Arpaio's deputies arrest 24 at Phoenix business in ID-theft case (Some Illegal Immigrants)

Source: AZCentral.com

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputies arrested 24 people at a work-site raid at a business park in west Phoenix.


The deputies began their search for 35 people who are suspected of identity theft at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday at the business near 48th Avenue and Van Buren Street. They remained on site throughout the morning searching two of the company's buildings, an office and a warehouse.

Arpaio said all of the employees were lined up inside the building and being asked for their identification.

Most of the people arrested were suspected of using false identification, Arpaio said. At least one person, however, was expected to be turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The business, Laser Masters, sells printer cartridges and toner.

Relatives of those who worked at the company stood outside of the building. Josefina Almanzar, who saw her husband Michael, 30, enter the sheriff's arrest bus in handcuffs, began to scream and cry.

Snip>



Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2010/05/06/20100506joe-arpaio-work-raid-west-phoenix06-ON.html#ixzz0nHeN4AJE

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2010/05/06/20100506joe-arpaio-work-raid-west-phoenix06-ON.html

with the amount of wood this guy gets throwing his weight around.

:argh:

I would feel shame for my state.

If you are here illegally, the consequences of getting caught are being deported back to your rightful country. Perhaps I misunderstood you and you meant its sad for the victims of identity theft. I do hope that Laser Masters is investigated and fined appropriately if they were knowingly employing illegal workers.

Anyone with any sense would vomit on what that sheriff does, and at the laws on which he depends.

These are just the sad efforts of an empire in its death spiral, trying to act like it still has the vitality that made it the leading nation of the world for a very short period.

Had it done to me, its very hard and expensive to clear up.

is not a way to resolve identity theft. That's just plain abuse of power.

Where in the article was is stated that the sheriffs department assaulted anyone? Maybe you misread this part and assumed Almanzar's mother was the person being harassed.

Almanzar's mother and friend tried to comfort her as she cried and yelled at the sheriff, calling him a coward.

get thrown out.

If you used the ID someone created for you you are complicit in the crime as well.

be involved with that if they don't want their rights trampled. Oh wait, the cops aren't trampling anyone's rights, they're doing their job.

My link is the article.

are here illegally?

Hmm?

s

you can bet your azz that if you hand a cop a really bad fake id .. your going to jail.

a bunch of people. Aren't you jumping the gun, especially considering this @sshole's record of detaining anything that's brown on two legs, no matter what their status is and no matter is he has probable cause or not?

I'm going by the article. I think you may be jumping the gun.

He may just be a nazi prick who happened to break up an identity theft ring.
His being a nazi prick could just be unrelated.

Going by his record, I wouldn't trust a single fucking thing he says.

Here's a good link to show you what kind of sheriff Arpaio is:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/11/18/arpaio-stoddard-apology/
The short version: His deputy got caught on camera stealing papers from the defense lawyer in the courtroom. Deputy got in halfassed trouble. Deputy ordered to apologize. Arpaio orders the deputy to not apologize. Absolutely nothing came of it.

his record would tend to lead me to question the validity of his claims in the current situation...

If your housemate is always burning things, and then you come home one day and your bed is aflame, and he sits there and claims the neighbor came into your house and set it on fire, what are you going to tend to believe actually happened?

That's where I am. I have been a victim of identity theft, and its a hassle, and should be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. But I wouldn't trust Arpaio to hold the flag for a gradeschool crosswalk, much less in a case where he gets to "come down hard" on some brown folk.

The sheriffs department received a tip 6 months ago regarding this. Are you honestly suggesting that Maricopa County Sheriffs Department should be bared from making legal arrests when its warranted?

for his long time human rights violations. I hope the Feds speed up their investigation of his horrible abuses which have been a matter of public record for years now.

But IMHO from reading the article this looks like a legitimate case of the MCSD enforcing the law. I'm not letting my bias towards Sheriff Joe influence what I read.

changes laws to permit unrestricted entry to all who seek a better life OR congress should fund federal LEO to enforce existing laws.

