Via Radley Balko, Sheriff Joe requires a latino woman to give birth while her hands and arm are shackled, then, after birth, refuses to let the woman hold the baby and informs her if no one claims the baby in three days, it will be turned over to the state.
Stay classy, Arizona!
wvng
Just makes me ill. Hero to teabaggers though.
BDeevDad
Unfortunately they are. Isn’t this the same district where the penalty for a police officer stealing a defense attorney’s documents in the court room was an apology?
Grumpy Code Monkey
Jesus, what’s next? Good old-fashioned lynchings?
Face
I find it hard to believe this isn’t a violation of patient rights, or something.
I have a feeling Joe could double-tap a Brownie in full view of 16 cameras and post it all on youtube, and he’d still be allowed to keep his job, and probably re-elected in a landslide.
Sick shit.
The Grand Panjandrum
The man is a sadistic jackal. The people of Maricopa County should be ashamed of themselves for reelecting this guy by double digit margins.
burnspbesq
“Barbaric” and “atrocity” seem inadequate to describe this.
And in other news …
latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-kennedy-communion23-2009nov23,0,6964165.story
Alas, the bishop is entirely within his rights as spiritual leader of the diocese to do this. And the hierarchy of the Church wonders why it is losing touch with the faithful. Sigh.
PeakVT
On the bright side, they didn’t taser the mother. This time.
Keith G
Good. Let these stupid and evil people be revealed by their actions.
Though I doubt that this will happen since Dems tend to act like battered spouses, I would love to see the sheriff become the face of conservative government in all elections in Az and neighboring states, a la Willie Horton.
Scott
I miss the days when crooked cops got thrown in jail.
Napoleon
@PeakVT:
. . . or the baby.
anon
This makes me sick..
How do people in that state accept that?
What’s wrong with those people?
Zifnab
@burnspbesq:
They do this every election cycle or so. Some east coast anti-coathanger officeholder gets a sternly worded letter from a wingnut child molester of the cloth. Everyone generally rolls their eyes, because you’re going to get George Bush to ride a horse right before you get a Kennedy to stop taking communion.
It drives another wedge between the church and the people it serves, because there is a very large contingent of sensible Catholics. And it takes a giant shit all over Vatican II and the church reforms of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. :-p
I’m just glad Sheriff Joe isn’t getting this kind of stern reprimand.
SteveinSC
I think that is just ‘latina’ not ‘latino woman’
Zifnab
@Scott: I miss “never” too.
GReynoldsCT00
@anon:
same people who elected John McCain… assholes
Scott
What’s wrong with those people?
They hate brown people, so this is all perfectly acceptable to them. It’s not like brown people are human.
I assume the only reason the feds haven’t busted him is ’cause they don’t want to violate that precious “thin blue line.”
mistersnrub
This guy reminds me of the sheriff from Naked Lunch.
Tom Hilton
@Scott: I can’t remember if he’s under indictment, or just under investigation…but there’s some kind of trouble for him in two cases where he retaliated against critics by arresting them on completely bogus charges. He could well end up in jail.
blondie
As someone with a brain who is from Arizona- NO WE ARE NOT PROUD. I hope that the current investigations yield something. He’s a crooked cop who treats everyone badly, from his inmates to his employees and he a huge drain on County resources.
Just clearing the air . . .
celticdragon
@anon:
What’s wrong with people?
We have been cultivating a racist, nativist hatred of other cultures, and this is coupled with a sadistic (deeply Puritanical) satisfaction with hurting people who have been arrested.
Heard all those jokes about guys getting gang raped by “Bubba” in prison? If you get arrested, you have it coming, right?
This is Cavanist and Puritan ethos distorting our ability to reform prison practices, and now we see sadistic and vile incidents like women being shacked during labor and tazering old women, children and the mentally incompetant. It’s a lot more common than you might know.
My wife and I discussed (again) last night whether we may have to run for Canada at some point. The authoritarian idiocy here is getting worse, not better.
