Sheriff Arpaio has been really busy lately responding to state and federal investigations rather than making celebrity appearances on cable television, so I thought I’d update.
America’s most famous Law Man continues to ignore or defy any law that applies to him. This behavior is what makes him an eccentric but lovable scamp, I guess.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has subpoenaed the sensitive investigative report detailing findings about alleged misconduct involving Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s three top commanders, The Arizona Republic has learned. Arpaio’s Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre confirmed Thursday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office subpoenaed the report Tuesday or Wednesday. The Sheriff’s Office has not yet publicly released the report or given any indication when it or its findings will be released. The federal subpoena requests production of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s report by May 4, MacIntyre said, adding that the Sheriff’s Office has not yet decided how it will respond.
Asked about the subpoena, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said he could not comment on the matter, indicating it was a subject “involving a grand jury.”The investigation into three of Arpaio’s close advisors was triggered last September, after a 63-page memo written by sheriff’s Deputy Chief Frank Munnell alleged mismanagement, favoritism, systemic abuse of county and Sheriff’s Office policies, and criminal conduct by Arpaio’s chief deputy, David Hendershott, and deputy chiefs Larry Black and Joel Fox.
Arpaio received the 1,022-page investigative report from Babeu last week but has refused a demand by The Republic and 12 News to release findings of the six-month investigation.
Here’s one witness describing a real-life encounter with Sheriff Joe’s deputies:
Tracked for nearly a mile by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies last May, when the Dodge still ran, Elaine became alarmed, and then terrified, as the lawmen followed closely without ever turning on their lights. Her anxiety surpassed anything associated with an ordinary ticket; her family had already exchanged tales about this sort of enforcement.
Elaine drove the van into her backyard. After banging on the back door and screaming for her own mother, she was wrestled to the ground by the sheriff’s men. Sanchez’s boys emerged from their home to find their mother flat in the dirt with a deputy’s knee in her back as she was roughly handcuffed.The light over her license plate was out.
Indeed, Elaine Sanchez was no stranger to the sheriff’s deputies who’d wrangled with her on the ground; one of them later volunteered that he recognized her from an earlier visit. Sanchez and her family believe they have been targeted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s men as part of the fallout from the lawman’s infamous anti-immigrant sweep in Guadalupe. And here’s the rub: In spite of their last name, none of the Sanchezes is Mexican. None of them is in the United States illegally.All members of the Sanchez family are Yaqui Indians. They are all American citizens. They are as legal as the sheriff’s family.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Impossible, no one brown can be a REAL American Citizen, it’s in the constitution or something. And she had a Mexican surname, QED.
Scott
Right. Brown people are not citizens. Brown people are playthings for citizens.
Califlander
How about, “Would you like that hand-delivered or sent by FedEx?”
If the Pinal County Sheriff is considering defying a federal subpoena, I’d be fascinated to hear on what gounds.
Scott
@Califlander: They’ll defy it on the well-established legal grounds of IOKIYAR.
Loneoak
I fail to see any substantial difference between this and Jim Crow.
kay
@Califlander:
I think it’s going to end badly. Sheriff Joe apparently believes his own press, where he’s America’s Sheriff.
I’d like to know why the Bush DOJ ignored a request from the mayor of Phoenix to start and inquiry into this. There was already a federal court order in place re: the conditions in his detention facilities, and that had to be brought by the ACLU.
Interesting that they didn’t pursue the request.
Jay C
@Califlander:
How about,
“Would you like that hand-delivered or sent by FedEx?”crumpled into a ball after being ceremoniously wiped on the seat of the Sheriff’s pants?More likely…
kay
@Loneoak:
Sheriff Joe started the first chain gang for juvenile offenders. It’s absolutely incredible what he’s gotten away with, while appearing on Larry King.
Linda Featheringill
So the target family [Sanchez] has been residing in this area a hell of a lot longer than the sheriff’s family. He’s probably only here because one of his ancestors was an anchor baby.
On second thought, maybe anchor babies are bad. Hmmmm.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@kay:
But that’s because he saves us from those scary illegal brown folk, so obviously he’s an awesome Real American that must be praised, not like those illegal-coddling Islamosecular Marxists in the Democratic party.
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
If you’re a Mexican from the southwest, odds are actually not so bad that your family was here before any Yankee’s. People seem to keep forgetting that we’re the ones who took Mexican soil originally and not the other way around. Not all of the Mexicans just went away when we did that.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Win!
