Arizona’s Joe Arpaio’s Office Filled With Racist Jokes

And now for the surprise of the century: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office routinely and frequently circulated racist, anti-Latino jokes among employees via email. What’s more, Arpaio distributed letters demanding racial profiling to his ranks — including the person in charge of selecting where the sheriff’s department would go on immigration patrols.

Short version: Arpaio and his office is plain racist. Here’s a snippet from the Associated Press:

One email from someone in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office that was included in a flurry of lawyers’ filings late last week had an attachment with a joke and image that reinforced stereotypes of drinking by Mexicans. Several officers also distributed an email making fun of Mexican accents, while another officer circulated a photo of a mock driver’s license for a fictional state called “Mexifornia” with a photo depicting stereotypical Mexican facial features.

Lawyers for the handful of Latinos who filed the lawsuit also zeroed in on Arpaio in the court filings, saying he passed along letters from people calling for racial profiling to some of his top managers, including an official in charge of selecting the location of his immigration patrols…

“If you have dark skin, then you have dark skin,” the letter said. “Unfortunately, that is the look of the Mexican illegals who are here illegally.” Young said Arpaio sent the letter to a top manager and instructed him to “Have someone handle this.”

What’s more, the attorney who filed the lawsuit said that racial profiling informs immigration sweeps, showing that Arpaio endorses racial profiling, evident in the fact that the sheriff sent thank you notes to some people writing him demanding he racially profile residents of the county.

While this blows my mind for how blatant and sad it is, my mind remains unblown for other reasons. This whole idea that “it’s about the law, not about race” is truly a cover for racial profiling and racism in general is pretty evident in this suit, although I am sure there will still be true believers claiming that it isn’t. There’s lots more to the story, including two deputies who were forced to resign for basically doing whatever they pleased under Arpaio’s leadership, but that’s not really surprising, now is it?

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD