Photo: Yvette Martinez
Undersheriff Backtracks on Postcard-Only Mail After Multi-Racial Protest
In San Jose, Undersheriff John Hirokawa couldn’t stop himself from smirking last May, as he told a crowded room of opponents that he knew his new mail policy, limiting incoming mail to postcards at the county jail, would provoke a “firestorm” of protest — but it would “blow over” in three months.
Three months later, not only he, but Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who implemented the first such policy, have found themselves pushed back by the firestorm they stirred up.
The two sheriffs, evidently thinking they could do anything they want to inmates, used the flimsy rationale that mail coming into the jails in envelopes poses a risk to the safety of inmates and staff — due to the possibilities of drugs and other contraband coming in as well as repetitive-movement injuries to those who open the mail at the jail.
But when San Jose residents demanded statistics on the actual extent of this supposed problem, the undersheriff could offer none.
Shortly thereafter, Hirokawa found himself confronted by a multi-racial group of furious opponents, organized by Silicon Valley De-Bug, the NAACP, and other organizations from the Coalition for Justice and Accountability.
Former prisoners, family members and activists voiced emotional pleas and vociferously argued that letters are a lifeline to inmates not only helping people turn their lives around but preventing suicides.
“It’s not right,” said San Jose resident Ramona Redmond, whose boyfriend is in the county jail. “How are you supposed to get everything you want to say on a postcard? What are you supposed to do, send a thousand postcards?”
Tears were shed as a tattooed ex-convict said that his wife’s long letters to him in California’s Pelican Bay Prison had helped him turn his life around.
The undersheriff’s proposed policy, limiting all incoming mail except legal mail to postcards, was to take effect June 1.
But the opposition—from African Americans, Latinos, and Anglos, united across racial lines—forced Hirokawa to agree to meet to negotiate alternative solutions. Implementation of any new jail mail policy was at first delayed, and on Aug. 9 the undersheriff gave up and entirely dropped his postcard plan.
In Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has also found himself struggling to douse his own firestorm.
Pressured by Arpaio’s opponents, the US Justice Department more than a year ago filed a lawsuit asserting a “pattern of unlawful discrimination” by the sheriff and alleging that Latinos at the Maricopa County Jail were often called “stupid” or addressed with an ethnic slur.
While Arpaio is infamous for his attacks on Latinos, his policies, such as limiting jail mail to postcards, have spread to harm prisoners of all backgrounds. But Sheriff Arpaio has himself run into a major roadblock.
When the US Justice Department case in Arizona against went to trial in front of US District Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix, Arpaio lost. The federal judge confirmed that Arpaio and his deputies used racial profiling against Latinos. Although the Maricopoa County website still contains Arpaio’s postcard jail mail policy, the sheriff is now under serious attack.
Now that he has decided against Arpaio, the judge in Phoenix must write a detailed order, and he has directed each side to give him their thoughts by August 15. A hearing on the exact wording of the order against Arpaio is set to occur on August 30.
For a long time, law-enforcement officials such as Hirokawa and Arpaio have rampaged against poor and minority people in what seemed to be unlimited fashion. But now the battle has heightened, and they have now hit some limits. While Arpaio’s reign of terror continues to harm Arizona and especially the Latino community there, recall efforts are under way to remove him as sheriff.
United across racial lines, the people in San Jose have shown that sheriffs like Hirokawa — and Arpaio — can be defeated.