Walker
Conservative Catholics hate Vatican II.
GReynoldsCT00
@blondie:
I hear you Blondie, I’m from CT, where we have a certain asshole senator holding up HCR, among other things. Boggles the mind.
Brian J
Despite wanting to be a lawyer, I’m not a particularly litigious person. Having said that, I hope this woman sues the pants off of this asshole and the municipality he works for. What a dick.
Col. Klink
Imagine for a nano second if some Mexican cop had done this to a Gringo woman south of the border. Fox News would be calling for an invasion right now and the Wingnuts would be yelling ‘damn straight it’s about time we kicked their asses’. This is what happens when you make empathy for your fellow human beings an ‘evil’ value.
celticdragon
@Walker:
Boy, is that right!
I found out just how bizarre conservative Catholicism can be when reading “Erin” at the CrunchyCon blog arguing against the notion of personal autonomy. Her “Catholic” belief is that you do not actually have ownership of your body, which is why it is “evil” to use birth control etc etc etc.
If we cannot even agree on such a fundamental principle of who owns your own body, other discourse become laughably impossible. It scares the shit out of me to see conservative Catholics joining with radical fundamentalists to try and destroy the seculer underpinnings of our laws and government.
celticdragon
@Brian J:
Unlikely. In many if not most states, this is a standard practice. I was horrified when I first learned that. There is no recorded incident of a woman in labor or a post delivery mother ever escaping from the hospital…but that does not stop male perogative and control.
celticdragon
yeah…my spelling is FAIL right now. *sigh*
PeakVT
I wonder how many employers of illegal aliens Sheriff Dredd has arrested. I’m thinking that the number starts and ends with a zero.
liberal
@Face:
I find it hard to believe this isn’t felonious assault.
Max
I think it will be interesting to see how John McCain manages his relationship with Arpaio. From what I understand, they don’t get along at all, but with McCain’s run to the right, I wonder if he tries to embrace this scumbag.
Riggsveda
This is not new, nor is it confined to Arpaio’s fiefdom. See here.
Bulworth
What a manly man this sheriff is. Maybe the Repubs will nominate him to run with that Alaskan wolf-murderer.
tinat
@GReynoldsCT00:
Oh it’s worse, Maricopa county is divided between McCain AND Kyl so we in Arizona are responsible for more crap then a circus full of elephants.
liberal
@celticdragon:
I don’t think “own” is the right verb here. For example, you can’t sell your body while you’re alive.
Riggsveda
Damn. Nothing new here.
Brick Oven Bill
Eugenics started with the American Progressive movement in the early 1900s. Hitler then picked up on it, and went crazy nuts, and the idea went away for sixty years.
Eugenics will come back and in the beginning be excused by economics. It cannot be stopped. This health care bill is the start. The human race will then be split into two groups of people. One group will all look like Brian Urlacher/ Jody Foster, and the other will be short and stupid.
These people will be dumb enough to not mind being slaves. The Helots were a threat, and caused friction in the system.
This is because humans are much more efficient energy converters than tractors, and there is not that much oil.
liberal
@PeakVT:
Thing is, anyone who truly believes illegal immigration is a problem would of course focus enforcement on employers, since they have so much more to lose.
Jamey
Sadly, I think Arizona IS proud of Sheriff Joe.
stinkwrinkle
@GReynoldsCT00: McCain?! As little as I like the man, and as unlikely as I am to vote for him, as far as the AZ congressional delegation goes, he’s a fucking paragon. Kyl, Shadegg, Trent Franks (my rep!), the list goes on and on….
This state is really a shithole. Sarah Palin should run for office here. She’d fit in with the gubernatorial trend of ethical standards, the people really believe the death panel crap, and when I openly laugh at the Birthers, a lot of people get red-faced and start looking at their shoes. Man, I hope the economy turns around soon, so I can get a job in a real state.
