Lawyers who say that Arizona's Joe Arpaio singled out Latinos in
patrols accused him of launching some sweeps based on complaints that
"dark-skinned people" were congregating in a given area or speaking
Spanish. A group of Latinos who say they have been discriminated
against filed a civil lawsuit against the sheriff, who makes jail
inmates sleep in tents and wrote an autobiography titled "America's
Toughest Sheriff."
Mr Arpaio, who has long denied racial profiling allegations, is expected to give evidence in his defence today.
During
the sweeps at the centre of the case, sheriff's deputies flood an area
of a city - in some cases, heavily Latino areas - over several days to
arrest people wanted for driving and other offenders. Illegal immigrants
accounted for 57% of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps
conducted since January 2008.
The plaintiffs are seeking a
declaration that Mr Arpaio's office racially profiles Latinos and an
order requiring policy changes. The trial began last week and is
expected to close next week. It will be decided by US District Judge
Murray Snow. The judge has not ruled on the ultimate question of racial
profiling, but said in a December ruling that a fact finder could
interpret some of Mr Arpaio's public statements as endorsements of
racial profiling.
The lawsuit marks the first case in which the
sheriff's office has been accused of systematic racial profiling and
will serve as a precursor for a similar yet broader civil rights lawsuit
filed against Mr Arpaio in May by the US Department of Justice.
The
plaintiffs say deputies conducting sweeps pulled over Hispanics without
probable cause, making the stops only to inquire about the immigration
status of the people in the vehicles. The sheriff maintains that
people are stopped only if authorities have probable cause to believe
they have committed crimes and that deputies later find many of the
people stopped are illegal immigrants.
Source: Press Association