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Conservatives Shouldn’t Look Up to Joe Arpaio
Joe Arpaio was my sheriff for 23 years. His predecessors were ineffective and mildly corrupt, so Maricopa County voters embraced the tough-talking, no-nonsense lawman. And he started out pretty well. Sure, there was the shticky pink underwear, tent city, and constant media stunts, but it finally seemed like a dedicated sheriff was at the helm.
But power tends to corrupt. Arpaio started focusing more on media appearances than law enforcement. Scandals started popping up. The headline-grabbing antics got more bizarre. And a man who seemed to many like a conservative stalwart devolved into anything but. I wrote about the ex-sheriff for Monday’s USA Today. Here’s a preview:
During one three-year period, his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office didn’t properly investigate more than 400 alleged sex crimes, many of them involving child molestation.
In all, the department improperly cleared as many as 75% of cases without arrest or investigation, a fact outlined in a scathing report by the conservative Goldwater Institute.
When local journalists delved into Arpaio’s dealings, he had them arrested, a move that ultimately cost taxpayers $3.75 million. We paid $3.5 million more after the sheriff wrongfully arrested a county supervisor who had been critical of him.
About the same time, Arpaio sought charges against another supervisor, a county board member, the school superintendent, four Superior Court Judges and several county employees. All of these were cleared by the courts and also resulted in hefty taxpayer-funded settlements for his targets.
As a U.S. District Court judge presided over a civil contempt hearing, Arpaio’s attorney hired a private detective to investigate the judge’s wife.
On the pretext of going after an alleged cache of illegal weapons, a Maricopa SWAT team burned down an upscale suburban Phoenix home and killed the occupants’ 10-month-old dog. There were no illegal arms, so they arrested the resident on traffic citations.
Arpaio’s staff concocted an imaginary assassination attempt on the sheriff, presumably for news coverage. Taxpayers had to pay the framed defendant $1.1 million after he was found not guilty.
The sheriff’s department misspent $100 million on the sheriff’s pet projects, and wasted up to $200 million in taxpayer money on lawsuits. Yet he still found money to send a deputy to Hawaii to look for President Obama’s birth certificate.
I would have included more examples, but for the strict word limit. Still, this should give conservatives around the nation a better idea of Arpaio’s actual record, instead of the character they see in the media.
I was similarly harsh on the local NBC affiliate’s public affairs show this morning:
The purpose of my article and interview was to correct the record on who Arpaio actually is. He was an authoritarian who routinely used his office to punish legal citizens, repeatedly violate constitutional restrictions, and mock the very concept of limited government.
Perhaps even worse, illegal immigration and the crime rate in Maricopa County remained commensurate with all the surrounding counties. His image as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” did nothing to better protect our borders or stop criminals from plying their trade.
Sheriff Joe was never a conservative; he just played one on TV.
Published in Law, Policing, Politics
It’s self parody. The Trump supporters here don’t actually write like that. We’re just accused of it.
Moderator Note:
Escalating.Thanks for your thoughtful comment. My response was relevant to the comment I referred to.
Wishing that it was not just because you don’t have an adequate response to me doesn’t make it so.Moderator Note:
unnecessaryRead the whole comment[redacted]. That’s not what he said.
Well, the NRA singled him out for praise on a number of occasions over the years, I think (could be wrong here, would have to go back and look it up) even calling him “America’s Sheriff” at one point. Sean Hannity has lauded him before as well. In the latter days of the Bush admin, and the early days of the Obama admin it was not uncommon to find articles praising him for his tough treatment of convicts and his outspoken views on immigration.
Point is, many have looked up to him and publicly praised him in the past.
Moderator Note:
Not helping your case by putting in your own "redacted".I did, [redacted].
Y’all should read the USA today column, as it has links to all the scandals Joe was involved in. My favorite is the faked assassination attempt. But really, let he who hasn’t accused an innocent man of trying to assassinate him, cast the first stone.
On a personal note, I loathe Joe Arpaio for sending me fundraising emails for the better part of a decade. I’m an Austin, TX conservative whose name got on Arpaio’s list after being a state GOP convention delegate in 2008. I’m not interested in sending money to an Arizona sheriff who brags about how “tough” his prison is while misappropriating $100mil in prison money.
So you’re just fabricating opinions and assigning them to others. Terrible behavior.
So he spent county money for bomb parts and had his employees entrap/frame a dude. Picky, picky, picky.
Moderator Note:
Needless Needling.No, actually I’m not. I’m sorry about your comprehension challenges. I’ll leave you to continue obsessing over my fully relevant response. But, you’ll do it on your own from here….
I both don’t like him, and I think the pardon was correct.
I no longer believe in good guys and bad guys in politics. There are only enemies of freedom. I am forced to sign up with lessor ones to fight the greater.
What, in your opinion, has Joe Arpaio done to promote freedom?
I never had a good impression of him (though almost all of what I learned about him was through the hate media) and don’t have a long list myself, but he has resisted the federalization of everything and that is worth something.
Fighting against the right people. Stuck with tools ya got.
Stalin fought against the right people, did he promote freedom?
It’s not necessarily about Arpaio and whether he promoted freedom, it’s also about whether, in our movement, we have to occasionally put up with folks like Arpaio as part of also protecting far better people.
He did. He also undermined it. The effects were uneven.
We stuck with him through WWII because we perceived Hitler to be worse.
In what capacity did “putting up with” Arpaio (a turn of phrase I disagree with, many conservatives actively promoted him) protect far better people?
Nope. Helped make is possible elsewhere. Life’s a booger.
That’s putting it rather mildly.
In retrospect that was a pretty bad presumption.
In what way has Joe Arpaio helped make freedom possible elsewhere?
For one he was a lightning rod drawing fire away from less self-aggrandizing law enforcement professionals in the border states.
As for the turn of phrase – many conservatives did put up with him through clenched teeth, just as others championed him. Just because some championed him, and did so loudly, does not negate the statement. Many shades of gray here.
I am not sure where you are going. Tell you what, outline your thesis here, and I will respond in one post. Beats back and forth with questions. I think I might have already answered your main point, but you don’t agree with me.
Hindsight is 20/20. What of it? Should we have sided with Hitler against Stalin? Or declared war on both? Or neither?
I’m not really trying to go anywhere. I’m trying to figure out how you got to where you are.
Fair enough, often it seems more people are defending him when they should be treating him with scorn – that’s what confuses me. It seems culture, visceral and emotional – he poked the right people in the eye therefore he’s worthy of defending to the hilt. I never liked that formulation.
I tend to agree with General Patton on this one.
Fight with the tools that move the ball down the field.
Really nothing more than that. He helped move the ball in the direction I want. Considering the political prosecution, I’d say he made some headway.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows.