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Trump's 'Toughness' Is an Insult to Law Enforcement
Retweeted by TreasonHat: https://twitter.com/Popehat
During his tenure as sheriff, at least 160 inmates died from brutality, neglect, suicide, disease, bad health, or old age in Arpaio’s jails. In many cases, we don't even know the cause of death, because the sheriff’s office never bothered to investigate. http://j.mp/2CMLzrl
Link to tweet
Trump’s ‘Toughness’ Is an Insult to Law Enforcement
By Michael D. Tanner
This article appeared in National Review (Online) on August 30, 2017.
By now, we’ve all seen the pictures: police officers and sheriff’s deputies wading into Houston’s floodwaters to rescue people, exhausted from working 20-hour shifts, disregarding their own safety to help others. Nothing could be more emblematic of the tens of thousands of professional law-enforcement officers in this country who do a dangerous and underappreciated job every day.
That makes it even more disappointing that President Trump has chosen to reward and highlight law enforcement at its very worst. ... First came the pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. While some segments of the president’s base cheered the move, it’s hard to find a law officer who has shown more contempt for the law itself.
Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for blatantly disregarding the orders of a federal judge. This was not a close case. In fact, Arpaio openly bragged that he would refuse to comply with the judge’s orders. The orders in question were designed to stop Arpaio from violating the Fourth Amendment rights of Arizona’s Latino residents with mass racially based roundups on the mere suspicion that those targeted might be undocumented immigrants. In fact, two different federal judges found against Arpaio’s office, citing constitutional violations that were “broad in scope, involve its highest ranking command staff, and flow into its management of internal affairs investigations” and saying that he had “willfully violated” court orders to correct those violations. That’s a far cry from “just doing his job,” as the president claimed. ... Ignoring court orders, shackling women while they give birth, and roughing up suspects do not exemplify good policing.
Moreover, this was hardly the only time that “Sheriff Joe” has shown his disregard for Americans’ constitutional rights. During his tenure as sheriff, at least 160 inmates died from brutality, neglect, suicide, disease, bad health, or old age in Arpaio’s jails. In many cases we have no way of knowing the cause of death, because the sheriff’s office never bothered to investigate.
By Michael D. Tanner
This article appeared in National Review (Online) on August 30, 2017.
By now, we’ve all seen the pictures: police officers and sheriff’s deputies wading into Houston’s floodwaters to rescue people, exhausted from working 20-hour shifts, disregarding their own safety to help others. Nothing could be more emblematic of the tens of thousands of professional law-enforcement officers in this country who do a dangerous and underappreciated job every day.
That makes it even more disappointing that President Trump has chosen to reward and highlight law enforcement at its very worst. ... First came the pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. While some segments of the president’s base cheered the move, it’s hard to find a law officer who has shown more contempt for the law itself.
Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for blatantly disregarding the orders of a federal judge. This was not a close case. In fact, Arpaio openly bragged that he would refuse to comply with the judge’s orders. The orders in question were designed to stop Arpaio from violating the Fourth Amendment rights of Arizona’s Latino residents with mass racially based roundups on the mere suspicion that those targeted might be undocumented immigrants. In fact, two different federal judges found against Arpaio’s office, citing constitutional violations that were “broad in scope, involve its highest ranking command staff, and flow into its management of internal affairs investigations” and saying that he had “willfully violated” court orders to correct those violations. That’s a far cry from “just doing his job,” as the president claimed. ... Ignoring court orders, shackling women while they give birth, and roughing up suspects do not exemplify good policing.
Moreover, this was hardly the only time that “Sheriff Joe” has shown his disregard for Americans’ constitutional rights. During his tenure as sheriff, at least 160 inmates died from brutality, neglect, suicide, disease, bad health, or old age in Arpaio’s jails. In many cases we have no way of knowing the cause of death, because the sheriff’s office never bothered to investigate.
