If you haven’t already heard, Trump went on Fox News and announced that he is likely going to pardon Joe Arpaio.
“I might do it right away, maybe early this week. I am seriously thinking about it,” Trump said, according to Fox News. He said Arpaio was a “great American patriot” who had “done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration.”
“Is there anyone in local law enforcement who has done more to crack down on illegal immigration than Sheriff Joe?” Trump said, according to Fox News. “He has protected people from crimes and saved lives. He doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.”
Here’s a casual reminder what this “great patriot” has done:
- In 2008 & 2010 a federal judge found that his jailed violated the constitutional rights of inmates when it came to medical care related issues.
- He set up tent city, which he loving describes as a “concentration camp.” The jail has been noted for its human rights violations and constitutional rights violations.
- Arpaio has been sued for feeding inmates in his jail moldy, expired, and contaminated food and for housing inmates in conditions so hot and overcrowded that it endangered their health.
- Arpaio and his sheriff offices have reported faulty criminal investigation statistics to federal authorities in 75% of its cases to boost his performance rating and clearance numbers. This is done by reporting cases as “solved” without investigating them.
- Some of those cases that were “solved” without proper investigation include the rape of a 14 year old girl by her classmates and the rape of a 15 year old girl by two men whose case was closed before the DNA testing was even complete.
- He failed to have hundreds of other sex crimes investigated and failed to investigate 32 child molestations. To make it worse, almost all the child molestation cases had known suspects and most the victims happened to be children of undocumented immigrants.
- The handling of Sabrina Morrison’s sexual assault.
- A court has found that he politically abuses his power and he has allegedly abused his power to go after journalists, ACLU attorneys, and AZ politicians.
- He has been fined for violating Arizona elections laws.
- In 2011 it was found that Arpaio had misspent $100 million in jail funds in just 5 years. For him and his deputies, this includes vacations, trips to Disneyland, expensive meals, and staying in luxury hotels.
- Framed an innocent man for an assassination attempt on himself, which almost sent the man to jail for 20 years. A jury later found that it had been an elaborate publicity stunt to boost Arpaio’s reelection bid. Arpaio was sued for wrongful arrest and entrapment by the man which he settled for $1.6 million.
- Countless numbers of racial profiling.
- So much racial profiling that the Department of Justice investigated him and found that he has “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” They also concluded that he engages in “unconstitutional policing” and that he committed some of the worst patterns of racial profiling in U.S. history.
But yeah he’s such a great guy and totally doesn’t deserve to ever see any punishment whatsoever because he’s a patriot or whatever. Fuck you, Trump.
Ok, don’t commit crimes maybe? Prisoners don’t deserve shelter or air conditioning. We need to be tougher on crime.
So did you actually read any of this or nah?
“Prisoners don’t deserve shelter or air conditioning”?
Shelter is a human right. Air conditioning technically isn’t, but I don’t think that breaking the law means you deserve to get heatstroke. Just saying.
I’d like to touch on the air conditioner thing too.
This is in Arizona, I live in AZ and I live in Maricopa County where Joe was sheriff. It gets VERY hot here, our summers can reach up to 120 at their worst. The temperatures inside these overcrowded tents get up to 145 degrees. 90 degrees is when the body can start to experience heat exhaustion, the higher it goes the more dangerous it is. Environmental temperatures at 130 OFTEN lead to heatstroke and is extremely dangerous. What these inmates were living in was beyond cruel and unusual punishment.
Now mix this with inadequate and dangerous food consumption that often leads to sickness that furthers dehydration. Add this to the inadequate medical care provided at tent city. Like, there’s a reason that hundreds of people have died at tent city and there’s a reason why the suicide rates were higher than the average.
While most big county lockups have suicide rates ranging from 6 to 14 percent, the percentage of deaths in Arpaio’s jails from suicide is 24 percent.
There’s a reason why this place is infamous for it’s inhumane conditions that violate human rights. This shit is pure evil.
(via cynicaltechnophile)
