Another brush with the Nobel in Arizona.

Elinor Ostrom, an Indiana University social scientist who also has a "research professor" appointment at ASU, is one of the joint winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Economics. (It's awarded by the Nobel Foundation; it's a Nobel Prize.)

Arizona's previous brushes with the Nobel include:

• IPCC, Peace, 2007 (Jon Overpeck of the U of A was a co-lead-author.)
  
• Roy Glauber, Physics, 2005
  
• Vernon Smith, Economics, 2002
  

Willis Lamb and Nico Bloembergen were both hired by the Optical Sciences Center (now the College of Optical Sciences) years after their awards. Glauber serves the OSC in what I understand to be an advisory capacity and his Adjunct Professor title is largely symbolic. As I understand it, Ostrom is much more a part of ASU than Glauber is of U of A. Smith was at George Mason by the time he won his award, but the bulk of his work was done at Purdue and the U of A. Overpeck was one of a few dozen co-lead authors on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

Interesting that Ostrom's was the first Nobel for someone affiliated with the party school in Tempe--the rest were all connected to the U of A. Smith's was probably the closest to a Nobel for work done at one of the state's megauniversities. Neither institution can claim a Fields Medal, John Bates Clark Award, or similar high honor, either. It should in no way disparage the research being conducted to note that Arizona's universities are in this respect always bridesmaids and never brides.

Alex Tabarrok nicely summarizes Ostrom's contributions, and it looks like Evan Lisull beat me to this post.

Like the work of maybe-UA prof Glauber, maybe-ASU prof Ostrom's work is very accessible at a high level. A review in the December 19, 2006 issue of PNAS of her work on effective and ineffective institutions for forest stewardship is relatively light reading which will give a "feel" for her institutional economics research program and findings regarding commons problems. Google Scholar turns up loads more and much of it is more interesting than my usual readings during sample incubations.

Note that modern conservation and environmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy are taking this work very seriously. Note that the takeaway message is minimally "there are people studying what does and does not work in commons problems" and perhaps "neither government micromanagement nor assignment of property rights are always or even usually effective, and not all spontaneous or autochthonous rules work, either". (Place your bets on when the first glibertarian says "Ostrom says that law is unnecessary and bad and she got the Nobel Prize--Ha!") And note also that this is yet another Nobel for someone putting Hayekian ideas on sound, mainstream footing.

A speedy reversal of firearms policy

Chipotle's University Boulevard location was the first alcohol-serving restaurant to post a "No Firearms" sign pursuant to Arizona's new law allowing concealed carry in alcohol-serving establishments.

It's also, as far as I can tell, one of the first to reverse such a policy, much to its credit. Eating a burrito doesn't make a responsible gun-owner turn in to a murderous lunatic--and the claim that concealed-carry permit holders are dangerous is simply not supported by Arizona's fifteen years of experience with concealed carry.

Among alcohol-serving Tucson restaurants without the "we don't want your business" (or "we're hoplophobic weenies") signs include Zachary's Pizza, The Fat Greek, Pho 88, and Bob Dobbs. Post others in the comments section.

Congressmen Franks and Smith: doubleplusgood doublespeakers about Sheriff Joe

"Hugh Nuze", 'blogging on Sonoran Alliance, reports a joint statement by Congressmen Trent Franks (AZ-2) and Lamar Smith (TX-21) on ICE/Homeland Security's nonrenewal of their enforcement agreement with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

Despite the odd formatting (it seems like everyone who covered this forgot what the <blockquote> tag is for) what you are seeing on the Alliance page is the full text of the announcement. Let's examine it more closely:

This unbelievable move by the Obama Administration represents a politicized attempt to hinder one of our most effective illegal immigration enforcement mechanisms, the 287(g) program.

"Unbelievable?" "Politicized?" I suppose everything is politicized these days, But I'd hesitate to call established 4th/14th Amendment constitutional law "politicized". If DHS/ICE's decision is beyond the pale (what people usually mean when they say "unbelievable") we can conclude that Franks and Smith really don't care about Fourth Amendment protections. Perhaps it'd be better to take them literally and infer that they are having difficulty believing what happened. In that case, they should avail themselves of psychiatric services in D.C.