The reporter stated that according to the owner the worker had presented him with phoney ID when he hired him. Anyone want to guess where the phoney ID was obtained? I say the OWNER or someone in a position of authority at the plant. I also noted that the term "suspected" was used. Many of Arpaio's arrest don't pan out as who he "suspects" they are and have to be released.

Then again, I didn't provide them. At least in Los Angeles in the mid 1990s it was fairly easy, and not too horribly expensive, to get fake IDs. The cheaper, the crappier. Expensive ones could be really nice. From time to time a bunch of DL or ID blanks would go missing from the DMV. Sure, police would be able to spot the numbers when they ran the IDs. I saw the newspapers publish info on the invalid number sequence. Never wrote it down. Couldn't check up on them.

Undergrads would routinely get fairly cheap ones so they could go to bars. I guess the logic is that bartenders handed them out.

sheriff but are going by the article, should be allowed on DU.

I mean come on, give us links or something if you know more than the article states.

Don't just go bat shit crazy and suggest the rest of us who only have the article to go by should get kicked off. It only makes you look, well, bat-shit crazy.

Charles Agster
In August 2001, Charles Agster, a 33-year-old mentally handicapped man, died in the county jail three days after being forced by sheriff's officers into a restraint chair used for controlling combative arrestees. Agster's parents had been taking him to a psychiatric hospital because he was exhibiting paranoia, then called police when he refused to leave a convenience store where they had stopped enroute. Officers took Agster to the Madison Street jail, placed a "spit hood" over his face and strapped him to the chair, where he had an apparent seizure and lost consciousness. He was declared brain dead three days later. A medical examiner later concluded that Agster died of complications of methamphetamine intoxication. In a subsequent lawsuit, an attorney for the sheriff's office described the amount of methamphetamine in Agster's system as 17 times the known lethal dose. The lawsuit resulted in a $9 million jury verdict against the county, the sheriff's office, and Correctional Health Services.


Scott Norberg
One major controversy includes the 1996 death of inmate Scott Norberg, a former Brigham Young University football wide receiver, who died while in custody of the Sheriff's office. Norberg was arrested for assaulting a police officer in Mesa, Arizona, after neighbors in a residential area had reported a delirious man walking in their neighborhood. Arpaio's office repeatedly claimed Norberg was also high on methamphetamine, but a blood toxicology performed post-mortem was inconclusive. According to a toxological report, Norberg did have methamphetamine in his urine, though "there would be no direct effect caused by the methamphetamine on Norberg's behavior at the time of the incident". During his internment, evidence suggests detention officers shocked Norberg several times with a stun-gun. According to an investigation by Amnesty International, Norberg was already handcuffed and face down when officers dragged him from his cell and placed him in a restraint chair with a towel covering his face. After Norberg's corpse was discovered, detention officers accused Norberg of attacking them as they were trying to restrain him. The cause of his death, according to the Maricopa County medical examiner, was due to "positional asphyxia". Sheriff Arpaio investigated and subsequently cleared detention officers of any criminal wrongdoing
Norberg’s parents filed a lawsuit against Arpaio and his office. The lawsuit was settled for $8.25 million.


Brian Crenshaw
Brian Crenshaw was a legally blind and mentally disabled inmate who suffered fatal injuries while being held in Maricopa County Jail for shoplifting. The injuries that led to his death were initially blamed on a fall from his bunk but were later alleged to have been the result of a brutal beating by jail guards on March 7, 2003. A lawsuit filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court of Arizona by the lawyer for Crenshaw's family stated:

An external examination report of the Maricopa County Medical Examiners Office concluded that Brian's death was caused by "complications of blunt force trauma due to a fall." This conclusion was reached largely on the 's relation of their "history" of Brian's injuries to the Medical Examiner's Office; a history that included the MCSO's implausible story that all of Brian's injuries were caused by a fall from his cell bed. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner conducted no autopsy; nor was the Maricopa County Medical Examiner informed by MCSO or about Brian's beating on March 7, 2003 and/or related events. An independent autopsy report later narrowed the cause of Brian's death to peritonitis and sepsis secondary to the duodenal perforation. A fall from Brian's 4-foot, 2 inch bunk could not have simultaneously caused a broken neck, broken toes, and a duodenal perforation.

