Police Join Fight Against Arizona SB 1070

Since the passage of SB 1070, Arizona's new racial-profiling legislation, police officers have announced their opposition and resentment towards the controversial bill, a piece of legislation many see as both distracting and unenforceable.

According to a local news station in Tucson, a local police officer has become the first to file a lawsuit against the state of Arizona in response to SB 1070. In court documents, Martin Escobar, a naturalized United States citizen and a veteran of the Tucson police department, claims that SB 1070 is aimed "specifically at Hispanics, is unlawful, [and] results in impermissible deprivations of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution."

The court documents further assert that, "in [Escobar's] experience as a Law Enforcement Officer, skin color and/or physical features does not provide any race neutral criteria or basis to suspect or identify who is lawfully in the United States." Thus, the provision of the bill requiring police to request identification from anybody they happen to come across who they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe is illegally in the country is nonsensical; it simply pushes law enforcement to use racial profiling as the only means they can think of to guess at undocumented status of any given person.

Escobar joins the growing ranks of law enforcement personnel who have come out against Arizona's latest immigration debacle. In a report in the Washington Post, one officer in Tucson describes the immigration status of the city's residents as "irrelevant." Sgt. Russ Charlton, another member of the Tucson police department, further describes the difficult situation police officers now face in the wake of SB 1070. "We don't have enough officers on the street to look for other stuff like that. If [residents are] not doing anything, they're just being normal people."

In Sahuarita, Arizona, Chief John Harris, the president of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, opposes SB 1070 according to an article in Time magazine. He fears that the provisions in the new law will drain resources, create budgetary problems, and open up vulnerability for costly lawsuits. Not only can those targeted by law enforcement sue for infringements on their constitutional rights, SB 1070 gives everyday nativist Arizonans the ability to sue their local police department if they feel they aren't hunting down enough undocumented immigrants. Chief Harris also worries that the legislation will provoke mass fear amongst the Hispanic community, making them less likely to report crime.

Tucson Police Chief Roberto A. Villaseñor puts the situation plainly: "We are in a tenuous position as law enforcement," he said. "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."

Photo credit: stevelyon