GReynoldsCT00
Oh goodie, it’s only 10A Eastern and we’re already having pie… I can haz more coffee?
bago
On things like this I want to raise my Balko flag. He got Cory Maye a new trial and deserves endless props for that. However his tenure at reason is kind of painful, given the forced advocacy for the donors that pay the bills. You secretly wish for a tell all memoir in the next decade.
cmorenc
@Brick Oven Bill:
Take your meds, before you slip too far into your manic side.
kay
He’s a purely political pol and his fans on the Right are stupid, cowardly bullies.
What is it about these clowns and their enthusiasm for beating up on people who have their hands tied behind their back? Cowards.
Luckily for us, despite best efforts on the Right, there’s still review and oversight of the stupid bully crowd:
“On October 2, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a vote of 6-5, held that a jury should decide whether there was a need to shackle Shawanna Nelson while she was in late-stage labor, because such treatment, in the absence of a security need, constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is a critical legal victory in the campaign of the ACLU and many allies to end the practice of shackling pregnant prisoners who are in labor.
Shawanna Nelson entered an Arkansas prison in June 2003 with a short sentence for a nonviolent crime. When she went into labor, the correctional officer accompanying her shackled her legs to both sides of her hospital bed. She remained shackled until she was taken to the delivery room. After the birth of her son, the shackles were again placed on her legs. She suffered intense pain and lasting medical problems from the birth and the inability to move her legs. After childbirth, authorities’ refusal to remove the shackles forced her to soil the bed. The correctional officer knew that she was not a flight risk, and knew that the restraints caused pain and unsanitary conditions.”
Betsy
This makes me sick to my stomach. He’s nothing but a smug sadist who got ahold of a little bit of power and decided to abuse it for all he was worth. For this the people of Maricopa County have reelected him several times over, if I’m not mistaken. Those who support him should be ashamed of themselves, but they won’t be. They’re too busy dehumanizing anyone poor and/or brown who lives in their midst.
LD50
I know people like to bash California here, but it’s a lot harder to imagine this shit happening in here. Hatred of Hispanics seems to run much closer to the surface in Arizona, like it used to be in CA in the ’50s and ’60s. Hopefully some day Arizona’s Hispanic voters will be numerous and organized enough to start putting an end to this shit?
Perry Como
@Napoleon: The suspect failed to follow orders, was gesticulating wildly and was screaming at the officer. The officer’s use of a Taser on the newborn is in line with department policies.
kay
That brave sheriff really showed the newborn who is boss.
I imagine he’s strutting around. Another “win”.
Does this guy ever confront anyone who can fight back?
Kanamit
I was just thinking of this issue. My Republican state assemblyman, whenever he comes to my extremely liberal area, always pretends to be a progressive in disguise. He was one of about 15% of the NY state assembly to vote against an anti-shackling for women in labor law.
JackieBinAZ
Forget the illegals – Arizona would be a better place if we could close our borders to prevent being overrun by a flood of conservative retirees. Hateful, fearful and energized by the notion that someone else covets their stuff, they’re the perfect constituency for Sheriff Joe and he plays to their fears shamelessly.
I do want to point out that for all of its sins, the state does have the excellent Rep. Raul Grijalva, who co-chairs the house progressive caucus.
PhoenixRising
Well, not ‘proud’ as such. I think ‘resigned’ would be closer to the mark.
Maricopa County has more area and more people in it than 5 Eastern states, and an international border that attracts criminals who make money off the drug policy of this country. So being the sheriff there, unlike being the sheriff of Itchy Elbow County, Arkansas, means a lot of budget to address the problems that the federal government creates in taking an irrational approach to both drugs and immigration.
The demographics of Phoenix are heavily skewed towards white folks from other states and brown folks from other countries.Guess which group can vote, and is highly sensitive to racially triggering language and imagery in ads?
Phoenix will get better the minute all those shitty ‘houses’, that were built out of paper towels and recycled pop bottles by guys with their first good-paying jobs, crumble back into the desert…and their former rent-to-own occupants flee back to Cleveland and Buffalo, where everyone in the neighborhood where they grew up was pretty much alike.