Although “Godless Islamosecular” would just double down on stupid, but these people are seriously into doubling down on stupid.
serge
I live for the day that Sheriff Joe is wearing a custom-fitted orange jumpsuit. Oh hell, lets throw in some horizontal stripes on that costume. He gives fascist brutality a bad name.
Kay
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
What I like is the complete idiocy of conservatives promoting a law-breaking sheriff
Only conservatives could navigate that contradiction, and decide to portray it as law ‘n order.
Because you never hear about thos elaw-abiding sheriffs, now do you? They don’t give “compelling interviews” that push the message.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
What I love is that they’ve been told for so long that we’re both Communist and Islamist, that some of them every now and then actually work up the neurons to ask “but how can you guys love Osama and the religion-is-the-opium-of-the-people-guy? Don’t you realize that doesn’t make any sense!”
No, it doesn’t. That’s probably why it’s not true. Don’t blame the characters if there are plot holes in your script.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Kay:
They navigate that contradiction because they can, simple and true. I mean…who’s going to call them out on it? Effectively in a way that the press can actually process into a palatable soundbite, I mean.
Chris
@Kay:
“Law and order” means cheering for the guy in the uniform when he cracks skulls. It has nothing to do with actually upholding the law or guaranteeing order.
It’s also supposed to apply differently depending on your Real Americanness status. The guys who cheered throughout the 1970s and 1980s as urban police departments were turned into small combat units? Same guys who squealed like stuck pigs at a couple ATF blunders in white Christian territory in the early 1990s, and have been stockpiling automatic weapons to fight the Government ever since.
kay
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
It could be a great story. Weave pictures of Sarah Palin appearing with him, and then his (probably) upcoming perp walk.
You wouldn’t even need text. Just a photo journey of the conservative hero lawman and his high-profile conservative fan base.
They’re astonishingly poor judges of character, at the end of the day. I don’t know how they’re still walking around with their wallets. They think this person is a great guy. Who thinks that? Is it based on ignoring everything he’s ever done?
kay
@Chris:
I think that cable tv promoting law enforcement “characters” like this man contributes to everything you wrote.
I don’t even think it’s fair to actual professional law enforcement to crown him “America’s Sheriff”.
You’d think the morality police on the “public intellectual” Right would worry about promoting a law breaker as “law enforcement” but apparently it’s good for business, so they went along.
Rhoda
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik: It’s not about soundbites, this Donald Trump thing has sealed the deal for me. It’s about the MSM CULTIVATING the crazy.
I used to think they were just covering it for the train wreck factor and to steal some of FOXs thunder; see CNN trying to become the tea party’s perfected network.
But nope, they’ve taken a page from reality tv and are attempting to script life. This isn’t going to end well.
ppcli
Not a problem. We’re also opium fiends.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
**cough**
It’ll take a while for the new name to take through moderation, but I guess this is more appropriate than Political Nihilism. At least until I find yet more proof of how utterly damned our politics really are.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
As a German policeman in the 30’s once pointed out to a German lawyer concerned about ‘breaking the law’, “we are the police. Who’s going to stop us?”
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Chris:
Fixt for accuracy.
WaterGirl
@kay:
Kay, I have 2 initial thoughts on this. One is that I noticed you said the DOJ ‘ignored a request’. I am not an attorney, but I wonder if they simply ignored it so they could reserve the right to step in if inquiries from other directions did not pan out.
My other thought is that janet Napolitano tangled with this sheriff more than once as governor, and I wonder if they don’t want to get into this unless other options don’t pan out, so as not to have the story be about how Janet Napolitano and the big bad administration has it in for this poor sheriff.
Just my wonderings, since I do give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt, cause you know this sheriff and his behavior are the antithesis of everything to this administration believes in.
kay
@WaterGirl:
I’ve been reading on this awhile, and you’re right, it’s complicated.
The Bush DOJ ignored a request by a mayor to look into the conditions at detention centers, so that was my question. Why they did that. Because there was already a federal court determination that the detention conditions violated civil rights when the request was made, and though I am a lawyer, I don’t do anything federal, and I have no idea how that works.
It just seems to me that if a state executive (mayor) requests federal help or intervention, there’s a problem there. So I’m wondering about that.
kay
@WaterGirl:
To clarify, the Bush DOJ didn’t act (07 and and 08) and the Obama administration did (09).
RinaX
@Rhoda:
The thing is, this has been going on for most of the decade. IMO this was already apparent during the 2004 presidential campaign. There was a brief moment with Katrina where the media as a whole did their job, but ever since then it’s just completely collapsed.
