2 big racial cases changed policing in Arizona

Opponents of Arizona’s new law targeting illegal immigration, which takes effect Thursday, are concerned that police will single out Latinos. Today’s Arizona Republic points out that those worries “are not unfounded” in the state because of police operations in 1997 and 2001 that “brought problems with racial profiling to the fore.”

As a result, the paper writes, “The police agencies involved were left paying out settlements, implementing new training measures and overhauling their procedures to fend off similar claims in the future.”

The first case, in 1997, involved a joint operation between Chandler police and U.S. Border Patrol agents that arrested 432 undocumented immigrants but also swept up hundreds of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent. Chandler paid $400,000 to settle a $35 million civil-rights lawsuit. Federal investigators concluded that Border Patrol agents had not documented basic information about the people they detained, and that they had conducted the sweep in poorer parts of the city.

In 2001, 11 motorists sued the state Department of Public Safety, accusing officers in northern Arizona of targeting minority drivers for traffic stops and searches.

The Republic writes: “The suit was dismissed, appealed and ultimately settled, with the stipulation that DPS launch a data-collection campaign that included information on every stop officers made, including the reason for the stop, characteristics of the driver and vehicle, and the stop’s date, time and location. The agency later agreed to give the information to an outside team to evaluate.”

As the court battle over the new law continues, Reuters reports that “scores of illegal immigrant families across Phoenix” sold off their belongings over the weekend in the rush to leave the state before Thursday.

“Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving,” said Wendi Villasenor, 31, an undocumented Mexican who said she is headed for Pennsylvania. “We have no alternative. They have us cornered.”

At the same time, the Nogales International writes about “upper-middle class” Mexicans in Sonora buying homes across the border to escape the escalating drug violence.

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