The lawsuit against Arpaio and his office resulted in an award of $2 million. As in the Scott Norberg case, it was alleged that Arpaio's office destroyed evidence in the case. In the Crenshaw case, the attorney who represented the case before a jury alleged digital video evidence was destroyed


Improper clearance of MCSO cases
New reports show that, under Arpaio, the MCSO may be improperly clearing as many as 75% of cases without arrest or proper investigation. The sheriff's office has failed to properly investigate serious crimes, including the rape of a 14 year old girl by classmates, the rape of a 15 year old girl by two strangers, and the rape of a 13 year old girl by her father. These cases were "exceptionally cleared" without investigation or even identifying a suspect in one case which are not in accordance with the FBI standards for exceptional clearance. The case of the 15 year old girl, the case was closed within one month and before DNA testing was even complete, the 13 year old's because her mother didn't want to "to pursue this investigation," and the 14 year old's because a suspect declined to come in for questioning. In a statement to ABC15, the Sheriff's Office claimed, "The Goldwater Institute’s report cites the FBI’s Uniform Code Reporting handbook, which is a voluntary crime-reporting program to compile statistical information and reports. The UCR is not intended for oversight on how law enforcement agencies clear cases...The Sheriff’s Office has its own criteria for clearing cases."

In an interview on the ABC Nightline news program, when asked to explain why 82 percent of cases were declared cleared by exception, Arpaio said "We do clear a higher percentage of that. I know that. We clear many, many cases -- not 18 percent." Nightline contacted the MCSO after the interview and was told that of 7,346 crimes, only 944, or 15%, had been cleared by arrest


On March 3, 2009, the United States Department of Justice "notified Arpaio of the investigation in a letter saying his enforcement methods may unfairly target Hispanics and Spanish-speaking people." <32> Arpaio denied any wrongdoing and stated that he welcomed the investigation, and would cooperate fully.<33> By May, 2009, Arpaio had hired a Washington D.C. lobbyist, who wrote to Obama administration officials suggesting that the decision to probe Arpaio had been driven by political rivalries and score settling. In July, 2009, Arpaio publicly stated that he would not cooperate with the investigation.

In October 2009, the Department of Homeland Security removed the authority of Arpaio's 160 federally trained deputies to make immigration arrests in the field. Despite the actions of the Department of Homeland Security, Arpaio has maintained that he will still pursue illegal aliens under Arizona state law.




Conflicts with local news media
In July 2004, the Phoenix New Times published Arpaio's home address in the context of a story about his real estate dealings. In October, 2007, a Maricopa County special prosecutor served Village Voice Media, the Phoenix New Times' corporate parent, with a subpoena ordering it to produce "all documents" related to the original real estate article, as well as the IP addresses of all visitors to the Phoenix New Times website since January 1, 2004. The Phoenix New Times then published the contents of the subpoena on October 18. Phoenix New Times editors Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were arrested and jailed by Maricopa Sheriff's Deputies on misdemeanor charges of revealing grand jury secrets after the publication of the subpoena. On the following day, the county attorney dropped the case and fired the special prosecutor.

On November 28, 2007, it was ruled that the subpoenas were not validly issued and in April 2008, the New Times editors filed suit against Arpaio, County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Special Prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik.<81>

In 2009, the East Valley Tribune ran a series of articles that criticized the Maricopa County sheriff for a decline in normal police protection due to an increased focus towards arresting illegal immigrants.<82> The five-part series titled “Reasonable Doubt,” which received a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, described "slow emergency response times and lax criminal enforcement."

On December 23, 2009, the Arizona Republic published an editorial titled “The Conspiracy that won’t stop.” The Editorial Board referenced a published letter written by The Yavapai County Attorney, Sheila Polk, titled “Arpaio, Thomas are abusing power” ” in which Polk was critical of Arpaio. The Editorial Board claimed that “As a result of stepping forward, Polk now may join the fast-growing list of Arizona public officials forced to defend themselves against criminal investigations for the "crime" of having upset Arpaio and Thomas

If you are working illegally you obviously have false documents. Employers ask for documents but look the other way when you give them false documents. I think by using "suspected of identity theft" makes it seem like they use the false id's to use someone's credit. In fact, they just want to work.

and using a fake id with it.

