Sunday, August 1, 2010

Dear DOJ: Arpaio and Goons Caught Breaking the Law AGAIN! Please Arrest Him and Shut Down his Heinous Jails!

Arpaio and his masked goon squad have been caught breaking the law AGAIN! He racially profiled and wrongfully arrested Latino American Citizens with NO CAUSE and without reading them their Miranda Rights. Even the Judge and the District Attorney agree. Dept. of Justice, it is time for you to step in and ARREST Arpaio and shut down his UNLAWFUL Jails!
PNT reports:
Salvador Reza Released, Prosecutor Admits No Probable Cause for Arrest
As civil rights leader Salvador Reza stood in stripes before a night court judge around 3:30 a.m. this morning at the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix, the county prosecutor made an eye-popping admission. "This is really my review," he stated cautiously of a statement from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office before him. "I did not see that this rose to the level of probable cause." Reza's attorney Robert Pastor immediately pounced. "Your honor," said Pastor, "I just heard the prosecutor tell the court that there's not enough evidence here to suggest that Mr. Reza committed a crime. I ask that the charge be dismissed and he be released immediately."

Of Reza's bogus charge for "obstructing a judicial proceeding," the judge herself seemed skeptical. "I do not have enough information to find probable cause in this matter, sir," she told the county attorney. She declined to dismiss the charge, but she released Reza on his own recognizance and set his next court date for August 18.
Reza, leader of the organization Puente, had been arrested late Friday afternoon after watching a band of protesters engage in civil disobedience by blocking Sheriff Joe Arpaio's command post for the MCSO's latest anti-immigrant sweep. The post was located near 35th Avenue and Lower Buckeye, close to the Lower Buckeye Jail. Reza was across the street in an unpaved parking lot.

Though Reza was not participating in civil disobedience that day, a pack of aggro sheriff's deputies ran across 35th Avenue and arrested him. Arpaio, MCSO Chief Brian Sands, and MCSO flack Brian Lee have all been videotaped stating that the arrest was because Reza had violated his order of release after he'd been let go on bond the night before for taking part in civil disobedience on July 29. This, as part of a "national day of non-compliance" to SB 1070. After court was adjourned with Reza's O.R., a crowd of about sixty supporters, who had crammed into a viewing room to watch the proceedings from a TV monitor, erupted into applause. They then filed outside to wait another two hours-plus before Reza and the others arrested that day were set free.

"They arrested him for no reason," Pablo Alvarado told me, as we all awaited Reza's release. "He was doing nothing. They just took him. To me it's clear that it's retaliation, because he's been highly critical of the sheriff. They [Arpaio and his staff] don't like him. They hate him." Reza said he was shocked by the arrest, which came without warning, just as he was about to leave for an interview. "When I saw them coming, I thought they were coming for the people in the street," he explained. "But then they just passed them and went for me." Regarding who actually ordered his arrest, Reza believes it was MCSO Deputy Chief Brian Sands, one of Arpaio's top henchmen, a man who looks like he would have felt right at home in the KGB. "It was Sands," Reza contended. "Sands was in command." MSCO thugs hustled a cuffed Reza to a van, where he remained for hours by himself. At one point, the MCSO opened up the van to display Reza to photographers and journalists like a captured prisoner of war.

"If they can do this to me," he told the reporters present before refusing interviews, "what do you expect they can do to anybody else." "I just wish the [ U.S. Department of Justice] would get on the ball and do something about it," he replied. "I don't know what else they want...It's very clear."

The DOJ has been investigating Arpaio for more than a year now for civil rights violations. There's also a federal grand jury in Phoenix looking into Arpaio and the MCSO for criminal abuse of power.

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