Like the song says, There is no Arizona. It’s just a mirror, one that shows the ugly zit on the chin of America.
asiangrrlMN
I couldn’t watch the video. Thank you all for discussing it so I know that I would be sick to my stomach if I had. But, this is the result of our inexorable move back towards authoritarianism and, yes, of racism/sexism. She’s not seen as human, therefore, why treat her like one?
kay
@Kanamit:
It’s punishment for the pregnancy, pure and simple, and tough on crime political posturing.
If they are really a flight risk, they can clamp an electronic monitor to one leg. And they do, regularly, for men who are in drug treatment. Corrections isn’t rocket science, unless you’re a sadist, and then it gets real complicated.
Kennedy
@blondie: I’m with blondie. I’m also from Arizona, and this guy is pretty much a hero only to the rabid, frothing, lunatic fringe (aka teabaggers and minutemen).
The real problem with Sheriff Joe is that the Democratic party never, ever brings forth a credible contender when he’s up for re-election. They’ve run the same candidate in two of the last three elections, and he always get buried in a landslide. Arpaio is so goddamned crazy that people seem to equate his job requirements with his extremism. Think of it in terms of the 2004 general election, except the meme/issue is illegal immigration instead of terrorism.
I really doubt Arpaio be going anywhere anytime soon either. AZ is far from turning Democratic, even though some polls showed it close in 2008. We will even soon have our own NY-23 on our hands; teabagger and minuteman extraordinare Chris Simcox is slated to run against him in the primary.
But yeah, the state is full of a bunch of rednecks, but hey…at least the weather is nice. Most of the time.
Ella in NM
Ok, this story HAS to be the straw that breaks Arpaio’s back.
Where the hell is the US Justice Department? How far do we let this rogue go in violating human and civil rights?
Where’s our big war hero, John McCain? Where the fucking hell are the women’s organizations? The human rights advocacy groups? The pro-life Catholics? Jesus–the La Leche League could get a piece of the action at this point!!! What better a story do they–we– need to start the huge protest/boycott/ letter writing campaigns to get this guy ousted and the whole Sheriff’s Department purged?
I hope he gets a huge boil on his scrotum and it develops into gangrene of the penis.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Apparently Sheriff Joe is going soft in his old age.
He’s some kind of phenomenon. Everybody hates him, including his own employees. But there he is, getting reelected all the time. It is weird.
He’s Mister Potter with a posse. He’s crazy, or phony, or both, nobody really seems to know. But nobody who can win will run against him, and the people who run against him just don’t get the votes to turn him out.
I work in the same downtown where he works, and I’ve seen him at lunch, holding court around a tablefull of sycophants, and he is quite the entertainer.
Whenever I am really really convinced that the American Experiment is going to succeed (which is most of the time), I have to stop and think of Joe, and wonder.
jon
@PeakVT: In the two years it’s been illegal under a new law, the answer seems to be… one.
I feel safer already.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
What? Cut the crap. Phoenix has grown from 100k to a metro area of 4 million or so in just the time since I went to the same grade school that Barry Goldwater went to. People are not leaving to flee to Cleveland. They are staying in droves, obviously.
ericvsthem
There is an article about the shackling/handcuffing of female prisoners during childbirth in the recent issue of Mothering magazine. This barbaric practice is actually fairly common in the US. Over 20 states have laws outlawing the practice, and the ACLU is working to increase that number.
ms. denver
yeah this practice is fairly common. same thing in florida. they hold the baby ransom. it’s not just that someone has to come and pick up the baby, they also have to pay the 350 dollars. so if the prisoner’s mother, the baby’s father, or other family member doesn’t have the cash, they don’t get the baby and she goes into state custody.