Suffern ACE
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Please…the national MSM loves him because of the pink underwear. Once he rolled out the pink underwear, there is no way our masculinity-challenged national press corpse was gonna not have a laugh at prisoner humiliation.
Sharl
In considering Sheriff Joe, don’t forgot those who blazed the trail ahead of him during the modern political era. A case in point: Rudy Giuliani, whose sleazy maneuverings to achieve power (like this; a brief overview here, also too) led to stuff like this.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Suffern ACE:
That might endear and soften him to folks that might not be so gungho about chain gangs and such, but it’s fairly obvious that he’s the cause celebre for being THE premiere Anti-Immigrant, Mexican, and other assorted brown folks guy, the one the GOP is supposed to look up to as success in practice.
maus
@RinaX:
Only because they were forced to go out and interact with “real America” with actual problems and see floating bodies.
I can’t think of any other situations where they’d be forced to think and feel what others are doing, so outside of that total immersion, we’re fucked.
Ruckus
They are as legal as the sheriff’s family.
Are you sure? Sounds like they may be much more legal.
Brachiator
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Too bad Balloon Juicers cannot retire the condescending snark in the endlessly repeated crap about “brown people.” It really impedes thinking.
@Chris:
Let’s revisit a key sentence again.
There is a sad irony here. The Sanchez family are American citizens by way of the “kindness” of conquerors. But the Yaqui people ain’t Mexican and they ain’t Spanish, and it is nonsense to talk about who took “Mexican soil,” when a larger dispossession of aboriginal people is staring you right in the freaking face.
Oh, and the word you are really looking for here is gabacho, not “Yankee.” As in, “liberal gabachos are just as dumbass as fascists like Arpaio when they persist in lumping all nonwhites together as “brown people.”
maus
@Suffern ACE: Homophobic acts are a “charming human interest story” these days, obviously.
Chris
@Brachiator:
I understood the key sentence perfectly the first time I read it, thanks. I pointed out that the “they were here before Arpaio’s family!” argument was true of many Mexican families in the southwest as well. Because, well, it is.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
The problem is that it’s too often precisely the sort of thing we’re objecting to. See the entire teabagger movement…ostensibly about the budget deficit, but not so much as a syllable of protest from these assholes before the Democrat Near guy got elected President.
Uloborus
@Brachiator:
In their defense, I believe the point the locals are trying to express is that TO CONSERVATIVES all nonwhites are ‘brown people’, and they’re using this incident as one of their proofs.
I personally think simple racism is only a minor element on current conservative thinking. It’s an aspect of a much broader tribalism and xenophobia. Muslims are not scary because most of them have a different skin color. They’re just an Other brought to the conservative attention recently. Democrats of any stripe are almost as Other.
Carol from CO
5th amendment, I imagine.
sukabi
@serge: NO!!! it has to be a PINK jumpsuit, preferably with tulle ruffling around the midriff…
(he makes his prisoners wear pink… extra helping of humiliation involved)
gwangung
Not when you are a brown people.
Wolfdaughter
@serge:
With pink underwear. And then jailed in one of his infamous “tent cities”, quite inadequately cooled, in Phoenix in June or July. Let him have a little taste of his own medicine.
Thank deity of choice that I live in Tucson, aka Baja Arizona, with Clarence Dupnik, who is low-key, and quietly competent.
Linda Featheringill
@Brachiator:
Just a quick note and I have to get back to work.
http://www.lasculturas.com/aa/vs_EdithYaqui.htm
An interesting, short history of the Yaqui.
Jager
My friend of mine, a computer programmer, lives in Phoenix. he is the son of an Air Force retiree and a Vietnamese mother and no, his dad isn’t Hispanic. The other night he was driving home in his new BMW 3 Series, it was about 1am and suddenly he saw the flashing lights of a Maricopa County Sheriff’s car behind him. He wasn’t speeding, he wasn’t violating any traffic regulations, as he said, “I guess I was stopped for looking vaguely Mexican in a new BMW”. My pal pulled over, the deputy walked up, leaned in the window and said, “where’d you get this car”? B said, “I leased from Penske BMW”, the cop’s answer, “sure you did”. B was rousted out of his car, searched, the cop called for back up and now B is spread eagled against the trunk of his first new car, while the cops go through his ‘papers”. Not finding anything amiss, the 3 deputies confer with each other and one walks back to B and says “get out of here”! B asked the cop, “I’d like to know why I was stopped”? Once again, the cop says “forget it and get in your fancy BMW and go”! B persisted and the senor deputy walked over and said “you were stopped because people like you don’t normally drive BMWs, now get the hell out of here”! B left, extremely pissed. Pissed enough to call a lawyer the next morning, the lawyer called the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, they have no record of the stop.
ellie
There used to be a cop in my hometown who was a real bully. He would stop people for no reason and assert his authority. He couldn’t control his kids; they were wild, drug-abusing punks. One day, someone shot this cop in the stomach. And then he retired. You can only push some people so far before they strike back.
