Arpaio protesters: 'We want him behind bars'
SourceArpaio protesters: 'We want him behind bars'
by John Genovese - Jan. 13, 2012 06:51 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
About 100 protesters gathered Friday afternoon in downtown Phoenix to demand the arrest of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
"We want him behind bars," said Carlos Garcia, an organizer for Puente, the human rights group that planned the event.
"The Department of Justice said Arpaio is responsible for the worst case of racial profiling they have ever seen," Garcia said. "You can't make a statement like that and not do anything."
Protesters of all ages gathered about 3 p.m. in Cesar Chavez Plaza, near Washington Street and 1st Avenue, just hours after law enforcement officers mourned the death of Maricopa County sheriff's Deputy William Coleman at a Phoenix church.
Coleman was killed during a shootout last weekend in Anthem.
"This event was planned a month in advance," Garcia said. "We obviously feel for (Deputy Coleman) and his family."
Organizers called for the federal government to end Arpaio's immigration enforcement powers, recommend criminal charges against the Sheriff, and shut down the controversial Tent City Jail.
Sheriff Arpaio responded to the event, calling the protestors "disgraceful" in a message posted to his Twitter account.
"Disgraceful critics protest against me when only hour ago we buried our slain deputy despicable action by pro illegal immigrant group," the tweet read.
Marco Sanchez, a 19-year-old in attendance, believes the Sheriff's Office is deliberately targeting the working-class Latino community.
"I've had many family members leave Arizona in fear since (Senate Bill 1070) was enacted," Sanchez said, referring to the state's controversial immigration law.
"I myself am not a citizen," he said. "But I'm not afraid - that's why I'm here."
The crowd marched a city block across from Cesar Chavez plaza, chanting "Arrest Arpaio, not the people." Further, they called the sheriff "guilty of murdering the people of Phoenix," referring to 44-year-old Ernest "Marty" Atencio, who died last month days after Phoenix police officers struggled with him in a booking area at 4th Avenue Jail and Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies joined in. A hospital report said Atencio was stunned with a Taser six times and then left naked in a safe cell.
According to a news release, organizers will continue to hold bi-monthly rallies until the sheriff is "brought to justice."
Got brown skin? You must be a criminal according to Sheriff Joe
I guess Sheriff Joe does think that having brown skin means you are a criminal.Arpaio appealing decision in racial profiling case
by Jacques Billeaud - Jan. 16, 2012 02:00 PM
Associated Press
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is appealing a federal judge's ruling that prohibited his deputies from detaining people under Arizona's immigrant smuggling law based solely on the suspicion that they're in the country illegally.
Arpaio's lawyers told U.S. District Judge Murray Snow in a filing Friday that they will appeal the judge's Dec. 23 ruling in a lawsuit alleging that the sheriff's deputies racially profiled Latinos in immigration patrols.
Lawyers pushing the lawsuit on behalf of five Latino clients also won class-action status that lets other Hispanics join the case if they have been detained and questioned by Arpaio's deputies as either a driver or passenger in a vehicle since January 2007.
The judge's decision further limits Arpaio's immigration authority after the federal government accused the sheriff's office of a wide range of civil rights violations and cut off the sheriff's federal immigration powers last month.
Tim Casey, an attorney representing the sheriff's office, said the judge's ruling raises questions about what sort of reasonable suspicion Arpaio's deputies need to enforce Arizona's smuggling law. "Do you need it (reasonable suspicion) on one element or on all elements of the law?" Casey said. "We need some clarification."
The sheriff's lawyers haven't yet filed their appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but they told the lower court judge that they intend to appeal the judge's class-action status ruling and his decision to limit the way Arpaio's deputies enforce the smuggling law.
"I do think we are on very solid ground moving forward, and we are confident that we will prevail on the appeal," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, whose lawyers have pushed the case in court.
Without yet ruling on the ultimate question of racial profiling, the judge had ruled that the case's evidence could lead a judge or jury to conclude that Arpaio's office racially profiles Latinos.
The lawsuit alleges Maricopa County deputies made some traffic stops solely because Hispanics were driving. The plaintiffs say authorities had no probable cause to pull them over and made the stops only to question their immigration status.
Arpaio has denied the racial profiling allegations, saying people pulled over in patrols were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes and that it was only afterward that deputies found many were illegal immigrants.
No trial date has been set in the lawsuit.
2 Asian-American groups call on Arpaio to resign
Source2 Asian-American groups call on Arpaio to resign
by William Hermann - Jan. 17, 2012 09:45 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Two Asian-American groups asked Sheriff Joe Arpaio to resign at a Tuesday event hosted by Citizens for a Better Arizona President Randy Parraz and by Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox.
Parraz and Wilcox long have sought Arpaio's ouster. Last month, Valley Black leaders also implored the sheriff to step down.
Asian Chamber of Commerce Director Madeline Ong-Sakata said Tuesday, "We are joining with our African-American and Hispanic-American brothers and sisters to ask Sheriff Joe Arpaio to resign."
"His obsession with Hispanics, legal or illegal," makes Arpaio "ineffective," she said.
Asian Pacific Community in Action President Doug Hirano said many of his members considered "racial profiling by the Sheriff's Office reminiscent of policies of countries Asian-Americans have fled."
Arpaio responded that Parraz and Wilcox "put this all together" and that "the majority support me in this fight against illegal immigration."
Feds cool to Arpaio's demands
If Sheriff Joe doesn't shape up and stop committing crimes Uncle Sam will give him a slap on the wrist??? Remember Emperor Obama wants to get elected in 2012 and Sheriff Joe is probably the most popular politician in Arizona so it's unlikely that Emperor Obama will punish Sheriff Joe for his crimes, other then give him a really, really gentle slap on the wrist.Feds cool to Arpaio's demands over discrimination investigation
by JJ Hensley - Jan. 17, 2012 10:15 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's response to the U.S. Justice Department's civil-rights probe was riddled with errors and inaccuracies, but the time to debate the motivations behind the letter-writing campaign between the Justice Department and the Sheriff's Office has passed, federal officials say.
If Arpaio's representatives do not agree to set up meetings with federal officials by mid-March to address the discrimination Justice Department investigators found in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, the Justice Department will assume that Arpaio does not want to cooperate with investigators, leaving a legal battle as the only option.
The Justice Department's letter to Arpaio's attorneys was the most recent written exchange between the two agencies in the wake of a 22-page notice of findings federal officials released last month. It accused the Sheriff's Office of widespread discrimination.
The letter delivered to Arpaio's attorneys late Tuesday afternoon was also among the most vigorous exchanges from federal officials.
An attorney for Arpaio's office released a statement late Tuesday saying the agency disagreed with some of the Justice Department's interpretations but remained encouraged by the possibility of cooperating with federal officials to avoid being sued.
The Justice Department last month accused the Sheriff's Office of rampant discrimination against Latinos in its police and jail operations, prompting an immediate suspension of Arpaio's participation in federal immigration enforcement.
