Judge To Arpaio: Quitcherbitchin’!

How about a little schadenfreude with your coffee, courtesy of the folks at Raw Story?

A federal judge admonished Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and a chief deputy on Monday for critical remarks directed at a sweeping court ruling that found their deputies racially profiled Latino drivers.

The judge warned Arpaio, a divisive figure in the national immigration debate, and Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan that he would not tolerate the type of behavior recorded in an October briefing that saw the top aide call the court order ludicrous and absurd.

“I intend to have my order followed,” said U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, who required Arpaio and Sheridan to attend the court hearing.

Snow ordered Arpaio last year to stop using race as a factor when making law enforcement decisions, in response to a 2007 lawsuit that tested whether police could target unauthorized immigrants without also profiling U.S. citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin.

Snow’s order called for an independent monitor to ensure that Arpaio, who bills himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” no longer had deputies use race in making law enforcement decisions. Appointed in January, the monitor, veteran lawman Robert Warshaw, was in court on Monday.

It should be no surprise that Arpaio’s sqealing like a stuck pig: Warshaw has a track record of sniffing out embarrassing facts about racial profiling, as demonstrated by another of this morning’s breaking stories:

Police stop and search African-Americans at a far higher rate than other racial groups in Oakland, according to a police report released Monday that has renewed concerns about racial profiling in the city.

African-Americans, who comprise 28 percent of Oakland’s population, accounted for 62 percent of police stops from last April to November, the report found. The figures also showed that stops of African-Americans were more likely to result in felony arrests.

However, while African-Americans were far more likely to be searched by police upon being stopped, officers were no more likely to recover contraband from searching African-Americans than members of other racial groups.

Latinos accounted for 17 percent of police stops, whites accounted for 12 percent, Asians 6 percent and “others” 3 percent.

Monday’s report had been sought for years by the police department’s federal overseer, Robert Warshaw. Preventing racial profiling was one of dozens of reform tasks the police department agreed to undertake more than a decade ago in the aftermath of the Riders police scandal, which included allegations of brutality and framing drug suspects.

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By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.