I am anti-illegal immigration. I believe that if we really wanted to take a stand against illegal immigration we would have the Army and aircraft drones patrol the border. Furthermore, I would deport any caught being in the country illegally to Chad or Guinea and charge the Mexican government the cost associated with the imprisonment and social services provided to illegal immigration. I don’t equate racism to this position because I feel those snowbacks that cross over with their toques and non-Vermont maple syrup should be treated exactly the same way.
But let’s assume for a second that all of the illegal aliens in Maricopa County are Hispanic. As a logic statement it is: All A are B. We get two fallacies out of this. For the pro-illegal alien side, they translate this as:
All A are B
Feelings against A means you have the same feelings towards B
Therefore if you are anti-A then you are anti-B (viz. racist)
Arpaio’s fallacy is a little different and this is where he loses my support
All A are B
If you are B then there is a chance you are A (i.e. a variation of the contrapositive ~B > ~A)
Therefore if you are A then I assume you are B until you prove you are not.
I am referencing the case from which I quoted “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.” You reference THAT quote when you said that it was not a traffic stop. So it seems you’re the one that got it mixed up.
There is a HUGE problem with police brutality, corrupt law enforcement, and just general abuse-of-power by cops in this country (not as bad as true police states or in many developing countries…but relative to other first world countries.)
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is the perfect example of everything wrong with law enforcement in the US. The idea of “shoot first, ask questions later,” and “everyone is a potential criminal” and the entire “us vs them” attitude that’s become so pervasive in LE is even worse under Sheriff Joe, and to make matters worse, there’s the added racism towards Latinos and Hispanics. The idea that criminals have to be “punished” instead of rehabilitated. Prisons and jails like the one Sheriff Joe runs do nothing to help the underlying cause of crime.
(Griffin, Mary L (2001). The Use of Force by Detention Officers. LFB Scholarly Publishing. p. 42. ISBN 1-931202-01-X.)
And then there’s this:
From the Wikipedia page on the controversy surrounding MCSO. It’s a Wikipedia page, yes, but it has cites for the information regarding the wrongful deaths of several inmates.
And not all of the wrongful deaths get “justice” (If you call simply paying a settlement and having no one actually punished justice…) There’s the case of Marcia Powell. She died from heat stroke after being left in a metal box in the Arizona heat for four hours. The temperature that day reached 107…God only knows how hot it was in that “cage.” Policy was to limit inmates to “only” two hours in there, but I can’t see how any sane, rational person can see that as anything but cruel and unusual punishment. Especially when you consider she wasn’t serving time for murder, assault, or any kind of violent crime…it was prostitution. Sickening.
So what? They are not being profiled according to their “race,” despite how you ty to change the topic. They are profiled on their behavior. The typical British tourist or businessperson who happened to be in those cities at the same time are not going to be herded into a crowd of football enthusiasts and forced to watch a game in one corner of the bleachers when they had an appointment to make a sale or plans to visit a museum.
Rather, crowds of Brit football fans, wearing team colors, hanging out together, shouting team slogans, and heading to varius stadia in a group are going to attract attention by their behavior and their behavior is going to be corralled.
Since I explicitly noted that behavior is a legitimate means of profiling, your non sequitur with it false claim of racial profiling is irrelevant to this discussion.
There is a HUGE problem with police brutality, corrupt law enforcement, and just general abuse-of-power by cops in this country (not as bad as true police states or in many developing countries…but relative to other first world countries.)
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Yes, I am ok with this. And, no, I don’t see it as “police brutality, corrupt law enforcement or abuse-of-power”. A few hours in the clink is an appropriate punishment for extreme stupidity. In fact, after the fact, that’s how my friends viewed it as well.
So the First Amendment doesn’t mean squat to you? We’re all supposed to kneel in deference to cops? What harm is done to society by mouthing off to a cop?
I am missing the First Amendment connection here. Is the traffic cop a federal official, and was the detention I described the result of Congress making some law abridging freedom of speech?
I am not a huge fan of cops, especially those that give out speeding tickets. I don’t think anyone is. But it is a tough and very dangerous job and unfortunately many cops die while doing it. Making this job needlessly harder for them is stupid and if you spend a few hours in holding for it, I find that an appropriate punishment.
What you seem to be missing is the allegation that she was not, in fact, stopped for a violation. She was stopped for being hispanic. The allegation is that the traffic stop is a pretense to harrass her, that had she been a white woman, she would not have been stopped at all.
They had no reason to stop her, other than her race.
The strong claim is the one where the officers lied about the existence of probable cause.
Pretextual stops in other contexts are legal. If an officer sees you with a drug dealer, he is absolutely allowed to pull you over for a bad tailight, even if he has no interest in tail light enforcement.
But… it has to be true that your tail light was bad. In the allegation I mentioned above, the facts supporting probable cause were fabricated.
The point of the quote, I believe, is that a law can target a certain group unfairly, under the guise of fairness, be simply aiming it only at things that apply to the target group. Say you had beef with the Amish and outlawed beards. Hey the beard law applies to man, woman, and child alike, right? Totally fair, yeah?
The the difference between the Amish, Hispanics, and vagrants goes back to legalistic definitions. The first two are protected, the last isn’t. Though, morally, a just society should help someone in bad times back on their feet.
I’m not sure what it has to do with this thread though. I think most would agree an innocent person being targeted because some tin star tyrant thinks they look too brown doesn’t even have the facade of fairness.