Sheriff Arpaio gets schooled

[iiandyiiii]

C’mon mags, you don’t really support this birther nut, do you?

[magellan01]

@iiandyiiii

C’mon mags, you don’t really support this birther nut, do you?

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

[kaylasdad99]

@kaylasdad99

His term runs concurrent to the President’s. His last electoral campaign was in 2012 (although he did successfully fend off a recall in 2013 – stupid Maricopa Countians :mad:).

Missed the edit window. To clarify, the 2013 recall attempt only made it to the petition stage, where it stalled.

[andros]

@DummyGladHands

How terribly depressing that you feel that way; so what you’re saying is that we Zonis can only enjoy Arizona until OMIGODTHERE’SMEXICANSEVERYWHERE!!! AND IT’S DOOMSDAY!!

jeez

That’s pretty much been Arpaio’s stance, yeah.

[iiandyiiii]

@magellan01

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

Was his investigation into Obama’s birth certificate part of this “great job” as sheriff? I think that kind of disqualifies him from the category of “rational thinker”, which I would think disqualifies him from such an important position as sheriff.

[kaylasdad99]

@magellan01

Odd that I even have to explain this, but okay. Come next Wednesday, the issue of the Senate will dwarf every minor issue, like this one. And if the results turn out as most people expect, libs will be crying in their beer.

Chardonnay, you idiot.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

Wait, magellan is throwing his support behind Arpaio? I mean, I get that he’s a right-winger, but I didn’t take him for a lunatic.

[Morgenstern]

@magellan01

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

I remember when he came to San Diego. We thanked him for coming, asked him to pay his hotel bill and go home, as soon as possible. But that’s pretty much what we do to residents of Maricopa county anyway.

[clairobscur]

@magellan01

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

You’re talking about the guy who uses his position as head of the police to harass people who dare criticizing him, and who has detained people die in suspicious circumstances in his jails, right?

I guess it’s all fine and dandy as long as people waiting for a trial to determine whether they’re guilty of something or not are dressed in funny clothes, eat the most crappy food possible, and are housed as badly as possible for the amusement of the general population (the part that isn’t too darkly coloured and didn’t criticize him, I mean)…

[BrainGlutton]

@magellan01

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

Really? No, not really.

Illegal immigration

Arpaio has taken a very hard line against illegal immigration. So hard, in fact, that he declines to hand illegal immigrants over to federal authorities for deportation in lieu of a stint in jail,[1] and the sheriff’s office is so busy trying to hunt illegal immigrants that it has little time for anything else.[2] The end result of all of this is that the Justice Department filed a civil suit against Arpaio in Federal court in May 2012 due to multiple civil rights violations primarily aimed at the Latino population of Maricopa County.[3]

Civil rights violations

Arpaio, like a large number of Republicans, talks a good talk on cost-cutting. Unlike most of the prominent politicians in his party, however, he has actually cut some costs. For example, he has cut food costs in the jails of Maricopa County by starving jail inmates, he has cut building costs by jailing people in tents in often triple-digit heat,[4] and he has cut maintenance costs by letting the jails rot. Unfortunately, these cost-cutting measures have been more than offset by the massive number of lawsuits filed against the sheriff’s office, resulting in more than $43 million paid out in settlements.[5]

In 2008, a federal court ruled that conditions in the jails were unconstitutionally harsh.[6] Arpaio, perhaps preoccupied with his fledgling clothing-design career, did not seem to get the memo; two years later, another ruling held that conditions had not changed and ordered him to get off his keister.[7] Yet somehow he keeps getting chosen as sheriff.

Using public office for self-promotion

Arpaio uses the sheriff’s office, including its official communication organs, as self-promotion tools, including but not limited to the publication of his political differences with the federal government[8] and of his opinions on Arizona political happenings.[9]

Sometime in the 1990s, the underwear given to inmates in Maricopa County jails was dyed pink to prevent inmates from walking off with it. Arpaio used this as a pretext to brag about how well he has served his constituents.[10] He also, in 1995, began to sell this pink underwear as a souvenir item through an outfit called the Posse Foundation, with funding from the sheriff’s office; there were allegations that the money thus received was being mishandled.[11] Unfortunately for poor Joe, use of the pink underwear in prisons is currently under scrutiny[12] by an appellate court.[13]

In 2007, Arpaio set up a radio station, KJOE, in the basement of one of the jails, broadcasting operas, patriotic songs, and educational programming.[14] This makes one wonder precisely what his position is on certain other taxpayer-funded radio stations with similar programming.

Sexual assault cases? What sexual assault cases?

It looks like while Big Joe was busy rounding up his posse of Mexican hunters and pot busters, he may have chanced to overlook over 400 sexual assault cases, most of which involve children.[15] Either these cases slipped under his nose while he was busy being a hero-cum-underwear vendor to all right-thinking people in Arizona, or he deliberately turned a blind eye since many of the victims’ parents were in the country illegally. These revelations have provoked many calls for him to resign.[16]

Birtherism

Sheriff Arpaio has recently taken up the cause of birtherism, arguing that President Obama’s birth certificate and selective service (draft) registration card are fakes. His volunteer “Cold Case Posse,” in conjunction with Jerome Corsi, conducted an “investigation” and then held an excruciatingly long press conference to announce their findings: the documents are fraudulent and Obama was probably born abroad and is not eligible to be President.[17] Their evidence was heavily dependent on the idea that the birth certificate’s electronic form, as released online by the White House, differed from a “control” sample certificate that they scanned themselves.

