Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is known as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” and his department have used racial profiling against Latinos, a federal judge said on Friday.
According to The Arizona Republic, U.S. District Judge Murray Snow said in a lengthy decision that Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department cannot use race any longer to make law enforcement decisions.
“The MCSO is disappointed by the outcome in this decision,” Tim Casey, a lawyer for the sheriff’s department, said, reports ABC News. “The MCSO's position is that it has never used race and will never use race in making its law-enforcement decisions.”
Casey added, “The sheriff respects the court and its authority and it will comply.”
According to Fox News, Casey later said that they will file an appeal of the ruling withing 30 days.
The ruling came eight months after final arguments were given in the four-and-a-half-year-old case. It started in 2007 when Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a day laborer was arrested, notes the Republic. The case grew to include more plaintiffs, including two brothers from Chicago who believed the sheriff’s deputies profiled them because they are Hispanic.
The American Civil Liberties Union represented the plaintiffs. “For too long the sheriff has been victimizing the people he's meant to serve with his discriminatory policy," Cecillia D. Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Right Project commented after the ruling. “Today we're seeing justice for everyone in the county.”
ABC News reports that the parties in the case will meet on June 14 to work out how the ruling will be implemented.
image: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
There has been a critical error on your website.<\/p>
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.<\/a><\/p>","data":{"status":500},"additional_errors":[]}