Arpaio responded to the Justice Department nearly three weeks later with a letter stating his intention to cooperate but demanding more than 100 pieces of information that could provide detailed examples of the institutional discrimination the Sheriff's Office is accused of.
Arpaio's response included a request for federal officials to disclose the identities of residents who were the victims of discrimination by the Sheriff's Office and of deputies who made critical comments about Arpaio's agency.
Arpaio and other sheriff's officials have also made numerous statements about their desire to cooperate with federal investigators, yet strongly questioning the findings and motivations of the years-long civil-rights probe.
The inherent discrepancy between those two stances -- cooperation and confrontation -- was noted in the Tuesday letter from Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez.
"Dismissive, inaccurate statements accompanied by overly broad document requests are inconsistent with your professed interest in negotiating, and in working with us to craft sustainable solutions to MCSO's significant civil-rights and public-safety problems," Perez wrote.
Also, the claims that the Sheriff's Office discriminates against minority residents and retaliates against opponents should be familiar to Arpaio's lawyers, Perez wrote.
The claims of discrimination have been steady in the past five years, since Arpaio began to emphasize immigration enforcement.
Some ensuing litigation has been decided in favor of the plaintiffs, and other claims continue as active cases in court, Perez wrote, including a racial-profiling case that a federal judge last month opened to include a broad class of Latino residents stopped by sheriff's deputies since 2007.
"MCSO has ample notice of the nature and extent of the problems," Perez wrote. "It is time to fix the problems, rather than debate the existence of problems."
Arpaio's attorney said the Sheriff's Office looks forward to meeting with Perez and his staff, but it still wants answers to questions posed about the investigation.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has raised more money than ever
by JJ Hensley and Matt Dempsey - Jan. 28, 2012 09:21 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
In the face of one of the most trying years the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has experienced -- with upheaval at the highest levels and a U.S. Justice Department probe accusing the agency of engaging in widespread discrimination -- Sheriff Joe Arpaio has raised more money than ever for his re-election campaign.
And the vast majority of those donors -- more than 80 percent -- live outside Arizona.
Arpaio's latest campaign-finance report, filed earlier this month, shows a local candidate whose fundraising prowess appears unrivaled, with more than $1.1 million coming in from donors in the past year and a total of nearly $6 million raised since 2009.
The report also shows a politician whose national profile has grown even as his office has come under increased scrutiny for a variety of reasons: botched sex-crime investigations, illegal-immigration enforcement, faulty financial management and an ongoing federal criminal investigation into allegations that members of the Sheriff's Office abuse the agency's power for political reasons.
With that as the backdrop, Arpaio in the past year made 16 trips around the country for speaking engagements and to offer support to other candidates. He also made 40 appearances as featured guest on national news programs.
His trips around the country don't necessarily translate to financial support, Arpaio insists, but his campaign manager said the sheriff made a conscious decision after the 2008 election to solicit more contributions from around the country. During the entire 2008 campaign, Arpaio raised slightly more than $600,000.
California had the most Arpaio donors in the last year, followed by Arizona, Texas, Florida and Washington. Data from Arpaio's campaign show that since 2009, Arizona has produced the highest percentage of donors, with more than 24 percent, followed by California.
"Whether they've given once or 10 times, Arizona is still the Number 1 source, in terms of the barometer of support. I anticipate that some of Arpaio's detractors or opponents would say, 'Eighty percent of your money came from out of state,' " said Chad Willems, Arpaio's campaign manager. "But we still think our numbers stack up with anyone's local support."
Arpaio's two opponents -- Scottsdale police Lt. Mike Stauffer and former Phoenix police Sgt. Paul Penzone -- have until Tuesday to file their financial reports. Neither candidate could provide information on fundraising efforts last week.
Both challengers have made issues of the problems in the Sheriff's Office, but to some of Arpaio's contributors, the Justice Department report in particular has served as validation that they support the right candidate.
The majority of Arpaio's donors from the most recent campaign filing, which covers a period from Nov. 23, 2010, through Dec. 31, 2011, came from California, which produced more than 2,700 donations for the sheriff, compared with about 2,500 from Arizona.
Many of the donors contributed in $25 to $30 increments and are retirees like Kenneth Miller, an 87-year-old San Luis Obispo, Calif., resident who donated $150 to the campaign in this cycle, including a $35 check in November.
"I don't have much to give, but I would support him to the end of time, really," said Miller, who first got to know Arpaio as an Arizona snowbird.
The Justice Department report issued last month contains numerous allegations of discrimination by sheriff's deputies and officers against Latinos. It alleges that some Latino citizens were treated like illegal immigrants and jailed.
The probe began in 2008 under former President George W. Bush. Arpaio and his administrators have promised to cooperate with federal agents, even as they decry the report as being the politically motivated work of President Barack Obama's administration.
That message resonates with many Arpaio supporters, including Miller.
"As far as that report goes, in my opinion, that's just somebody else's opinion," Miller said. "I think the Justice Department is wrong. I think the way they're treating Arizona is unconscionable."
Willems said the Arpaio campaign is hoping to capitalize on that sentiment among the sheriff's supporters.
"You've got the most powerful government in the world coming down on a local county sheriff and for what? For enforcing the law," Willems said. "Our take on it is that they're using this as a political tool to either intimidate the sheriff from doing his job or curry favor with the Hispanic community."
Mike O'Neil, a public-opinion pollster who has tracked Arpaio's popularity for more than 20 years, said the response from the sheriff's supporters was not surprising.
The Justice Department investigation validates the opinions of Arpaio's harshest critics and his most fervent advocates, O'Neil said, but if the investigation remains a topic of discussion, it might begin to sway some of the middle-of-the-road voters.
The more politically dangerous issue for Arpaio could arise from the botched sex-crime investigations, O'Neil said.
"That hits people where they live," he said. "It causes me to wonder whether or not he might take a really serious hit from this."
The most recent polling data, based on a telephone survey of 700 residents conducted last April, shows Arpaio's support has steadily eroded over the past four years. In 2007, 74 percent of respondents to a Behavior Research Center poll rated Arpaio fair to excellent. Last year, that level of support dropped to 60 percent.
But Arpaio insists the dominance of national donors so far is not a reflection on his popularity in Arizona.
"When you do the campaign and fund-raise, if you go to New York, for example, you expect to get New York people, if you go to Scottsdale, you get money from Scottsdale. It doesn't mean that I can't get money here," Arpaio said. "I've still got over $1 million (from Arizona), if I didn't get anything from anyone else, that'd still be enough."
Arpaio is country's 'worst sheriff,' group says
Feb. 2, 2012 01:04 PM
Associated Press
A prominent national advocacy group for Latinos has joined a call for the self-proclaimed "America's toughest sheriff" to resign from office amid a wide range of civil rights violations, botched sex crimes investigations and other alleged abuses.