Jager
@Linda Featheringill: I think Joe was the anchor baby in his family, his parents were Italian immigrants in Springfield, Ma
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
I would like to say, for full disclosure, I am “brown” and of a certain ethnicity that would share Mrs. Sanchez’s issue of ‘Living w/ a vaguely Hispanic Surname’. Not quite with the historical citizen cred the Yaqui have, but I have no doubt I could easily find myself or my family in that same situation if we lived in Arizona.
My “Brown People” snark is 1) in the vein of the great, late George Carlin, who was brilliant on this sort of subject, and 2) very much aware of the fact that a lot of this shit only cares about one factor: Are you White or are you Not? Because for situations like this, if you’re not White, you’re “Brown”. It’s about the pithiest way that appalling dichotomy that be characterized.
Jay in Oregon
@serge:
Preferably with a lifetime’s supply of his trademark pink underwear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio#Pink_underwear
Pococurante
America needs you, Billy Jack.
Cassidy
@Brachiator: Someone has a case of the vapors…”well, actually …”
MobiusKlein
@Jager: Your friend should sue, I am sure.
I think he now wishes he got the badge numbers of the cops.
Jager
@MobiusKlein: His lawyer said he’d be joining a list of thousands. BTW, tough to get the badge numbers when they constantly keep a flashlight in your eyes.
Brachiator
@Chris:
To aboriginal peoples, the gabachos, the Mexicans and the Spanish are all thieves of the peoples’ land. That Mexican families were “here” before Arpaio’s family don’t mean shit.
@Uloborus:
No, this is a tired bit of lazy snark that Balloon Juice posters can’t let go of. It’s shorthand for conservative racism, but it’s worn out and a substitute for original thought.
But I take your point about the tea baggers, whose movement is founded on racial anxiety.
@Cassidy:
No, just suffering fools.
@Linda Featheringill: Thanks for the link. I strongly suspect the part about the Yaqui being “eager” converts to Christianity is some serious bullshit. The rest is a good overview.
piratedan
well to understand the delay, you have to know the players, the Sheriff of Pinal County is Sheriff Paul Babeu, he of the McCain ad “Just build the damn fence” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0lwusMxiHc
Sheriff Babeu is well liked in Maricopa County as he’s on the “right” side of Russell Pearce and is “good friends” with Sheriff Joe. He’s just not AS corrupt (then again, the opportunities in a town like Florence compared to Phoenix, you see how it is. This guy is really good at his job too:
http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_central_southern_az/other/mexican-drug-cartels-now-control-parts-of-arizona
so….connect your own dots regarding delay reasons
gene108
@Kay:
When the laws are immoral and unjust, breaking is a good thing. I mean we have a federal holiday for a man repeatedly convicted for breaking U.S. law: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
I do believe that’s how they rationalize celebrating criminals from abortion clinic terrorists to Sheriff Joe. If the cause is just, their criminal actions will be justified in the lens of history.
IrishGirl
There is so much that stinks in Joe’s Office that you can smell it all the way in New Mexico. The local free mag, the only source of real investigative journalism in the state, has a very good article on one tiny aspect of the corruption–the use of a PAC to defeat Joe’s former rival, Saban, in the last election AND the homosexual relationship between two of Joe’s most trusted manly LEOs. You have to read it to believe it. Love, Maricopa County Sheriff Office Style
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Brachiator:
Guess what one of the people did in the linked story who was harassed by the Arpaio Gang?
Keep ranting on though, I’m sure you have a point to make. Something about trees and a forest I’ll bet. :)
Brachiator
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Thanks. I will.
And as for forests and trees, I got no problems with blasting the stupidity represented by Arpaio and the goons who cheer him on, or in recognizing the necessity of opposing all that he represents, and in cheering on those who are fighting back.
maus
@Brachiator:
What do you think the worn-out catchphrase is used for?
A argument intended to convince?
A cynical way to let off steam about horrible people?
The racist conservative archetype isn’t original, but it’s ever-present.