The key to combating illegal immigration is federal, state, and local cooperation.

Right-wingers are like old-fashioned libertarians. When abstractions start being tossed about, they're up to no good.

This is why we believe it is crucial for the federal government to continue to support individuals like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the implementation of agreements under section 287(g), which provides for the Department of Homeland Security to delegate authority to enforce federal immigration laws to state and local officials. To date, hundreds of local officers have been trained in enforcing U.S. immigration laws, and nowhere in the country is this more critical than in Maricopa County. Currently, over 33% of inmates in Maricopa County Sheriff facilities are illegal, and more than 53% of violent crimes in Maricopa County are committed by illegal immigrants.

53% According to whom? According to what study? That would contradict the experience of the rest of the U.S.A.--since Franks doesn't even allude to a source we can consider this as one of those 43.7% of statistics that are simply made up.

The fact is, the 287(g) program works. Thousands of illegal immigrants apprehended for other crimes are being identified and deported.

The fact is, only jackasses trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes actually write "the fact is". In speech, it's an obnoxious, arrogant, insulting tic in speech, as though that isn't bad enough. And more to the point, under the new agreement, the MCSO can still check the immigration status of those apprehended for other crimes.

Claims that the program was supposed to focus only on serious crimes are false. In fact, the program was created to let state and local law enforcement officials help enforce all immigration laws, not a select few. We must not forget that we live in a post-9/11 world and have a profound responsibility to secure the borders of this nation to prevent another terrorist attack.

The race to the bottom! The rest of us are concerned about being able to go about our daily lives without being herded into a Third World scene like Julian and Julio Mora, and Franks is appealing to the September 2001 terrorist attacks and trying to stir up irrational fear. And think about it: if you're a foreigner intent on some sort of kamikaze act of terror, wouldn't you rather have a visa, like the 11 Sept 2001 goons?

Terrorists are looking for our weakest link and will exploit such weaknesses at any cost. Border security and national security are inextricably linked.

Divert immigration back to the roads, where it belongs, and you wouldn't have this problem. Moreover: A shall-issue policy for visas would make it safe to presume that anyone without one is up to no good. Contrast this with the current situation, where the presumption is that the individual without the right visas--an illegal immigrant--is a victim of a broken system.

“Local law enforcement agencies deserve the thanks, and not punishment, of the federal government for helping to address the problem of rampant illegal immigration, especially in area like Maricopa County that see an increase in crime, drug trafficking, and other issues because of it.

This talk of an increase in crime is, again, suspicious, and the proper counterfactual to consider is not "immigrants obey the law" but rather "illegal immigrants are made legal."

"Punishment" would be making every single MCSO officer who violated 4th Amendment protections in the course of 287(g) street level enforcement pay up. To take an abused power away from local law enforcement, that's not punishment. Government agencies are not objects of moral consideration. To speak of their dignity is absurd--it is to make people subordinate to institutions.

Instead of launching a politicized attack against a local law official who has yielded great success with the 287(g) program

By "success", according to the Arizona Republic's numbers, they mean fewer than 300 suspected illegal immigrants caught by the enforcement actions that will soon be prohibited. Contast that to the 30,000 caught by screening of those arrested for other offenses.

the Obama Administration should replicate the success we have experienced in Maricopa County in other areas that are desperately in need of similar solutions. It is reprehensible for DHS to bull

Again, a regulatory change is "bullying", as though government agencies are entitled to their current powers due to some moral considerations, as though they are ends in themselves.

law enforcement officials who have honorably served this nation and the state of Arizona by enforcing federal and state laws and who are continuing to work to protect the American people.”

If what Sheriff Joe and his goons did to Julian and Julio Mora is honorable, if workplace raids are honorable, if willfully violating the U.S. Constitution is honorable, then Franks's and Smith's ideas of honor is very different than mine, and, I suspect, yours.

Given their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, we can conclude that Franks's and Smith's sense of "honor" renders them dishonorable.

