April 29, 2010

This is nice to hear coming from the "police state" of Arizona.

In Arizona, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who has been a cop for 52 years, says it will definitely lead to racial profiling. He told local TV station KGUN9 that the law is “racist,” “digusting,” and “unnecessary,” and he won’t enforce it. While the law may not explicitly mandate profiling, Dupnik said that there’s no way to enforce it without doing so; the “lawful contact” provision will become nothing but a “flimsy excuse” to target certain people:

The sheriff acknowledged that this course of action could get him hauled into court. SB 1070 allows citizens to sue any law enforcement official who doesn’t comply with the law. But Dupnik told Nunez that SB 1070 would force his deputies to adopt racial profiling as an enforcement tactic, which Dupnik says could also get him sued. “So we’re kind of in a damned if we do, damned if we don’t situation. It’s just a stupid law.”

Dupnik had harsh words for anyone who thinks SB 1070 will not lead to racial profiling. “If I tell my people to go out and look for A, B, and C, they’re going to do it. They’ll find some flimsy excuse like a tail light that’s not working as a basis for a stop, which is a bunch of baloney.

Amanda does a nice job of also including Tom Ridge's statement on SB 1070:

Another high-profile law enforcement official who has condemned what Arizona is doing is former Bush Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, who told the AP yesterday that “he’s uncomfortable with Arizona’s new immigration law, saying it allows police to question people without probable cause.

This will freak the Russell Pearces out, but good for Sheriff Dupnik, who is a far cry more sane than Arpaio. What he basically does is lay out the scenario that we've all been saying: The police can and will come up with any bogus excuse to ask you to show your papers. That's a violation of our Constitution. We have to put up with haranguing from these Judge Scalia phony originalists and "constitutionalists" who say progressives are destroying America because we hate the Constitution. Who hates the Constitution now?

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