JHF
Arizona is also the state that won’t let me take care of my psychotic mother because the laws are to “protect” geezers at all costs. No matter how wacko they are, their children aren’t allowed to help them, so long as they aren’t a danger to themselves, supposedly. My mother has been very, very sick (in the head) for several years, moved out of a perfectly good home into a shitty one she “liked better,” leaving the other to rot. She’s wasting all her money and soon won’t have anything left for nursing home care, and there’s not a thing I can do. Declaring her incompetent takes a long court trial, with me testifying against her, and thousands of dollars.
So basically, AZ sucks. It makes perfect sense to me that John McCain lives there. The trailer park where my mother lives is chock-full of bitter retiree emigrants from northern states who think everything that’s wrong with AZ is because of the “Mexicans.” They make me puke.
Pasquinade
rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_governor_electio…
Words fail…
bago
If Heaven is on the way…
Senyordave
I hope he gets a huge boil on his scrotum and it develops into gangrene of the penis.
Ella in NM,
Wow, maybe we need a new thread on what we would wish upon sheriff Joe.
How about being raped using his billy club by a gang of femal bikers?
He really is a disgustingly sorry excuse for a human being. If there is karma, he’s going to wish one day he had acted with some measure of humanity.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Pasquinade:
I seriously doubt that those numbers would hold up in a statewide election here. Goddard is a solid guy and will make a formidable candidate.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Yeah, it’s a well known fact that anti-Hispanic prejudice originated in and mainly lives in Arizona.
( rolls eyes )
Kennedy
Jesus on ice skates….we are fucked if he becomes governor.
@JHF: Another great moment in our state government was their refusal to pass a goddamned budget. A family member of mine has worked in Flagstaff schools for years and recently finished his masters in education. He applied for, and was promoted to assistant principal of his school, only to not have any pay increase due to the state’s wrangling over the budget. I stopped paying attention a long time ago because it got so ridiculous (I don’t even know if we have a budget at this point), but as far as I know, his pay increase is still mired in red tape and bull shit.
Maybe that sounds petty, but when you consider the way we pay teachers in this country, moving into administration is a significant career move/pay adjustment. To have a member of my family be denied his hard earned pay because a bunch of assholes in state government can’t agree on a 1 cent sales tax increase or any other number of palatable solutions really pisses me off.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Here’s the bottom line:
Steelers 6-4
Cardinals 7-3
Heh.
Great Laker
F*ck desert-dwellers.
They can’t have our water. As soon as they start running out and get into real battles with California and Vegas over it, they’ll move away. Phoenix will crumble.
PhoenixRising
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: Sorry I offended your delicate sensibilities there, by openly stating the unspeakable fact that the population growth in the Sonoran Desert is an environmental impossibility that will not continue forever but will reverse itself–as the shoddy workmanship of the housing bubble, and the increasing price of electricity and water, make it cost big money to live in a sunny place. (Aside: if AZ weren’t dominated politically by cranky geezers with an entitlement disorder, there would be a stampede for access to the green energy development options encouraged by state policy…but if wishes were kilowatts…)
Let me make it simpler: Phoenix is but a symptom.
If the rest of America is disgusted by what Sheriff Joe exemplifies about racial thinking, the drug war, and anti-immigrant populist blowhards, that’s good.
Better yet would be some acknowledgement of the fact that the native-born Americans who make up most of the white 70% of Maricopa County all came from somewhere else.
aimai
I can’t believe that none of the Nurses or Doctors involved in this woman’s care had the sense to call the ACLU, a local Judge, the Governor’s office and everyone else and simply *demand* that the shackles be taken off. It is obscene that they submitted themselves to the tyranny of the Sherriff’s office.
aimai
Phoenix Woman
How much you wanna bet the video ends up on YouTube? Or on a very special pay-to-view BDSM website where all the proceeds go to the Sheriff’s Office?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@PhoenixRising: f
Whatever point you were trying to make in the original post I replied to, you managed to completely obfuscate in the follow up.
A lot of people here come from somewhere else? Wow. Pretty profound. But that has nothing to do with the recent housing bubble. The bubble was nationwide and responded to causes having nothing to do with the demographics of Phoenix.