Interestingly, the day before Sheriff Joe’s “Cold Case Posse” released their report, the lead investigator, Michael Zullo, published a book on the topic, co-authored by a helpful Jerome Corsi.[18][19]

Not content with hosting one excruciating dog and pony show on the subject, Arpaio and Zullo took a second stab at the same comedy-ready material in July 2012, adding some extra spice to the mix by insisting that sooper sekrit codes were hidden in the birth certificate and that some very old person (apparently not present at the press conference; go figure) could figure out what those secret codes actually meant. Not content to leave it at that, Arpaio and Zullo also asserted that black helicopters Hawaiian police were following Zullo around in an effort to harass him during his “investigation”.[20] Mind you, none of this has anything to do with the civil lawsuit being filed against Arpaio at all.[21]

School protection posse

In early 2013, after the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School[22] Sheriff Arpaio announced he would form an all volunteer posse of “well trained”, gun-carrying patrols to drive around town and protect the schools. Not one school has ever requested such services, of course, and many schools and parents are outraged at the use of volunteer, virtually untrained men protecting the schools. In early February 2013, it was discovered that his posse included at least one convicted child molester, and several men convicted of domestic abuse. The training for the team was given by police tactician and ammunitions expert actor Steven Seagal who defended himself by saying “I’ve put hundreds of thousands if not millions of hours into my weapons training”[23]. For the record, 100,000 hours is 11.41 years of 24-hour days.

Ersatz cultural criticism

Arpaio also challenged George Lopez to “meet (him) face to face” after he took selective outrage offense to some of Lopez’ material concerning Arpaio that aired on HBO in July 2012. He was also supposedly shocked by the naughty, naughty words that Lopez used during the monologue as well even before the fact became apparent that Lopez was talking about Arpaio at the time. Yeah. Sure.[24]

Which parts of that disgraceful record do you care to defend?

[BrainGlutton]

@DummyGladHands

How terribly depressing that you feel that way; so what you’re saying is that we Zonis can only enjoy Arizona until OMIGODTHERE’SMEXICANSEVERYWHERE!!! AND IT’S DOOMSDAY!!

jeez

Perhaps you can enjoy Arizona after that point, but the likes of magellan01 – and Arpaio – cannot.

[DummyGladHands]

And yourself.

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@clairobscur

You’re talking about the guy who uses his position as head of the police to harass people who dare criticizing him, and who has detained people die in suspicious circumstances in his jails, right?

And who has spent countless resources getting to the “bottom” of Obama’s birth certificate, while hundreds of sex-crimes went uninvestigated. Let alone how much he has cost the county in wrongful death suits paid to all those people who “accidentally” die while in his custody.

[GIGObuster]

@clairobscur

You’re talking about the guy who uses his position as head of the police to harass people who dare criticizing him, and who has detained people die in suspicious circumstances in his jails, right?

I guess it’s all fine and dandy as long as people waiting for a trial to determine whether they’re guilty of something or not are dressed in funny clothes, eat the most crappy food possible, and are housed as badly as possible for the amusement of the general population (the part that isn’t too darkly coloured and didn’t criticize him, I mean)…

magellan01 also ignores how often Arpaio loses in the courts thanks to his abuses of power, costing the taxpayers of Maricopa millions of dollars already, The voters of Maricopa that supported him are in the dictionary next to the definition of “cut off your nose to spite your face”.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@magellan01

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

Do you support his investigations into political opponents?

[Kimstu]

@magellan01

Come next Wednesday, the issue of the Senate will dwarf every minor issue, like this one.

Why do you think so? We’ve had elections before, and the results didn’t change the satisfaction felt when the courts do their job to restrain or rebuke overreaching politicians.

If even someone like you can’t come up with any more substantial objection to this well-deserved judicial criticism of Arpaio than “Oh yeah? Well, our side is gonna beat yours in next week’s [del]game[/del] elections, so I guess you won’t be feeling so good then!”, that just illustrates how egregiously and thoroughly Arpaio has abused his position.

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@magellan01

I am not a birther, but I do support him. Strongly. Even before Obama came on to the scene I was a fan. He does a great job as sheriff. Really.

Seriously, what metrics do you use to support that he is doing a “great job”? Honest things like crime rates, percent conviction rates of arrestees? How well his officers direct traffic at Cardinals games?

Or maybe how well he harasses “Mexicans”? Because even though he tries, he doesn’t even do a good job of that. Oh, he wants to. he’s just as incompetent at that as everything else. Like outing Obama as a Kenyan. How’s that going, Joe?

[YogSothoth]

No surprise there, one racist supports another racist

[Inigo_Montoya]

@DummyGladHands

And yourself.

Give it up, you misread BG’s message. It happens. **Mags **is a much easier & appropriate target anyway.

[BrainGlutton]

@DummyGladHands

And yourself.

[shrug] I could bear it.