In a news conference Thursday in Phoenix, National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia called Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio "America's worst sheriff" and says it's time for him to resign.
Her group long has been critical of Arpaio but called for his resignation for the first time Thursday because Murguia says not enough has been done locally to remove him from office.
The five-term sheriff has raised more than $1.1 million in the past year for his re-election campaign.
His office says it doesn't discriminate against Latinos.
Arpaio denies involvement in office's corruption
by JJ Hensley - Feb. 14, 2012 01:53 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Sheriff Joe Arpaio can recall bits and pieces about the political action committee that originated in his office and led to a criminal investigation involving a top aide, but the five-term sheriff still sought to distance himself from the group that collected money for a controversial ad targeting Arpaio's opponent in the 2008 election.
Arpaio testified Tuesday about his knowledge of the Sheriff's Command Association in a hearing set as part of former Maricopa County Sheriff's Capt. Joel Fox's efforts to get his job back.
Fox was fired in October, in part for lying to state Attorney General's investigators conducting a probe of the Sheriff's Command Association, or SCA.
SCA raised more than $100,000 during the 2008 election, and the money was funneled through the Arizona Republican Party to an independent expenditure committee operated by Republican Party leaders. The committee later spent the money on an ad targeting Dan Saban, Arpaio's 2008 opponent.
Fox told Attorney General's investigators that he alone was responsible for how SCA collected and spent money, but he later changed that story, prompting sheriff's investigators to fire the 23-year employee for being untruthful.
Arpaio spent a little more than an hour on the witness stand Tuesday, saying he recalled SCA's formation in his office as a way for sheriff's commanders to combat some of the negative press the Sheriff's Office receives.
Arpaio also said he knew Fox and another deposed commander, Larry Black, were working with trial video from Saban's defamation lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office, though Arpaio said he thought the two commanders were preparing for a legal action. And the sheriff said former Chief Deputy David Hendershott told him that an "exciting" ad was going to air that would target Saban.
The controversial ad included clips from Saban's defamation trial and was funded with money SCA collected from a handful of Arpaio's top commanders and affluent supporters.
But Arpaio testified that he never connected the dots between SCA, the Saban trial footage and the controversial ad.
"I don't recall any details," Arpaio said. "I had nothing to do with the SCA or the use of the money. I was not involved in any of the intricacies of that situation."
Fox, Hendershott and Black were all fired following an internal investigation conducted by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu at Arpaio's request. Hendershott and Black were "at-will" employees of the Sheriff's Office and could be fired at any time and for any reason.
In August, Hendershott, Black and Fox jointly filed a $22 million notice of claim against the county because they believe county and state officials, Babeu and his investigators schemed to destroy their careers.
Fox was the only employee with appeal rights, which he used to challenge his termination and request the hearings that have taken place over the last two weeks.
Fox's attorney, Ed Moriarity, declined to question Arpaio on Tuesday in relation to the SCA matter, but indicated the sheriff could be called back to testify when the hearing tackles other aspects of Fox's termination.
Posted: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 3:29 pm
Tribune
An advertisement that calls for the resignation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will air during Wednesday's Republican presidential primary debate in Mesa. The ad is funded by Citizens for a Better Arizona, which has been critical of Arpaio and worked on the 2011 recall of former Senate President Russell Pearce.
Citizens for a Better Arizona said Tuesday this is the first ad of its kind. The organization has been scrutinizing Arpaio since December, when a U.S. Department of Justice civil-rights investigation found MCSO policies led to discrimination against Latinos in its jail and police operations.
The organization said more than 60 elected officials have called for Arpaio's resignation in the past two months, including members of Congress, state legislators, supervisors, city council members and others.
If you ask me saying that a crooked cop deserves to die is certainly NOT threatening the life of the cop.
FBI raids home of Oregon blogger suspected of Arpaio threat
by Liz Kotalik - Feb. 21, 2012 08:27 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
Agents from the FBI in Portland, Ore., conducted a raid Monday on the home of a blogger suspected of threatening Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's life last month, FBI officials and Arpaio announced at a news conference Tuesday.
Evidence was seized from the home that investigators think could potentially link Clifton Dawayne Brooks, 35, to a blog that praised cop killers, according to FBI Special Agent James Turgal.
The Google blog
TargetingCops.com
posted a picture of Arpaio with the words "Wanted: Dead or Alive" on it.
"Dead" was underlined, and "Alive" was crossed out.
The blog proceeded to say: "You're next Joe, watch your back, (expletive)."
The blog has since been taken down.
Maricopa County sheriff's detectives had recently served search warrants on Google's headquarters in California, where they determined the IP address associated with the website, according to the Sheriff's officials.
This led the FBI and the Sheriff's Office to Brooks' home in Portland.
Turgal would not give specific details during the press conference about the evidence found in Brooks' home, but Arpaio said the man had "strange items" pinned to his walls.
Agents had to evacuate the home after finding an object that looked like an explosive device, which was later identified as a "prop," according to Sheriff's officials.
Brooks was present at the time of the raid, but no arrests were made. Turgal said agents are waiting until all evidence is examined before deciding whether to take anyone into custody.
Officials believe that as many as eight people could be living in the home with Brooks.
Brooks had a prior federal conviction in 2001 for making a bomb threat in interstate or foreign commerce, officials said.
"We take all of these threats very seriously, regardless of who or what agency it was towards," Turgal said.
Arpaio called the website deeply offensive to law enforcement, specifically officers who died in the line of duty.
Arpaio said he was especially angry about a post on the blog that celebrated the death of Sheriff's Deputy William Coleman.
Coleman was killed in a shootout with Drew Ryan Maras, 30, in Anthem earlier this year. Maras was also killed.
Arpaio said he was sicked by the post on the blog, which included a picture of Coleman with the word "LOL" - meaning "laughing out loud" - over it. The blog's author called Maras a "hero."
The sheriff said today that these posts were sickening.
"In a way, I'm happy that he threatened me," Arpaio said. "Now we have the authority to investigate."
Turgal said the investigation was ongoing.
My new second favorite Arpaio quote
Speaking to Maricopa County Republicans recently, Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
who will hold a press conference in order to announce that he is
holding a press conference, actually said, “I don't have press
conferences just to get my name on television. When I have a press conference, I talk about something."
Anyone who has lived in the county for more than five minutes
knows that when the sheriff alerts the press to “talk about something”
he means – ALWAYS – himself.
So this is my new second-favorite Arpaio quote.
(A C-Span video of his speech can be seen as part of a clip
here.)
However, the still-undisputed-number-one Arpaio quote goes back to a time several years ago when I was speaking with the sheriff about an investigation he was conducting into one of the Maricopa County Supervisors and how some people (me included) had described it as a vendetta.
