Arizona man says taking down 'America's toughest sheriff' Joe Arpaio was his wife's dying wish
A few weeks before Daniel Magos' wife Eva died from cancer last year, she told him: "We're going to defeat Arpaio."
She was referring to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who she blamed for a humiliating evening seven years prior, when the couple was pulled over without probable cause in what they believe was an act of racial profiling.
"Quite often, she would remember the incident because it was quite traumatic to her to see the injustice that was being committed to myself and her, to American citizens who were being treated as second-class citizens, as criminals," Magos told As It Happens guest host Piya Chattopadhyay.
Arpaio, 85, was convicted Monday of criminal contempt, capping off a decade-long racial profiling case against the man who once billed himself as "the toughest sheriff in America."
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He now faces up to six years behind bars for the federal offense of willfully ignoring a judge's 2011 order to stop detaining migrants who are not suspected of having committed a state crime.
That order stemmed from a lengthy federal civil rights lawsuit, in which the judge ruled that Arpaio and the Maricopa Sheriff's Office had racially profiled Hispanics in the county for years.
Arpaio told the local CBS affiliate he is "disappointed" by the conviction and plans to appeal.
"My deputies and I were just doing our job," he said.
Arpaio also made headlines in the '90s when he built an outdoor desert prison where the inmates were subjected to all manner of humiliations. It was shuttered earlier this year.
Magos was a key witness in that lawsuit, testifying about the night in 2009 that he and his wife were pulled over.
Magos remembers the police car was driving in the opposite direction when it suddenly swung around and hit the siren. After he pulled over, the officer stayed in his police car for what seemed like forever. He and Eva had no idea why they were being stopped.
"My wife and I were, you know, anxious, as to why he was taking so long, so we proceeded to get out of the vehicle, and he came out of his vehicle screaming at us, yelling at us to get back in, and from there on, that was the tone of the whole stop," he said.
"He never talked to us in a civilized tone of voice, always yelling at both of us with his right hand on his gun. And that was quite intimidating."
At the time, Arpaio's Maricopa Sheriff's Office had policy of zeroing in the Hispanic community with traffic stops and neighbourhood patrols in an effort to catch undocumented immigrants.
Both Magos and his wife were U.S. citizens.
He said Arpaio's conviction has brought a sense of justice for him and his late wife.
"It was like being in Disneyland for the first time. I was quite happy to receive this news," Magos said. "And I'm quite optimistic that the judicial system is going to serve his punishment."