Joe Arpaio's Racist Roast And Other Stories From The Western Conservative Conference


ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK

PHOENIX -- The demographic death spiral of the conservative movement has a laugh track. It was recorded live in Barry Goldwater's hometown on Saturday night, in front of a 1,000-person ballroom audience, during a banquet roast of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the gala conclusion to the annual Western Conservative Conference, known until last year as Western CPAC.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne laid down the basic comic framework for his fellow roasters, totaling a dozen conservative dignitaries of local and national reputation. "Apologies to the Civic Center," said Horne, "but half of the kitchen staff was arrested tonight upon arrival of Joe and his deputies. Because of a budget crunch, the sheriff's cutting way back. No more green baloney for prisoners -- just an extra beating at suppertime. Over the years, Joe's touched many people. We know because many are now pressing charges."

Chuckling throughout Horne's routine on stage next to Arpaio was Russell Pearce, a recalled state senator with a documented fondness for neo-Nazi websites, and the primary architect of Arizona's controversial immigration bill S.B. 1070. Pearce smiled as his one-time ally in the 1070 fight, Arizona State Rep. John Kavanagh, began his set asking, "How many Hispanics did you pull over on the way over here, Arpaio?" He later added, "All these years I figured he was rounding up Hispanics because you had a grudge from [fighting in] the Spanish-American War. But if you were in the Korean War, how come you're not rounding up Asians?" Kavanagh was doing a bit about the difficulties of dining out with Arpaio -- "When we go into a restaurant, most of the wait staff and cooks dive out the back window" -- when he spotted a passing waiter holding a platter of stuffed chickens, and screamed, "There's a brave one! Get him! Sic 'em!"

The crowd roared; the waiter turned red. Thus did a day of strategy sessions on how to reclaim the White House and build a new conservative majority end with national movement leaders affectionately teasing a divisive deport-'em-all drug-war dinosaur, whose roast material revolved entirely around the three facts of his being old, sadistic, and having a bit of a brown-person problem. The Tea Party's loud rejection of immigration reform shows it has also refused the message of electoral emergency delivered by Barack Obama's 2012 victory map. But if anyone needed another reminder, they now have the image of Joe Arpaio receiving a "Medal of Freedom" award in recognition of his rough detainment and deportation techniques, and a taste for racial profiling so aggressive it has resulted in a federally appointed monitor in Maricopa County.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/02/28/joe-arpaios-racist-roast-and-other-stories-from/198268

Ex-student accuses Troy cops of excessive force

Ex-student's excessive force suit latest of many
By Bob Gardinier
Updated 12:51 pm, Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Troy

Another notice of a pending lawsuit was filed against the city, this time by a former college student who claims police officers slammed him against a truck, punched him and used a Taser on him for jaywalking.

One of the officers was named in two other cases in which defendants claim use of excessive force.

The most recent incident happened Oct. 16, when Archie Davis, who was attending Hudson Valley Community College at the time and was a defensive back for the school's football team, and three of his friends were walking in the city, according to Davis' lawyer, Terry Kindlon.

According to a police report, Officer Isaac Bertos stopped Davis and his friends as they walked down the middle of Adams Street. Bertos advised them to use the sidewalk and alleged that they were jaywalking. The officer reported the men "began using vulgar language," and called for Officer Dominick Comitale's assistance. While the others complied, police allege Davis became combative and resisted arrest.

Davis was thrown to the ground, punched in the ribs and eye and subdued with a Taser, Kindlon said.

The pending federal lawsuit claims Davis was "unlawfully seized" and the officers used "excessive force," Kindlon said.

Bertos was named in two other cases claiming excessive force.

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Ex-student-accuses-Troy-cops-of-excessive-force-5243283.php

By Matt Stroud on February 19, 2014 09:31 am

When the Chicago Police Department sent one of its commanders to Robert McDaniel’s home last summer, the 22-year-old high school dropout was surprised. Though he lived in a neighborhood well-known for bloodshed on its streets, he hadn’t committed a crime or interacted with a police officer recently. And he didn’t have a violent criminal record, nor any gun violations. In August, he incredulously told the Chicago Tribune, "I haven't done nothing that the next kid growing up hadn't done.” Yet, there stood the female police commander at his front door with a stern message: if you commit any crimes, there will be major consequences. We’re watching you.

What McDaniel didn’t know was that he had been placed on the city’s “heat list” — an index of the roughly 400 people in the city of Chicago supposedly most likely to be involved in violent crime. Inspired by a Yale sociologist’s studies and compiled using an algorithm created by an engineer at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the heat list is just one example of the experiments the CPD is conducting as it attempts to push policing into the 21st century.

Predictive analytical systems have been tested by police departments all over the country for years now, but there’s perhaps no urban police force that’s further along — or better funded — than the CPD in its quest to predict crime before it happens. As Commander Jonathan Lewin, who’s in charge of information technology for the CPD, told The Verge: “This [program] will become a national best practice. This will inform police departments around the country and around the world on how best to utilize predictive policing to solve problems. This is about saving lives.”

But the jury’s still out about whether Chicago’s heat list and its other predictive policing experiments are worth the invasions of privacy they might cause and the unfair profiling they could blatantly encourage. As Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Verge: “My fear is that these programs are creating an environment where police can show up at anyone’s door at any time for any reason.”

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5419854/the-minority-report-this-computer-predicts-crime-but-is-it-racist