Arpaio (who now is dealing with the Justice Department over problems in his department) told me, "I'm the only guy who's not paranoid — and everybody's going after me."
aaa_sheriff_joe_arpaio.html#sheriffjoeattackad_12_02_22
Joe Arpaio Slammed in New Attack Ad by Citizens for a Better Arizona
By Stephen Lemons Wed., Feb. 22 2012 at 10:27 PM
Cost $6,000 and worth every penny...
For years, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has successfully peddled the myth that he's "America's toughest sheriff," but his record of wasting taxpayer money, pursuing his political enemies and, worst of all, bungling the investigations of sex crimes on a massive, unprecedented scale, seems to finally be ripping the facade away from this phony lawman.
That's why I give big kudos to Citizens for a Better Arizona -- the group that put ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce out to pasture -- for releasing this slick new anti-Arpaio attack ad today.
Reportedly, it was aired on Cox cable during the GOP presidential debate and cost around $6K.
I'd say CBA got its money's worth.
You know, you could fill a library or three with all the articles New Times has published over the years about Arpaio's corrupt regime, one of the best of late being my colleague Ray Stern's recent cover story on the sheriff's sex crimes debacle.
Stern writes, "Victims of sex crimes -- mostly children -- in [El Mirage] and throughout the county still are paying for Arpaio's misguided policies. Rapists and child molesters got away with their crimes."
Disturbing stuff. Thing is, voters need to be pummeled with this information over and over again, so that they cannot avoid the message that a vote for Arpaio is a vote for incompetence, abuse of power, and letting sex criminals go free.
CBA's ad is yet another way of doing that. Arpaio, it seems, is in for a long, arduous election year. By the time its over, he may wish he'd resigned.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has raised more money than ever
No wonder it is easy for jerks like Hitler to get into power. Sheriff Joe is probably the worse Sheriff in the history of Arizona, but he rolls in the money.
Arpaio is country's 'worst sheriff,' group says
Source
Sheriff Joe - I know nothing!!!!!
Sheriff Joe - I know nothing!!!!!
Cops never lie.
OK, testilying isn't the same as perjury.
Well at least in a corrupt cops mind, testilying isn't perjury!
Anti-Arpaio ad to air during debate
Source
Don't criticize crooked cops or you will go to jail
F*ck the First Amendment, if you criticize cops you're going to jail????
It's all about ME, ME, ME - Sheriff Joe
Source
Sheriff Joe Arpaio Slammed in attack ad
Source
19 years of Sheriff Joe's Tent City Gulag!!!
SourceArpaio to mark 'Tent City' anniversary
by D.S. Woodfill - Feb. 26, 2012 06:03 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will mark the 19-year anniversary of the makeshift jail known as "Tent City" by erecting a large sign outside the facility boasting the number of inmates "served."
Sheriff's officials said the concept was borrowed from "the world's most renowned fast food chain," apparently alluding to McDonald's, which once posted the number of hamburgers served.
Tent City opened in 1993 in southwest Phoenix using surplus Korean War tents. Since then, the jail has housed more than 427,000 inmates, according to the Sheriff's Office.
In a news release, Arpaio said Tent City remains one of his "proudest innovations" and is a "model program throughout the entire nation as an economical, safe and successful way to house a growing inmate population."
The sheriff will unveil the new sign to the public Monday.
We have examined this image carefully and it's an obvious fake - Arpaio lawman extraordinaire
![We have examined this image carefully and it's an obvious fake - [Sheriff Joe] Arpaio lawman extraordinaire](0_____photos/sheriff_joe_is_a_fake.jpg)
Fake Sheriff Joe announces that Obama's birth certificate is a fake too!
Fake Sheriff Joe Arpaio announces that Obama's birth certificate is also a fake!OK, Sheriff Joe is just trying to get some publicity to offset the heat of the FBI investigations.
Source Arpaio unveils results of Obama birth certificate investigation
by Crystal Cruz and Associated Press
Posted on March 1, 2012 at 3:56 PM
PHOENIX (AP) -- Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has unveiled preliminary results of an investigation, conducted by members of his volunteer cold-case posse, into the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate.
“Based on all the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” said Arpaio.
Arpaio, a Republican, is making bold accusations about Democratic president Barack Obama's birth certificate.
He also said the Selective Service card completed by Obama in 1980 in Hawaii also was most likely a forgery.
“Investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House,” said Arpaio.
Even though the White House released Obama's birth certificate online last year, a group of Arizona Tea Party members asked Arpaio to investigate the document shortly after.
The sheriff launched his volunteer cold case posse to start digging.
Six months later the results are in.
“The document has failed every test we put it through,” said volunteer lead investigator Michael Zullo.
Zullo said the date and time stamp on the birth certificate appear imported and he suspects the president's birth certificate is forged.
Outside the sheriff’s office Arpaio supporters and opponents squared off.
“I think sheriff Arpaio is looking for headlines, he is trying to divert attention away from problems he has caused in this county,” said Daniel Martinez with the group Citizens For A Better Arizona.
Martinez said Arizona doesn't need a sheriff meddling in Obama's affairs.
Instead Martinez wants Arpaio to focus on the Department of Justice's investigation into his office.
“He has not investigated over 400 sex crimes against children,” said Martinez.
The sheriff said he wasn’t accusing Obama of forging his birth certificate.
The volunteer Cold Case Posse has made an ID of a person of interest into the suspected forgery.
Not everyone is buying what the sheriff is selling.
The Arizona Democratic Party responded by calling on its party to "Stop the ridiculous tea part, birther GOP nonsence" and make a donation to the party today.
The sheriff said no tax payer dollars were used during this investigation.
Obama's campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt offered a light-hearted dismissal of Arpaio's probe -- hetweeted what he referred to as a "live link" to the sheriff's news conference, but instead provided a link to a snippet of the old conspiracy-theory based TV series, "The X-Files.
Hawaii Department of Health: Frequently Asked Questions about Vital Records of President Barack Hussein Obama II
Maricopa County Sheriff's Department press release
VIDEOS RELEASED AS PART OF ARPAIO'S INVESTIGATION OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE:
Arpaio's cynical birther rebirth
Source
Arpaio's cynical birther rebirth
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s press conference Thursday did exactly what it was supposed to do: It diverted attention from his own troubles.
Wait.
You didn’t seriously fall for the claim that Arpaio’s intent was to announce some great discovery concerning President Barack Obama's birth certificate, did you?
Come on.
Have you not been paying attention for the past 20 years? This is Sheriff Joe. Pink underwear. Chain gangs. Green baloney sandwiches. The self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America whose department somehow managed to not investigate several hundred sexual abuse cases involving children.
Arpaio is a showman, part-P.T. Barnum and part-Pied Piper. Because he’s entertaining to watch and because we (in the media) are suckers, we’re happy to trail along behind him no matter what tune he plays.
Thursday was no different.