A practical tip for readers in the Phoenix area.

Until Sheriff Joe and his fellows are reined in, try not to look Mexican while driving. As can be inferred from the immediate previous post, it could make for a long and interesting day. Take off the tejana hat (or trade it for a sporty Vietnamese model), turn off the Morrissey, apply blackface makeup, learn a good Indian or Pakistani accent--do what you can. If detained, ask which way is east so you can pray facing Mecca.

The obligatory Sherrif Joe post

Via the Arizona Republic and the Wall Street Journal (HT: Justyn Dillingham), word that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office agreement with (federal) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorizing street-level immigration enforcement by the department has ended. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has signed a new agreement with ICE allowing only screening of arrestees and jail inmates.

Arpaio is already blustering about there being no change--"I am free of the Federal Government". According to a second Republic article, Arpaio intends to continue charging undocumented immigrants as conspirators in their own smuggling--this despite Arpaio's deputies having no reason to believe any particular individual without the correct visas has been smuggled. Andrew Thomas's extremely creative interpretation of the state's human smuggling law has been upheld in appeals court but has yet to be tested at the Arizona Supreme Court.

The newspapers have avoided giving details as to why ICE might want Arpaio & Co.'s powers rolled back. (It wouldn't be editorializing, but who cares?--Republic reporters editorialize all the time!) Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputies routinely violate Fourth Amendment guarantees in their immigration enforcement operations. They're not in the "grey area" like the officers in the Evan Lisull chalking case. They're so clearly in the wrong that they could be said to disregard the law.

Consider, for example, the case of Julian and Julio Mora. Julian, a legal resident, and Julio, a U.S. citizen, were driving to Julian's place of work by their usual route. An MCSO car cut out abruptly in front of them; they were arrested and transported to the site of a workplace raid (itself of dubious legality), where they were detained for hours without contact with the outside world. The entire complaint is worth reading. The lack of reasonable suspicion for the preliminary search or probable cause for detention obvious, and the manner of detention will give you chills:

Upon arrival at H.M.I., Plaintiffs observed a scene that resembled a heavily guarded armed camp, with nearly as many uniformed MCSO personnel as detainees. It appeared that all of the employees [emphasis mine] who showed up to work at H.M.I. that morning were being detained. Some of the MCSO deputies were wearing masks over their faces and carrying semiautomatic rifles. Others surrounded H.M.I. employees who had been herded into two long lines for interrogation. Detainees were not provided with any food or water at any point while detained. They were ordered not to use their cell phones to speak with anyone on the outside, nor were they permitted to talk with other employees.

ACLU-AZ counsel Dan Pochoda seems to agree in spirit with the line of thought I presented yesterday:

Exemplary damages are required as punishment and to deter Defendants from repeating these abusive and illegal actions in the future.

The calculus in Sheriff Joe's head--and that of MCSO supervisor Joe Sousa and the other participating officers--should be a weighing of political grandstanding against the prospect of being left indigent (and probably unemployable as peace officers) due to the awarding of damages to those whose rights they violated under color of law.

---

For a long time I have favored a shall-issue policy for visas, letting the market decide who comes to the U.S. and who stays, and finding the "welfare state" cop-out to be overstated if one actually cares about quantitative information.

But suppose I didn't. Suppose I was a nativist, or someone who preferred that the people I encountered each day were of strictly European descent. Suppose I was someone who held it against undocumented immigrants that they didn't wait in a queue that didn't exist, who recognized that there was no means for them to simply fill out paperwork, wait for processing, and get a visa, and then cited this as a reason for them to never receive visas. Suppose, à la George Squyres's infamous August 2004 LP News article, which seems no longer to be on the Internet, that I considered being an illegal immigrant "prima facie evidence" for rejection of rule of law and was bigoted enough to not look beyond the prima facie and consider whether or not this was corroborated by the pattern of conduct in total.

Suppose that, like Russell Pearce, I thought that "illegal aliens have no rights", in either sense of the term. Suppose, to give the position its most charitable description, I out of peculiar aversion to "outsiders" or peculiar need for homogeneity just didn't like having Mexicans or Mexican-Americans around, wished they'd disappear, and didn't give a damn about their maltreatment.

