What's the Matter Wetback, Can't Take a Little Ass-Kicking?

Jamie Ross at the Courthouse News Service reports on Refugio Rodriguez's lawsuit against the Phoenix cops and the Maricopa authorities: 

"After T[ASERING], kicking and hitting a man in the head with flashlights while calling him a 'wetback,' Phoenix police officers falsely accused him of assaulting them and running away, but the man can't fight or run at all because he is paralyzed on one side of his body from childhood polio, he says in a civil rights complaint.

Refugio Rodriquez sued the city, Maricopa County, Maricopa County Correctional Health Services and the three Phoenix police officers he says assaulted him in the parking lot of a church.  Rodriquez, whom the officers accused of aggravated assault against a police officer after they Tasered, kicked and hit beat him with police-issued flashlights, says he could not have assaulted the officers or run because the left side of his body is paralyzed from polio.

Rodriquez the three officers - Tedesco, Mills and Neidenbach - approached him outside of a church on May 27, 2010.

They told him 'you better not run you (expletive) wetback' and then slammed him onto the concrete driveway 'in a manner which obviously exceeded the minimal amount of force necessary to accomplish a lawful purpose and continued to brutally assault plaintiff Refugio in the driveway,' according to the complaint in Maricopa County Court.

After they needlessly Tasered him, they handcuffed him and continued to kick and hit him in the head 'with their police-issued long flashlight,' the complaint states.  The officers stopped beating him after his wife, Josephine, and his two children 'screamed at and pled with the defendant officers to stop the beating,' according to the complaint. The officers told the wife and kids to 'stay across the street or that they would be 'in trouble.'

Rodriquez, who is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 140 lbs., says the officers did not let his family see him after they beat him, 'to cover up Refugio's bruises, scrapes and severe swelling of the head.'  The officers told his wife and children 'that there was nothing wrong with Refugio and that he was 'the same as when he left home awhile ago,' the complaint states.

But at the Maryvale police station, one of his assailants asked him, 'What's the matter, you can't take an ass-whipping?'  Rodriquez [reports.]

Rodriquez says the officers lied in their police report: that they wrote that he 'ran from the officers when they first came into contact ... which is totally impossible because plaintiff cannot run due to the paralysis on the whole left side of his body since his birth with polio.' [ . . . ]

Rodriquez says he was taken from the Maryvale police precinct to the Maricopa County Fourth Avenue Jail, where the intake nurse told him 'he was going to be transported to the nearest hospital emergency room via an ambulance because of the severity of his injuries.'

But a few minutes later the intake nurse told him that 'if she sent him to the hospital emergency, she was told she would lose her job.'  After Rodriquez was released on bail, his wife took him to St. Joseph's Hospital, where the emergency doctor told him that 'he could have died because a blood clot near his brain was beginning to develop,' the [lawsuit claims.]"
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All things being even, maybe we would automatically think, "there are two-sides to every story;" but, this is Phoenix, Arizona.  Maricopa County.  The Bad Lawyer's sure the AZ Legislature and Governor Jan Brewer can right this wetback lawsuit with a stroke of the pen.

How We Treat Others

My fellow-blogger, Gayle sent me a Time magazine column by Adam Cohen while I was in D.C. last week, thinking about Torah and the future purpose of my life.  The story is fantastically appropriate to this blawg and I wanted some time to think about it.  This is what Gayle sent me: link, please read it. 

Essentially the column is about the Ninth Circuit's reversal of a conviction of Daniel J. Millis who was arrested and prosecuted for "littering" by providing water to aliens crossing the desert border in Arizona.  The plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants is the "litter." At the above link, you can read the entire decision of the Court.   While I want to avoid the nasty underlying politics underlying the prosecution of Millis, since, of course I've discussed it at length in connection with my discussion of SB1070 and various posts on Sheriff Joe Arpaio, let us look at the prosecution and conviction from another perspective:  what is the right thing?  What is the righteous thing?  What ultimately should we do for ourselves and mankind?  Do you or do you not believe that how we treat others impacts us as human beings and if you believe as I do--as children of God?

Are we not commanded by nearly every religion, as Jesus said, to love one another, to treat our neighbor as we ourselves would be treated?  In the "Old Testament" book of Numbers 15:13-16,  Gentiles are called (aliens, foreigners, sojourners, or strangers) and when they attach themselves to Israel, God required that Israelis to treat the alien the same: "the same Laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you.”  Throughout the Bible this rule is asserted and reasserted: in Leviticus 24:22 God states, “Y[ou] shall have ONE manner of Law, as well for the stranger as for one of your own country; for I am the Lord your God.” This is repeated in Exodus 12:49 and other places in Scripture.  In the days of the prophet Isaiah for future generations: “…And the foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve Him and to love the name of the Lord, and to worship Him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant – These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.” (Isaiah 56:1-7.)