At the end of his press conference in which Arpaio said that his investigators believe that the electronic version of President Obama’s birth certificate was manufactured, the sheriff said he was not “accusing anyone of anything until we find out who may have committed these alleged crimes…”
He said that he now has to decide to whom he should turn over the information. Authorities in Hawaii? Congress?
The sheriff’s people worked with the assistance of WorldNetDaily, one of the chief conspiracy theory organizations in the country.
The investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate was instigated by Tea Party members from Surprise, a group of voters that Arpaio wants and needs as he fights the federal probe into his office during an election year. Perhaps using the “birthers” to stage a career rebirth for himself.
The sheriff declared Thursday, “This has nothing to do with politics.”
Really? Not even a teeny tiny bit? Like maybe that federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power? Or that U.S. Justice Department letter outlining allegations of racial profiling and other problems within the sheriff’s department?
One of Arpaio’s chief critics, Randy Parraz, Co-Founder & President Citizens for a Better Arizona, issued a statement about the sheriff’s press conference saying, “Unfortunately for Maricopa County, Sheriff Arpaio has chosen to be a TEA Party Sheriff . This behavior is consistent with Arpaio’s tactics of retaliating against his critics. The Department of Justice’s recent findings letter documents numerous incidents of racial profiling, discrimination in the jails and retaliation against critics of Sheriff Arpaio. Today’s release of Arpaio’s investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate exemplifies the extent to which Arpaio will use his office and resources to appease some of the most extreme residents in Maricopa County.”
If Arpaio’s investigators are correct the conspiracy into the president’s birth certificate could be one of the biggest frauds every perpetrated and involve federal and state officials at the highest levels, along with who knows how many government agencies, educational institutions and so on.
Others have looked at the some of the same “evidence” discussed by Arpaio’s investigators and dismissed it.
You get to decide whom you want to believe. I’m guessing that has more to do with your politics than with any evidence.
And no matter where you fall on the issue, in a year when Arpaio is under investigation and up for reelection, and Obama is up for reelection, and the sheriff’s office and the Obama administration have been in direct conflict, how can any of us say this is not political?
“I serve the four million people in this county,” Arpaio said. “When 250 people come up to me and say, ‘Sheriff, you’re the chief law enforcement officer, will you look into it?’ I’m not going throw it in the waste basket and forget it.”
Unless, maybe, it’s those hundreds of child sex crimes. Or is bringing that up also political?
Thursday’s dog and pony show wasn’t about a law enforcement investigation. It was theater. A performer requires an audience. And even though the folks who live in Arizona have seen the same show with the same showman again and again and again over the years, we keep watching.
I wonder how it would be if, just once, we didn’t?
What if Arpaio staged a press event and no one showed up?
Arpaio's Obama investigator selling book
Source
Arpaio's Obama investigator selling book
Mar. 3, 2012 03:31 PM
Associated Press
PHOENIX -- The lead investigator in an Arizona sheriff's investigation into President Obama's birth certificate is selling his report as a book.
Retired detective and volunteer Maricopa County Sheriff's Posse member Mike Zullo is listed as the co-author of "A Question of Eligibility," an e-book for sale through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
The book is a copy of the investigation findings presented to the press Thursday.
Zullo's co-author is Jerome Corsi, a well-known political conspiracy writer.
Phoenix television station KTVK reports (http://bit.ly/ykO9vU) Corsi denied using Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in the country, as a promotional tool to sell his books and theories. Corsi supplied much of the research for the Sheriff's Office investigation.
Arpaio said at a news conference Thursday that his volunteer investigator found probable cause that the president's birth certificate is fake. Obama's campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt offered a light-hearted dismissal of Arpaio's probe, tweeting a link to a snippet from the TV series "The X-Files."
Mike Zullo a MCSO investigator selling 'birther' investigation
SourceMCSO investigator selling 'birther' investigation online
by Jared Dillingham
Posted on March 2, 2012 at 11:03 PM
PHOENIX -- The lead investigator in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigation into President Obama's birth certificate is profiting from the case.
Mike Zullo, a retired detective and volunteer Maricopa County Sheriff Posse member, is listed as the co-author of "A Question of Eligibility," an e-book for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The book is a copy of the investigation findings presented to the press on Thursday.
Zullo's co-author is Jerome Corsi, a well-known political conspiracy writer who started the Swift-boat case against Sen. John Kerry. More recently, Corsi, who writes for World Net Daily, has spent the last few years driving the birther movement.
Corsi supplied much of the research for the MCSO investigation, which labeled the president's birth certificate "a fake."
Corsi and Zullo are selling the investigation online for $9.99, and Corsi said they are splitting the profits. In a phone interview Friday night, Corsi told 3TV neither Arpaio nor the MCSO will see profits from the sales.
Corsi denied using the MCSO as a promotional tool to sell his books and theories.
"It's what I do. I'm a writer," Corsi said, "My motive is to get the information to the American public [so] if they want to read it in a book, they've got one available."
Corsi said he informed Arpaio of his plans to sell the investigation's findings six months ago, at the start of the investigation.
"He approved," Corsi said, since neither he nor Zullo are paid members of the MCSO.
"Since he's a volunteer, Mike owns his work product and as such, he's permitted to utilize that work product for compensation," Corsi explained.
Still, the sale of the investigation is raising eyebrows and ethical questions from Arpaio critics.
"I'm shocked to learn about this book," said Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox.
Pink underwear is a punishment???
Source
New trial ordered in death of inmate forced to wear pink underwear
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
March 8, 2012
"America's toughest sheriff" is facing a new threat of punishment in the death of a mentally ill jail inmate forced to don pink underwear.
The jail dress code imposed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., so traumatized schizophrenic detainee Eric Vogel that it may have caused his death from heart failure, two coroner's officials concluded, and their testimony should have been presented to a jury that rejected a wrongful death claim in 2010, a divided panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
Vogel, a 36-year-old recluse who lived with his mother, was arrested by deputies on suspicion of burglary after he wandered out of his North Phoenix home in November 2001. After mental health screeners at the jail deemed him in need of psychiatric care, Vogel became hysterical when ordered to "dress out" and had to be held down and stripped naked by four deputies to force him into the pink garments. He was released a couple of days later.
Less than a month after his release, Vogel was riding in his mother's car when she had a minor accident, and a sheriff's deputy told him there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Vogel fled the scene, running four or five miles before dropping dead of a heart attack, according to court records.
His sister, Yvon Wagner, filed a lawsuit alleging constitutional violations in her brother's death. When the case went to court, the judge refused to allow her to testify at trial about Vogel's delusional belief that he had been raped during the dressing struggle. The court also refused to allow two medical examiners to offer their opinions that the humiliating pink underwear was "likely" a factor in the man's fatal attack of arrhythmia.
"Pink underwear sounds funny until you have a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks he's being prepared to be raped," said Joel Robbins, the Phoenix attorney representing Wagner in her quest to punish Arpaio, who has been dubbed by the media — and himself — as the toughest lawman in the country.