Again, I ask people to provide more info if they know this article is wrong.

For now, I only have the article to go on.

http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=1291731

"Ten people tried to escape capture during the raid, which targeted illegal immigrants with possibly stolen identities, Arpaio said. He said deputies were looking for 35 suspects.

The investigation began six months ago after a tip to the sheriff's hotline about alleged illegals working at Laser Masters, Arpaio said."

The "identity theft" is working under somebody else's name and SSN.

They pay me to put money into my SSN....

the name and/or SSN.

But once you have a job and you're using a name and SSN, eventually you'll want more. That often enough involves presenting ID for other things. Bank account. Credit card. Revolving credit.

Or you do something wrong and the name/SSN that's attached to you--because nobody checks to see if your name/SSN is actually yours, at least in some locales--gets attached to the crime. It's all downhill from there for some poor unsuspecting schmuck.

All that other stuff is some kind of fantasy because it doesn't happen.

First the racist's use the citizen's fear of rising crime rates to get their fascist identity law passed. Does Arpaio go after illegal gang bangers, meth dealers, etc.? No, he goes after identity theft rings of people otherwise living lawfully. 35 people at one business and the owner walks. Crime in Phoenix - unchanged. Tough man, that Arpaio, tough man!

From fox, no less.

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/immigration/apx_mcso_crime_sweep_050610

false reporting yet?

grind very slow but grind they do,that sheriff and his ilk will come to a sad end.Sheriff Joe your days are numbered.Justice will prevail.

If they were complicit in identity theft, they should go to jail first. I get people not liking the sheriff, but the laws need to be enforced. Illegal immigration and identity theft have serious implications for our society.

I get the part about the seriousness of identity theft and how that angle of the story needs to be looked at more fully. However my experience, with the guys I worked with, doing their new hire paperwork was they had fake ids with god knows whose number on it only to file the I-9 at work... I am sure there are some who take it further, but I doubt it is the norm. And yes family members and friends do often loan out their legit ssns for this purpose.

What is interesting is that, unless I missed it, not one person so far in this thread has mentioned what should happen to the employer employing all the undocumented people. (unless they are the ones providing the ids - someone mentioned that angle) Many have chimed in to say these people should be shipped back to the border, and some righteous sheriff bashing... but even here, now mid-debate we don't think to look at the employer who accepted all the bad ids.... Just noticing.

I didn't see the Sheriff talking about any investigations regarding the employer. This type of stuff does little to combat illegals doing anything, well, illegal. Unless companies stop hiring these people (most of the time the employers look the other way) then the real problems from illegal immigration will never be dealt with. The Sheriff does small potatoes stuff and it is out of his dislike for illegals and hispanics in general.

That is kind of what I am getting at. I know how bad the sheriff is, and the racism/nativism that ia going on, but I am trying to point out that we SHOULD be talking about the effing employers. (and a link somewhre in the thread mentioned the raid was part of an employer investigation- granted it is a fox link)Employers always seem to be left off the hook. I used to do the paperwork in a restaurant - I know exactly how complicit the employers are. You wouldn't believe some of the ids I saw.... but it wasn't my call. I just filled out the paperwork.

I just thought it was interesting that people seemed to be more glommed onto the ID theft ring angle - wanting to believe the absolute worst about people, especially illegal people (and boy is that sheriff a power hungry asshole). Rather than asking hey, why did Whatever Ink, inc. hire all those people and look the other way? And why aren't we doing something about that part of the problem as well?

They are here illegally and that is not right but we have a lot to address with how long real immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries take. But the main problem in the U.S. seems to be that many employers gladly will allow illegals to be here because they obviously get to pay them less. Who is worse to me? Greedy employers or poor illegals?