Feds find blatant pattern of discrimination in Sheriff Arpaio's office. Seriously, is anybody surprised by this?

"You know Sheriff Joe, when they accuse me of being a racist I just hold up little Trig as a human shield. You should get yourself one of these, it stops all kinds of criticisms."

Courtesy of Google News:  

A scathing U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday found that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office carried out a blatant pattern of discrimination against Latinos and held a "systematic disregard" for the Constitution amid a series of immigration crackdowns that have turned the lawman into a prominent national political figure. 

Arpaio struck a defiant tone in response to the report, calling it a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration that will make Arizona unsafe by keeping illegal immigrants on the street. "Don't come here and use me the whipping boy for a national and international problem," he said at a news conference. 

The government found that Arpaio's office committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including unjust immigration patrols and jail policies that deprive prisoners of basic Constitutional rights. 

The Justice Department's expert on measuring racial profiling said it is the most egregious case of profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature, said Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department's civil rights division. 

"We found discriminatory policing that was deeply rooted in the culture of the department, a culture that breeds a systematic disregard for basic constitutional protections," Perez said. 

The findings will force Arpaio's department to make major changes to carry out new policies against discrimination and improve training of staff and officers. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4 deadline for saying whether he wants to work out an agreement to make the changes. If not, the federal government will sue him, possibly putting in jeopardy millions of dollars in federal funding for Maricopa County.

This is why we need a federal government. To keep assholes like this from running roughshod over those who simply cannot defend themselves, and who use their office to act as if they are above the laws that govern our country.

I assume that all of the time Arpaio spent protecting Arizonians from people with brown skin, kept him much too busy to protect children from being molested.

I guess you have to have your priorities straight don'tcha.

Asshole.