Sheriff's Office Employs Racial Profiling to Arrest Motorists; Protests Held At Staging Area

For the second evening in a row, the Sheriff's Office is saturating an area of Phoenix in order to pull over and arrest as many undocumented immigrants as they can. Last night and tonight, the MCSO set up a large area in the parking lot of Big Lots on Thomas with a command unit, stadium lights, and other large vehicles. Although they will say that they are only pulling over people committing crimes such as traffic violations, it can't be more blatant that they are going after specific people. Last night, one car that was stopped was pulled over for not having adequate lighting on their license plate. The driver was arrested and taken away.

Rumors are that Rusty Childress was deputized as a posse member by Sheriff Joe. This is not the first anti-immigrant organizer to be part of his posse. The Sheriff allegedly spoke at one of United for Sovereign America's meetings the other day. In their press release the MCSO stated that the raid has been in response to written written requests for police presence in the area. Rumors are that Buffalo Rick (the one who peed in public and got caught) was behind gathering support for this campaign. The mayor has said that the area the sheriff's office is targetting is not higher in crime than other areas of Phoenix.

There have been a few dozen people at the Sheriff's Department's staging area in a sort of protest. The primary objective is to let the people who are being brought in know that they have a right to a lawyer and they shouldn't say anything. There were people shouting these things by bullhorn. The people who were arrested were being taken to this area, and therefore could possibly see the signs or hear the shouts. People were also shouting shame to the police officers for being part of this blatant racial profiling. Another thing I left out was that there was a lot of media there, and of course Arpaio was there... read more>>>