See, the problem here is that most conservatives that support this bill think the "ends justifies the means."
The problem is two-fold:
1. You are giving the government, particularly law enforcement, more power. This is generally a bad idea. It was not but a generation or two ago that cops used to beat people with rubber hoses to extract confessions. I've known many cops (my ex's brother was a cop in Rochester, NY) and while quite a few are good upstanding people that try to do the right thing, too many get so jaded that they start thinking the same way ("the ends justifies the means") and the end result is you end up with gross violations of power. My ex's brother is one of the most racist people I know. He's a nice guy but years of seeing blacks commit most of the crimes in an inner city like Rochester has colored (pun intended) his vision. Many cops like him even use euphemisms, for example black people are called "Canadians" to avoid triggering charges of racial discrimination. Look at the Rodney King incident. That was less than 20 years ago. It triggered riots and millions of dollars in damage.
The justice court judge I clerked for in Yavapai County after my first year of law school was a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, most judges are not like him. My judge was a fair and decent man, and he knew which cops could be trusted and which ones were "exaggerators," to put it mildly. For far too many cops, the key is to win at all costs. I've seen them lie many times on the stand, just to try and win their case. When you authorize people sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution to lie, you open up a monstrous pandora's box that can never be closed. Ever heard of the "thin blue line?" It's true - cops will generally lie to cover up bad acts of another cop. After all, it's just some perp we are talking about, and hey! The ends justifies the means. It's expedient.
2. It tramples all over a little document called the Constitution of the United States. For example, nowhere in the bill of rights does it state that these rights are ONLY available to U.S. citizens. That's because they are considered basic human rights that all people possess, regardless of your legal status. Once we start deciding who gets and who does not get these basic human rights, then we find ourselves on a really slippery slope.
Think of it this way: right now there's tremendous political pressure for prosecutors and politicians to appear "tough on crime." This, despite the fact that crime rates have been falling in the U.S. for the last decade. Homicides are down by 40% in Phoenix alone, but because of the "forensic journalism" that the media fosters "if it bleeds, it leads," most Americans would never know this. They think they are under siege, and as Mr. Goebbels advised Hitler prior to World War II, if you tell the people they are under attack, they become easier to manipulate, and you can get them to go along with anything you want to do. This philosophy permitted Kristallnacht to take place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
We laugh and think these sorts of things cannot happen here, but this bill could be the first step to creating a real police state. Once the state has these powers, they will NEVER give them up voluntarily. I have read this bill in great detail. This bill makes it a crime to be in Arizona "illegally." That means that there is no longer any need for a pretext stop, as many supports seem to think. If a cop "suspects" you may be here illegally, they can stop you for interrogation. There is no need for the "light broken bullshit pretext stop." Your mere presence, and his suspicion you might be illegal, is all it takes. AND, to avoid allegations of racial profiling, they will have to do this to EVERYONE they encounter for any reason. I for one refuse to cooperate with this horseshit seizure of power. A cop encoutering me will get my driver's license and nothing else. I will not answer ANY questions about where I work, where I am going and what I am doing, because this is NONE of the government's goddamn business. If he wants to arrest me, I will then sue and tie them up in court for years with litigation. If enough people think like me and resist this power grab by the government, the judicial system will collapse. Think about it...I will waste a cop's time for five hours while he tries to arrest and investigate me. Time that should have been used stopping armed robbers, thieves and other real criminals, just to enforce SB 1070. This is the disaster that Arizona has created, and I hope anarchy ensues as a result of this stupidity. When the people vote to sacrifice liberty for perceived security, they deserve NOTHING.
--don
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