Another day in the life of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, another group ganging up on you. Last week it was a hundred or so kids who pummeled an Arpaio pinata during a May Day celebration at the park. Today the forum was a morning meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors:
Community activists called for the resignation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio during a Wednesday morning news conference, saying the longtime sheriff is unfit to serve.
The activists -- who included immigrant-rights advocates, county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox and state Rep. Ruben Gallego -- called for the U.S. Department of Justice to place the Sheriff's Office into receivership, a rarely-used legal process to place an organization under independent control. Arizona Republic
Naturally, Arpaio greeted this the way he does all criticism: the activists, he said, "seek only the media spotlight." Couldn't be his fault, nope, and of course he's never sought the media spotlight.
County Supervisor Wilcox, mentioned in the blockquote above, has a long history with Arpaio. She's one of the elected officials who stood up to his police state tactics, and for that he tried to ruin her career by filing a criminal lawsuit against her. It and another lawsuit against Supervisor Don Stapley were so vindictive and baseless that a Federal Grand Jury has been looking into Arpaio's abuse of power since 2009. Lawsuits and harassment have been his modus operandi all along: if someone gets in your way, sue them, arrest them, spy on them -- doesn't matter who they are:
"Arpaio has arrested and jailed journalists ... political opponents ... and he's even had the audacity to arrest and go after judges," activist Chad Snow said.
The calls Wednesday for Arpaio to step down were based mostly on two things (although the list could be much longer). The first is Arpaio's nearly $100 million mismanagement of a fund earmarked for inmate services that he used for his anti-immigration campaign. Instead of upgrading the jails and services for prisoners, Joe bought himself a bus, a tank, and all kinds of manly toys to hunt brown people.
Incredulously, last week Chair Andy Kunasek said the Board of Supervisors will not hold a hearing to discuss the $100 million screwup! Kunasek stated that the only people who want to raise the topic are "agitators," and "nothing could be accomplished by talking about the issue." Yeah, it's only $100 million of taxpayers' dollars that Arpaio misspent -- couldn't possibly be a reason to look into that. So much for accountability, which is why the protestors called for the Feds to place the Sheriff's Office into receivership. Don't forget, Arpaio has also cost taxpayers more than $40 million in lawsuits! Fiscal conservative my ass.
The second reason cited for Arpaio to resign involved the recent findings of a five-month investigation into a slush fund and political machine that three of the Sheriff's senior aides oversaw.
The critics also point to the new internal investigation into three of Arpaio's employees that found Arpaio's second-in-command used the sheriff's public-corruption unit as a tool to smear political enemies and documented instances of mismanagement and deceit, among other findings.
After the investigation found the three deputies culpable of accepting illegal contributions, obstructing justice, and all kinds of other nasty shit, two of the three resigned before the Sheriff fired them. But the question remains:
how could a control freak like Arpaio not know what his closest deputies were up to for years? Either he was complicit in their schemes or he was a piss-poor administrator. Either way, it's time to go, Joe.
More than 100 protestors appeared today at the meeting to support calls for Arpaio to step down. Fewer than a dozen Tea Party members staged a counter-demonstration outside. Even Arpaio's supporters see the handwriting on the wall, the ceiling, and the floors: two Federal investigations are underway (the Grand Jury looking into abuse of powers and a civil rights probe by the DOJ); the investigation into his office's slush found found three senior aides guilty and raises serious questions about his management; and the $100 million blunder even pisses off the wingers. To top it off, last week a bunch of kids destroyed his pinata likeness. The guy can't catch a break.