The 9th Circuit sent Wagner's case back for a new trial, but Robbins said he expected Arpaio and county authorities to petition for reconsideration by a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges.
"My experience with Maricopa is they squirm until they have to pay," Robbins said of Wagner's claim for unspecified damages.
The attorney for Arpaio, Eileen D. Gilbride, did not return phone calls.
The 9th Circuit opinion, written by Judge John T. Noonan, an appointee of President Reagan, said Arpaio's choice of pink for male inmates' undergarments "appears to be punishment without legal justification."
"Given the cultural context, it is a fair inference that the color is chosen to symbolize a loss of masculine identity and power, to stigmatize the male prisoners as feminine," wrote Noonan, who was joined by a visiting judge appointed by President Clinton.
Judge N. Randy Smith, named to the court byPresident George W. Bush, dissented, saying that Wagner's account of her brother's mental state was inadmissible hearsay.
Arpaio has been sued repeatedly over his treatment of jail inmates. He has reduced jail meals to two daily, served surplus food, reinstated chain gangs — including for women and juveniles — and relegated some detainees to a tent city where summer temperatures often exceed 120 degrees.
The Justice Department last year revoked the sheriff's authority to identify and detain illegal immigrants after finding that Maricopa County deputies were engaged in racial profiling.
A week ago, Arpaio announced at a Phoenix news conference that preliminary results of an investigation he ordered on the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate had yielded "probable cause to believe forgery and fraud occurred." Obama released the Hawaiian document to the public last year after "birthers" stirred up a national frenzy with claims that he was born in Africa and therefore ineligible to be president.
carol.williams@latimes.com
Brewer disagrees with Arpaio findings, believes Obama birth record real
Posted: Tuesday, March 6, 2012 4:10 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer wants Barack Obama out of the White House.
But she said Tuesday it’s not because she believes the findings last week by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that his birth certificate appears to be a fake.
“I have every reason to believe that his birth certificate is valid in the state of Hawaii,” the governor said.
Brewer acknowledged that, unlike the sheriff, she has not done extensive research.
But the governor said she had spoken several years ago to her Hawaiian counterpart when the issue first arose. And she said Tuesday that he “assured me that everything was in proper order and they stand by their records that he was born in Hawaii.”
Arpaio sniffed at the governor’s comments.
“That’s the governor’s opinion,” he said. “And I have my opinion, plus facts.”
Those facts, Arpaio said, stem from what he said was a forensic analysis of an electronic copy of the president’s birth certificate posted on the White House web site.
Mike Zullo, head of the sheriff’s Cold Case Posse, who headed the investigation, said that showed it was not a single scanned document but several pieces put together with software. And he said there is no legitimate explanation for the inconsistencies.
Arpaio said while he was not accusing Obama of serving illegally — the U.S. Constitution allows only native-born citizens to be president — the sheriff said the findings show evidence of a fraud perpetrated on the public. And Zullo said that merits a further criminal probe.
And Arpaio said the assurances of Hawaii’s former governor, Linda Lingle, to Brewer are irrelevant.
“I mean, what does that mean?” he told Capitol Media Services. “You’ve got to go back and see all the conflicts” over the document.
Anyway, the sheriff said, that conversation between the two chief executives occurred “some time ago.”
Brewer seemed bemused by the ongoing attention, especially with an election this fall.
“We’ve got November coming up and we can vote him up or vote him down,” she said.
This isn’t Brewer’s first tussle with those who question Obama’s U.S. birth.
Last year she vetoed legislation which would have required candidates to provide proof they were born in this country to get on the Arizona ballot. Brewer said giving the secretary of state authority to decide if a candidate is eligible, as the law would have allowed, “could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions.”
She also suggested there was an “ick” factor in the measure, noting candidates who could not produce a “long form birth certificate” would have had the option of instead furnishing other documents.
“I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for President of the greatest and most powerful nation on Earth to submit their ‘early baptismal or circumcision certificates’ among other records to the Arizona secretary of state,” Brewer wrote.
Pink underwear in jails draws censure
Appellate court questions Arpaio's practice
by Jacques Billeaud - Mar. 9, 2012 10:46 PM
Associated Press
The pink underwear worn by inmates in Arizona's largest county are a hallmark of America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff. They also have become the target of criticism by an appeals court considering the case of a mentally ill man who mistakenly viewed officers' efforts to forcibly clothe him as a rape attempt.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that strip searches and other steps may be necessary for jail security, but it questioned the legal justification in one particular case for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's policy of dressing an inmate in pink undergarments.
"Unexplained and undefended, the dress-out in pink appears to be punishment without legal justification," the court said in its majority decision. It also noted earlier in the ruling that it's fair to infer that the selection of pink as the underwear color was meant to symbolize the loss of prisoners' masculinity.
The court pointed out, however, that no attorney on either side of the case questioned whether the dressing of prisoners in Arpaio's jails is, in every case, a due-process violation when applied to inmates who are not convicted of a crime.
Early on in his nearly 20-year tenure as sheriff, Arpaio won points with voters for making inmates wear pink underwear, housing them in canvas tents during Phoenix's triple-digit summer heat, and dressing them in old-time striped jail uniforms.
Arpaio has joked about the popularity of the pink-underwear issue with voters. In January 2010, he told the Associated Press: "You know what my joke is: I can get elected on pink underwear. I don't need this illegal immigration to get elected."
The sheriff said Thursday that he plans to ask for a larger panel of the appeals court to reconsider the case. "What do they do next -- take away the striped uniforms?" Arpaio said.
In its 2-1 ruling, the appeals court threw out a 2010 jury verdict in favor of Arpaio's office and ordered a new trial in a lawsuit brought by the estate of Eric Vogel.
Vogel refused to get out of his street clothes after he was arrested in November 2001 and accused of assaulting an officer responding to a burglary call. A group of officers in Arpaio's jail stripped Vogel and put him in pink underwear and other prison clothing as he shouted that he was being raped.
The lawyer for Vogel's estate has said that the officers didn't sexually assault Vogel and that his client didn't suffer injuries at the jail.
Vogel, who was determined by a counselor to be paranoid and psychotic, died less than a month later, after he and his mother got in a minor car accident. When the officer handling the accident told Vogel that he might be jailed on a warrant stemming from his previous struggle to wear jail clothes, Vogel ran several miles from the scene back to his home. He died the next day, and medical examiners concluded the cause was cardiac arrhythmia.
Vogel's attorney, who appealed the 2010 verdict, had been barred by a lower-court judge from calling Vogel's sister to testify about what he told her about the jail incident and his sense of humiliation stemming from the underwear.
Joel Robbins, the attorney representing Vogel's estate, said the use of pink underwear has long been a source of amusement for some members of the public. But it's not funny when a mentally ill man who believes he is going to be raped has officers forcing pink underwear on him, Robbins said.