I still wouldn't support Joe Arpaio's workplace raids and profiling, for no other reason than that his policies are patently unconstitutional and will cost the taxpayer's millions. There must be cheaper ways of actualizing one's bigotry. Regardless of one's position on immigration, to support grandstanding politicians who invite sure-win Fourth Amemdment civil liberties lawsuits is, independently, fiscally irresponsible lunacy.

"I got your back...We clear?"

Those who watch a lot of television--and I'm inclined to think of the glowing box as Russell Kirk thought of cars--might get the idea that the police more than rarely "save the day", entering at the nick of time to stop some wrongdoer from harming someone. Many Americans speak about policing and the need to "just let 'em do their jobs" as though policing is like The Commish, out-of-shape middle-aged men managing to stop the next crime just before it happens.

Try convincing the Arambula family of Phoenix of that. Responding on 17 September 2008 to a home invasion at the Arambula residence, Phoenix PD officer Brian Lilly back-shot Anthony Arambula six times--twice while he was on the ground! Arambula was simultaneously on the phone with 911 and holding the home-invader at gunpoint while wife Lesley was with outside with the kids, on the phone with Sgt. Sean Coutts, also via 911.

Not only is policing not ordinarily like television, police are poorly trained to charge in and save the day. (Consider how often the cowards shoot the family pet!) Lilly and partner Dzenan Ahmetovic responded after being flagged down by Lesley Arambula; Lilly didn't get the particulars of the situation--despite both husband and wife having informed the police of it via 911--before charging in and shooting, and he shot a man in the back!

That's a bit of an old story, but Courthouse News Service, a new development. While the officers were (poorly) tending to Arambula's needs, already Lilly and Coutts were discussing a cover-up:

The complaint states: "Sgt. Coutts knew that officers has just shot up and likely killed an innocent homeowner and the husband of Lesley, with whom he had spoken before entering the home, instead of the armed intruder. Sgt. Coutts was quick to commence the cover-up of their terrible mistake. Sgt. Coutts asked Office Lilly where Tony's gun was at the time Officer Lilly had opened fire on Tony. Officer Lilly admitted that he did not know where Tony's gun was: 'I don't know. I heard screaming and I fired.'"
Lilly later told a police internal affairs investigator that Anthony had pointed his gun in his direction, "in the 'ready' position," the complaint states. But Anthony Arambula says he was facing away from the officers, who could not have even seen his gun.
The complaint continues: "Still not knowing that he is being recorded on the 911 tape, Sgt. Coutts interrupted Officer Lilly's admission and apology with his assurance that the cover-up would commence: 'That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?'"

ABC News has the 911 recording.

The Arambulas are suing for criminal damages for quite a variety of torts--see the notice of claim.

Here we have not only an instance of poorly-trained police, but police caught red-handed changing their stories and covering up each other's mistakes. Policing errors I can understand being lenient about, but such police misconduct should not be tolerated.

On David Hardy's 'blog (which I owe for bringing this story back to my attention), anonymous coward commenter "Wrangler5" writes:

Maybe there are mitigating factors not disclosed in the article, but the actions of the responding officers as reported strike me as absolutely beyond the pale. My initial gut reaction is that appropriate consequences would be criminal conviction and 5 years in the general population for the cop/shooter, if possible a conviction and time in the general pop for the partner for covering up, 7 figure civil judgments against both cops personally to bankrupt their families (as a personal message that other cops will get and understand) and 8 or 9 figure judgment against the city to get their attention focused on better officer training and on crushing any personnel involved in covering up violations of law and department policy.

I'm usually unsold on punishment. Too often it is merely revenge or catharsis, hurting the culprit because it feels good. This has no place in civilized laws. But in many a policeman's mind, thanks to the "blue line" culture, there's a bit of an informal economic calculus which is approximately the following: Multiply the loss if I get caught in a cover-up by the probability of being caught. Compare this to the loss if I do not cover this up. If it pays to cover it up, cover it up. We must tip this result back in our favor.