Phoenix in the last decade has been the second-fastest growing metro area in the country. This could not have been so without considerable in-migration. The history of this area shows that the in-migration is not a transitory thing, it has been the foundation of the area’s demographics for most of the last 100 years. People are not going to flee. There aren’t that many metro areas in the country with the jobs, the moderate cost of living, the warm weather, and the infrastructure that Phoenix has.
It’s a little foolish to argue that Phoenix is a bad place to live when people keep flocking here and end up staying in droves. Unless you think that prospectors have discovered gold out there in the riverbeds.
As for my delicate sensibilities, don’t have any. What I have is a distaste for people who don’t know what the hell they are talking about. If that group doesn’t include you, then my mistake, and we are in total agreement on everything.
Liberty60
Whenever I see these sorts of “tough on crime” folks, I think of the commenter on greenwald’s blog, that said something to the effect that when they hold the whip handle, none are more fierce; when the handle is held by another, none are more servile.
Notice how the favorite fantasy among the Tea Party is the fevered self-pity of imagining themselves the oppressed victim, the pitiable defenders of a monstrous overclass.
kth
That they keep electing someone like this as their county sheriff means (greater) Phoenix is a shit town, period.
Joel
It’s pretty fucking depressing that Maricopa county, not exactly the sticks, props this guy up with landslides every time the election rolls around. It makes me wish there was a hell, after all.
toujoursdan
Phoenix rising is absolutely correct that Phoenix, Vegas and other Southwestern cities are going to depopulate rapidly once energy becomes expensive and the Basin and Range aquifers dry up and water becomes scarce.
There is a reason why these areas were thinly populated before the development of cheap (and non-renewable) energy.
sacman701
I lived in Phoenix from 1993 to 1998. Arpaio has always had the mentality of a 3rd world dictator, and he stays popular by putting on “Joe shows” for lazy local tv news programs: making inmates wear pink underwear or eat green baloney, putting them on chain gangs, using his “posse” of volunteers to try to chase hookers off of an inner city street, etc. Until lately he hasn’t gotten much substantive criticism except from the local alternative newspaper, although his election margins have been dropping as people have started to tire of his thuggery and incompetence.
JFitz
I live in Tucson, home to Raul Grijalva and Gabby Giffords. Frankly, I resent the implication that ALL of Arizona sucks. Half you guys sound like a bunch of teabaggers bitching about Massachusetts or San Francisco.
Stay classy, Balloon Juice commenters.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@toujoursdan:
I seriously doubt that, and Phoenix does not rely on basin and range aquifers. That would be Tucson, which has hardly depopulated since its water table collapsed. It just learned how to reduce water consumption. Once people learn to live in a desert, the wasteful water consumption of the past is easy to ditch.
Most of the power generated at the local nuclear plant is sold out of state. There is plenty of power available here.
Solar and wind will gradually replace a good deal of conventional power generation out here.
Water and energy are going to be issues everywhere, and all kinds of geologies and climates are going to present challenges requiring adaptation. Phoenix is not going be unique in that regard.
As they say about the desert, it’s hot, but you don’t have to shovel it. I don’t know many people who would move back to the Upper Peninsula if they had to give up their lawns or pay more for electricity. It won’t be any cheaper to heat those Upper Peninsula homes than it will be to cool the homes here.
SiubhanDuinne
Totally apart from his appalling record, the guy is 77 YEARS OLD. Now admittedly I’m no youngster myself, but I really have concerns about people running for office much past age 70 or serving beyond, say, 75. (Yeah, sorry, but I’m talking to you, Senator Robert Byrd.) So if Arpaio won the GOP nom and the general, he’d be 78 going on 79 at the time of taking office as governor and 82-83 at the end of a four-year term. (All of which, of course, god forbid.)
licensed to kill time
May Joe Arpaio come back in his next life poor, female, brown and shackled to a bed with really bad back labor, pink panties on his head and nothing to eat but green baloney.
Psalm 139:12 (Arpaio version)
celticdragon
@ThymeZoneThePlumber:
An awful lot of Arizona’s water comes form the Colorado River, which is already over used (legal rights to the output actually exceed annual deliverable water!). Agriculture in the state relies on government subsidies to both riparian and ground water sources which means growers get the water at far below what the market cost would be. This will not be sustainable forever in a desert environment with dwindling finite supplies.
celticdragon
@aimai:
Have you read what the Sherriff’s Office does to critics??
There is a reason why there are Federal investigations of this man. He uses the power of his office to investigate, harass and intimidate anybody who crosses him. Even the mayor has been “investigated” (and anonymous details leaked to the media) when the mayor got too mouthy about the runaway abuses within the department. Robert Mugabe in Zimbebwe would love this guy.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@celticdragon:
Arizona’s position WRT Colorado River Water is on a level playing field with the other states that use that water. Whatever affects us affects them. Carl Hayden made sure of that.
But that said, there is no way these people should be growing fucking cotton out here, and that is where the water goes. Cotton takes more water per acre than almost any other cash crop after rice. The idea of growing cotton in a place that gets 7 inches of rain a year is fricking ludicrous, and yes, it will stop soon enough. Good riddance.
The Pima Indians grew their wonderful cotton, which bears the name of their tribe, in this valley … but did it on a tiny postage-stamp piece of land that was directly in the path of the outflow of a major watershed out of nearby mountains. That little microeconomy is no longer viable.
Ruckus
@celticdragon:
Remember the Puritans didn’t come here to escape religious persecution, they came here to practice it.
Jager
6 Years ago I supervised the Phoenix office of my old company, the job was so time consuming that I bought a house (seemed like a good idea at the time) rather than spending half the year in a hotel. The developement had strict rules on landscaping; basically no none-native plants, flowers or trees. Our area used over 20% less water than comparable sized communities in the Phoenix Metro. If you go to the older parts of Phoenix, the Biltmore area for instance, it looks more like a Chicago suburb than a desert community, huge lawns, hardwoods, etc. Too many green grass golf course rather than desert courses and a shit load of non-native palm trees. I still have my house there, thank god its rented and covers its costs. Phoenix attracts conservatives from all over the country, there are a ton of evangelicals, Mormons and many “randians”. I remember going out to look at a piece of property a few years ago and we arrived ahead of the agent…the care taker looked like he stepped out of a Peckinpah movie with a bowie knife and a 9″ revolver strapped to his waist…we were 23 miles from Scottsdale for Christ’s sake! for many of these folks Joe isn’t tough enough!
Lidane
What a disgusting, pathetic excuse for a human being. I bet that sheriff is loved by the teabaggers and the Fox News/Glenn Beck crowd.
RememberNovember
@anon: You’re in McCain country- where “real” ‘muricans live.
Sherrif Joe needs to share a cell with Los Luchadores.
Brazil is Big
This is exhibit A why I ran out of this desert cultural wasteland as soon as I graduated.
As a woman who has recently given birth, I know I should be appalled, but I’m so passed that that my first emotion is to bawl my head off.
jlmerkle
From the state of Arizona I apologize. However Sheriff Joe is the sheriff of Maricopa County, not the entire state, and for some reason the people of Maricopa County continue to re-elect this sad excuse for a human being. Our sheriff in Pima County, the second most populous county, which unlike Maricopa County is actually on the US-Mexican border, is a much more sane individual. Sheriff Joe, his blind hatred and idiocy does not represent all of Arizona.
auntieeminaz
@Pasquinade: kill me now.
Marquis de Sade of Maricopa County
Do online petitions ever do any good? I’d like to see this one get some traction
americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff
LanceThruster
Just saw Sheriff Joe featured prominently in the doc “American Drug War: The Last White Hope”. He likes the attention and thinks his get tough stance is a cure-all. I was actually surprised when he said he was probably supportive of a medical marijuana policy.
His actions here are borderline barbaric. Regardless of the mother’s crimes, the traumatization of mother and child is inexcusable.