Jack MacIntyre, a deputy chief for Arpaio, said the court's decision had serious flaws. The Sheriff's Office started dyeing the jail-issued underwear in the 1990s as a way to discourage inmates from taking home the undergarments after they were released from custody.
The Arpaio aide rejected the appeals court's note about the underwear's color to "stigmatize the male prisoners as feminine."
Robbins had argued that the testimony of Vogel's sister wasn't meant to provide details about the jail incident. It was intended to show her brother's state of mind and establish the impact of the incident, he said.
Protesters in custody after Arpaio protest outside school
by John Genovese - Mar. 20, 2012 08:13 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
Six of the nearly 150 young people were taken into custody Tuesday after taking to the streets in front of Trevor Browne High School in Phoenix to protest the immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The protesters, consisting of students from Trevor Browne, other area high schools and colleges, rallied in the intersection of 75th Avenue and Cheery Lynn Street, forcing the closure of 75th Avenue in both directions.
slideshow Trevor Browne High School protest
"Arpaio is terrorizing our community and we're tired of it," said 16-year-old Jackie Sanchez, who was seated around a protest banner laid out in the street. "The only power [Arpaio] has is fear. That's over."
The group repeatedly chanted "undocumented and unafraid" during the nearly 4-hour protest.
Some held signs reading "Support the DREAM Act!" and "We will no longer remain in the shadows."
Arpaio was unavailable for comment Tuesday evening.
"Our job is to keep it peaceful and legal," said Officer James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman.
The protest was peaceful but was clearly illegal because participants were blocking the road, he added.
The protest started on a street corner but moved into the street by 3:15 p.m.
Police, wearing helmets and carrying shields, later formed a line across 75th Avenue. A warning was announced at 5:50 p.m., telling the protesters who continued to block the street they would be arrested. Many had moved to the sidewalk but others remained in the street.
Police began moving towards the group at 6 p.m., and the street was mostly cleared by 6:15 p.m.
Four women, including two under age 18, and two men were arrested and are expected to be charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing a thoroughfare, according to Phoenix police.
"It's incredibly important that we exercise patience in these situations," Holmes said. "We don't want to rush in with unprepared resources."
According to Holmes, a "tremendous amount of resources" were used by police during the protest, in which about 100 Phoenix officers responded.
He added that the demonstrators were never physically aggressive and the outcome "appeared to be a success" for both protesters and police.
Sheriff Joe's shifts conspiracy theory from birth certificate to draft card
Ok, so maybe the phony birth certificate claim concerning President Barack Obama didn’t quite catch on with the media. Did you think that was going to stop Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
How about claims of a faked Selective Service registration?
The sheriff sent out a press release today that begins, “Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has sent a letter to the Director of the U.S. Selective Service System headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The Sheriff is asking the agency to conduct an investigation of Barack Obama’s Selective service registration form from 1980 after preliminary findings of the Sheriff’s six-month long investigation determined that it may be a forgery.”
Like the “birther” conspiracy that the sheriff claimed to uncover earlier this month, the Selective Service card conspiracy has been out there for a very long time and also has been debunked.
The Internet is filled with conspiracy theories by believers in the fake card and with others who debunk the claims. One of the latter can be viewed here.
Not that such a thing matters to those who want to believe the documents are fake no matter what.
People who happen to be the voters Arpaio is most counting on in November.
The sheriff hints in his press release that he doesn't trust what the Selective Service director will tell him, anyway, since the director was appointed by Obama.
Which means this entire exercise is what?
A political stunt?
Also, for an investigation by posse members that wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers anything the sheriff’s throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-if-anyt hing-sticks investigation into the president’s background certainly seems to be taking up a lot of HIS time. As well as the time of his county paid public relations staff.
And doesn’t THAT cost us something?
Or would suggesting such a thing be part of a media conspiracy against him?
Governor Jan Brewer thinks Sheriff Joe Arpaio is full of BS???
Of course I don't like tyrant Jan Brewer any more then I like tyrant Sheriff Joe
Pink underwear cruel and unusual punishment??
Source
Cops bust 6 teenagers for protesting against Sheriff Joe's terrorists
Source
Sheriff Joe says President Obama is a draft dodger??
Source
Students stage another protest of Arpaio, immigration policies
Mar. 23, 2012 05:20 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Scores of mostly college and high school students marched in downtown Phoenix Friday afternoon to protest Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his continued crackdown on illegal immigrants.
The protesters gathered at a park near Central Avenue and Fillmore Street and began marching about 3:30 p.m. toward a downtown building where Arpaio and his office leases space. The marchers were planning to go from there to the state Capitol by 17th Avenue and Jefferson Street.
It was the second time in three days that young people have staged a protest of the Maricopa County Sheriff -- in the first instance, the event was staged by Dream Activist, an online organization that's encouraging young undocumented immigrants to "come out of the shadows" by getting arrested.
Friday's protest was coordinated by the Arizona State University chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), a student organization that promotes political participation for social change. About 600 students from across the nation are in town for the 2012 National MEChA Conference. Jose Rios, an ASU student and one of the conference's planners, said the event also got assistance from PUENTE, a group that seeks to promote human rights.
In the earlier protest Tuesday, just outside Trevor Browne High School in northwest Phoenix, six people, including two juveniles, were arrested by Phoenix police on suspicion of disrupting a thoroughfare and disorderly conduct. That event drew about 150 people and led to a shutdown of a portion of 75th Avenue.
Dream Activist has organized acts of civil disobedience in more than six cities in recent years, including the one in Phoenix, that have resulted in the arrests of more than 60 young undocumented immigrants, many of them students or recent graduates, a group spokesman said earlier this week.
At Tuesday's march, protesters repeatedly chanted "undocumented and unafraid" during the nearly 4-hour protest.
Some held signs reading "Support the DREAM Act!" and "We will no longer remain in the shadows."
Arpaio responds to ruling critical of pink boxers
Mar. 28, 2012 05:56 PM
Associated Press
An Arizona sheriff known for making prisoners wear pink underwear asked an appeals court Wednesday to reconsider its ruling that criticized jail officers' decision to force the colorful boxer shorts onto a mentally ill inmate who erroneously believed the officers were trying to rape him.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in a case brought by the estate of inmate Eric Vogel against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that the mandatory pink undergarments were a form of "punishment without legal justification." The court also said it was fair to infer that the selection of pink as the color was meant to symbolize the loss of prisoners' masculinity.
An Arpaio lawyer who asked the court to reconsider its March 7 ruling had argued its statement about the underwear appearing to be punishment without justification was improper and that no one had an opportunity to present evidence on that issue.
"It trivializes the constitution to make a federal case out of the color of jail garb," wrote Eileen Dennis GilBride, who is representing Arpaio at the appeals court.
Joel Robbins, the attorney representing Vogel's estate, said the court wasn't issuing a judgment on the constitutionality of mandatory pink underwear for all prisoners and instead was pointing out that the issue shouldn't be ignored in this case.
