Arizona Sheriffs and Police Continue to Speak Out Against SB 1070

Though extreme anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio often hogs the headlines due to his vehement agenda against undocumented immigrants (at the expense of properly pursuing violent criminals and child rapists), his nativist intolerance doesn't represent all his brethren in law enforcement. So what do other wearers of a badge have to say about Arizona's controversial new law?

Sheriff Antonio Estrada of Santa Cruz County, right along the border with Mexico, calls the law "absurd" and "downright racist." He tells it like it is: "The way it's tailored is very clear. You're looking for brown-skinned individuals. That's what you're looking for. That's what the whole purpose of the law is and that's what they've always said." Estrada is also concerned about the impact this absurd law will have on their ability to carry out regular police work on limited resources: "we cannot, as small agents, especially here along the border, cannot afford to have another level of responsibility and jurisdiction. We're not prepared for it, we're not trained for it, and we shouldn't be doing federal work."

Police are also concerned that the law which allows any nativist Tom, Dick, or Sally in Arizona to sue if they think law enforcement isn't adequately enforcing the law, a provision is clearly designed by anti-immigrant extremists to pressure police to resort to illegal racial profiling as the only means of finding undocumented immigrants under this law.

Of course, people racially profiled can then sue — and it doesn't matter, by the way, what their immigration status is. If police don't find out that they are undocumented through legal means, they can still sue for violation of their constitutional rights and cost a nice chunk of change. Tucson Police Chief Roberto A. Villaseñor complains, "No matter which way we go, there are lawsuits in the wings. The ones who are going to get beaten up on this most are the law enforcement agencies."

David Salgado, a 19-year veteran police officer in Phoenix, is so strongly opposed to SB 1070 he is suing his city and the Arizona governor to block implementation of the law. Already, he has noticed that the passage of the law is harming community law enforcement by causing people to avoid him. Salgado joins Martin Escobar, an officer in the Tucson Police Department, who was the first to file a lawsuit against a law he states is "specifically at Hispanics, is unlawful, [and] results in impermissible deprivations of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution." Escobar states in court documents that there is simply no way for police officers to use non-racial characteristics to enforce the law, and personal experience growing up in Arizona tells him to expect abuse.

"When you get a law that leads a state down this path, where the enforcement is targeted to a particular segment of the population, it's very difficult not to profile," says Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris. "It takes officers away from doing what our main core mission is, and that is to make our community safe."

Update: a Phoenix police officer appears in a Cuéntame video outlining the problems, for him as an officer, with SB 1070, which makes him "feel like a Nazi," and requires him to arrest people without discretion.

Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com