in the past. > > The fact is I never begged or stole during my time of misfortune, but I didn’t get all upset and hurt feelings, and whine about my being selected well above the average for police attention. > > Because in the first place I’m a big boy now, so I sucked it up, and secondly the fact was that most, if not all of my street bretheren who I got to know really well, would steal at any opportunity, and on ocassion actually rob. Being a vagrant is not an immutable trait. Being targeted by police for no more reason than your race is offensive. It is government oppression of a given minority and makes members of that minority scared of the very people who are presumably there to protect them. > [@](#): > > Police officers stopped people on New York City’s streets more than 200,000 times during the first three months of 2012, putting the Bloomberg administration on course to shatter a record set last year for the highest annual tally of street stops. > > \ > > On Wednesday, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a study of last year’s stop data, arguing that far too many innocent people were suffering under the policy. The study said that while young black and Hispanic men made up 4.7 percent of the city’s population, those between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011. > > SOURCE: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/nyregion/new-york-police-data-shows-increase-in-stop-and-frisks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/nyregion/new-york-police-data-shows-increase-in-stop-and-frisks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/79 "2012-05-14T16:42:30Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > And if you really think that the police should stop West Indians in the street when they’re clamping down on White Supremacists because otherwise then they’re being racist ? Making up arguments to attack is called creating a straw man. It is an example of failed logic–and generally of a failed viewpoint. > [@Lust4Life](#): > > Well I’ll say nothing more about that. Let’s hope not. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2012, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726/80 "2012-05-14T16:53:42Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Apparently he **has** done **something** more than enforce the program, which does not authorize, e.g., this sort of shit: Correct me if I’m wrong, but several of the incidents you cited involve “victims” who refused police officers explicit instructions and got cuffed/arrested because of that. That happens all the time, everywhere, even in the bluest of the states, and seems to be proper procedure. Why single out Arpaio’s department? I mean: “When she arrived home, **they insisted that she stay in the car** … After **she tried to enter her home** , officers took her to the ground, kneed her in the back and handcuffed her.” Do you see this going differently anywhere else in the country? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doj-sues-sheriff-arpaio-for-civil-rights-abuses-anyone-care-to-take-arpaios-side-here/621726.md?page=5)