Conservatives talk endlessly about religion and the place of God in our lives and public spaces but where the rubber meets the road, this idea is jettisoned.  Under our system of laws we would prosecute someone for providing water to aliens on the pretense of "litter." 

The bloggers at the Ninth Circuit Blog quoted T.S. Eliot in their coverage of the Millis opinion, it is very apt, I can do no better: 

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand not lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain

from The Waste Land (1922)

Woe to those among us who fail to remember from where their voice comes from, lest they lose their very humanity and separate their soul from the Creator's. 

Arizona Pastor Tasered By Immigration Cops--Not Guilty of Misdemeanors

The Yuma Sun is reporting on the acquittal of Baptist Pastor, Steven Anderson (pic, with daughter) who was charged with two misdemeanors after being pulled over at an immigration check point and being tasered when he refused to answer questions about his name and nationality.  This is James Gilbert's story in excerpt for the Sun:

"A Baptist pastor who claimed he was beaten by law enforcement officers at an interstate checkpoint was acquitted Friday of two misdemeanor charges related to the incident.

Steven Anderson, who is minister of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, was found not guilty Friday afternoon after a two-day trial on charges of obstructing a highway and failure to obey instructions of a law enforcement officer.  'I'm thrilled. I'm happy about it,' Anderson said moments after the verdict was handed down. 'I think it asks the question ‘Why was someone who was found in court not to be doing anything wrong, was brutalized and tasered like I was.'

Anderson was driving east on Interstate 8 on April 14, 2009 when he drove into the Border Patrol checkpoint at milepost 78. While at the checkpoint, Anderson was stopped and questioned by a Border Patrol agent about his citizenship.

Anderson did not answer and instead replied that he was exercising his Constitutional rights and did not want to answer any questions. He kept asking if he was free to leave.   A Border Patrol agent referred Anderson to the secondary inspection area after a canine allegedly alerted to his vehicle. However, Anderson refused to move to secondary and stayed in his vehicle even after multiple requests from both Border Patrol agents and officers with the Department of Public Safety.

'I was exercising my Constitutional rights. I knew they wouldn't find anything and they didn't,' Anderson told the Yuma Sun. 'It is an unconstitutional checkpoint and I basically refused a warrantless search of my vehicle.'  He added: 'I wasn't the one blocking the highway. I was asking to leave, but they wouldn't let me.'  Anderson said the DPS officer and Border Patrol agents eventually broke both windows of his vehicle, tasered him, dragged him out of his car and slammed him onto the ground.   He received 11 stitches and had visible scabs on his forehead following the encounter.

Anderson's trial was held before Justice of the Peace Pro Tem Yolanda Torok in Yuma Justice Court. The jury, composed entirely of Wellton residents, returned its verdict after about three hours of deliberation.

Anderson said prior to the verdict that if he was found guilty, he felt that it would be another example of the government taking rights away from its citizens.  'If the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution doesn't matter, what is next? Take away the First Amendment?' Anderson said. 'Give the government a inch and they will take a mile. As soon as you allow the government to violate and take away your rights it will.'  He stressed that he felt checkpoints along Arizona's highways bring Arizona one step closer to becoming a police state.

'It is Nazi Germany. Show us your papers,'  Anderson said.

Judge Torok previously dismissed the case in December 2009 after testimony in an evidentiary hearing revealed that Border Patrol canine training records, which were available, had not been provided to the prosecution as requested.

Because the defense had requested the same records, but did not receive them either, it made an oral motion during a June hearing to dismiss the charges, claiming it hadn't been given all the evidence in the case.

During a recess in the hearing the prosecution obtained a copy of the canine training records and provided it to the defense. However, after reconvening, the judge ruled that the prosecution failed to provide the records to the defense in a timely manner and dismissed the case with prejudice, which meant charges could not be refiled.  The prosecution appealed the ruling to the Yuma County Superior Court before Judge Maria Elena Cruz. Cruz overturned Torok's ruling and the charges against Anderson were refiled, with further proceedings to take place in Justice Court.

The defense had argued that Anderson was charged with criminal acts that occurred as the result of an unlawful stop and detention. Cruz in her ruling determined that the canine training records were 'irrelevant' because Anderson's alleged criminal conduct happened prior to his initial detention."
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You getting this, pro-SB 1070 commentators?  Remember, this is what you'll get with Sheriff Joe immigration policies.  This is your future.