"It's just a comment they made as they ruled on the case," Robbins said.
The court noted that no attorney on either side of the case questioned whether the dressing of prisoners in Arpaio's jails is a due-process violation when applied to inmates who are not convicted of a crime.
The appeals court had thrown out a 2010 jury verdict in favor of Arpaio's office and ordered a new trial in a lawsuit brought by Vogel's estate.
Vogel refused to get out of his street clothes after he was arrested in November 2001 for assaulting an officer who was responding to a burglary call. A group of officers in Arpaio's jail stripped Vogel and put him in pink underwear and other prison clothing as he shouted that he was being raped. Robbins said the officers didn't sexually assault Vogel.
Vogel, who was determined by a counselor to be paranoid and psychotic, died less than a month later, after he and his mother got in a minor car accident. Vogel ran several miles from the scene back to his home. He died the next day, and medical examiners concluded the cause was cardiac arrhythmia.
The sheriff's office has said it started dyeing the jail-issued underwear in the 1990s as a way to discourage inmates from taking home the undergarments after they were released from custody.
Negotiations between MCSO, DOJ fall apart
Feds say Arpaio refused to consider an independent monitor; legal action likely
by JJ Hensley - Apr. 3, 2012 01:30 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office have ended because the Sheriff's Office refused to consider appointing an independent monitor in an effort to resolve the federal government's racial profiling allegations.
Justice Department attorneys, in a terse letter to lawyers for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, said they were scheduled to depart Washington, D.C. for Phoenix at 2 p.m. Tuesday, and asked attorneys for the Sheriff's Office to let the federal government know by noon if the Sheriff's Office would agree to an independent monitor
document Letter to Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
The deadline passed without a response.
Arpaio said he refused to comply because President Barack Obama's administration is "trying to strong arm me into submission only for its political gain."
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined further comment, but legal action against the Sheriff's Office once again appears imminent.
Representatives for both the Sheriff's Office and the Justice Department have said repeatedly that they want to avoid going to court in an effort to resolve the profiling allegations detailed in a report the Justice Department released in mid December.
The negotiations between the two parties were crucial to avoiding litigation, but the Justice Department's letter to Arpaio's attorneys indicate that meetings were spotty and not productive.
"It was disappointing, to say the least, for you to contact us 24 hours before our negotiations were scheduled to continue and raise, for the first time, a precondition that you understood would result in the cancellation of negotiations - and, by extension, the initiation of a civil lawsuit - and calls into question whether you were ever interested in settling this matter," Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Roy L. Austin wrote.
Arpaio believes the investigation is a politically motivated ploy by the Obama administration to curry favor with Hispanic voters and said the appointment of an independent monitor would usurp Arpaio's powers and transfer them to a person selected by the Obama administration.
Negotiations between MCSO, DOJ fall apart
Hey did you expect anything different????
Sheriff Joe will jerk anybody around for his own political gain!!!!
Feds get played by Arpaio
Source
E.J. Montini's Columns & Blog
E.J. Montini is a columnist for The Arizona Republic.
Feds get played by Arpaio
A citizen wants to have confidence that the officials guiding a law enforcement bureaucracy like the U.S. Justice Department are not so naïve as to fall for a ploy by a local county sheriff.
A citizen WANTS to believe that – but shouldn’t.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that “negotiations” between the feds and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio have broken down.
The sheriff duped the boys from Washington. Played them like a fiddle.
This is evident in the letter sent to the sheriff by Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Roy L. Austin, who wrote in part, “It was disappointing, to say the least, for you to contact us 24 hours before our negotiations were scheduled to continue and raise, for the first time, a precondition that you understood would result in the cancellation of negotiations- and, by extension, the initiation of a civil lawsuit- and calls into question whether you were ever interested in settling this matter.”
Really?
You didn’t suspect that Arpaio was just pretending to go along?
That he wasn’t going to pawn off your investigation as revenge politics?
That he wasn’t going to turn that around and use politics to excuse the behavior of HIS office?
Now you could take him to court.
That is exactly what he wants.
If he wins, he gloats. If you win he says it is only because the judge is somehow a pawn of the administration.
Assuming your administration is in office at the time the decision is made.
Which he is betting against.
Another protest Joe will ignore
SourceAnother protest Joe will ignore
Anti-Arpaio activist Salvador Reza and others plan to hold a press conference today outside Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office in order “to demand immediate Receivership of Maricopa County Sheriff Office operations” by the U.S. Department of Justice.
A press release put out by the group goes on to say, “Affected community and individuals will be there to speak to the media and demand the Department of Justice to put an end to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror over Maricopa County.”
So, what does this mean?
First, it means that Reza and a few others will get on TV.
Second, it means that Arpaio will get on TV.
Third, it means that NOTHING else will happen.
On Tuesday Arpaio scoffed at the feds’ demand for an independent monitor to oversee his office's operations.
The fact that the feds didn’t see this coming from the start is shocking. Or maybe they figured that they had to go through the motions in order to seem fair.
Either way, the case most likely will now end up in federal court.
Meaning that Arpaio will get the chance to use his conflict with the justice department to bolster his claim that this is all a political vendetta by a law enforcement bureaucracy under the control of that guy in the White House that Arpaio claims to have a fake birth certificate.
Arpaio protesters want to keep Arpaio’s troubles in the public eye because they know that there is only one way to get the sheriff out of office. They don’t believe the feds will do it.
They’re hoping you will.
In November.
If I were a betting man I’d say … you won’t.
Arpaio probe: Feds told to 'put up or shut up'
SourceArpaio probe: Feds told to 'put up or shut up'
by JJ Hensley - Apr. 4, 2012 12:41 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery made his strongest statements yet about the U.S. Justice Department's investigation into Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office, accusing federal officials of spreading misinformation and attempting to foment unrest in Maricopa County by alleging discriminatory police practices without providing proof to back up the accusations.
Federal investigators released a 22-page report last December that accused the Sheriff's Office of widespread discrimination against Latino residents through its patrol and jail operations. Sheriff's officials have said the report was full of anecdotal information but lacked details to substantiate allegations that the agency had a systemic problem with discriminatory policing.
Montgomery took the same approach in his Wednesday news conference, calling on the Justice Department to "put up or shut up."
"I want to make it absolutely clear: If the Department of Justice actually has information that supports their assertion that there continues to this day systemic concerns of discriminatory policing or racial profiling, I demand, I demand as the chief prosecutor of Maricopa County, I demand as the duly elected officer with responsibility for prosecutions, to be given that information immediately," Montgomery said. "This posturing, this playing hide the ball in the context of civil litigation, is disgusting, particularly when it involves criminal prosecutions."
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
The Sheriff's Office and local media outlets also have requested detailed information on which the allegations are based, but the Justice Department considers the investigation ongoing until a settlement is reached and has declined to turn over any documentation.
The information Montgomery and the Sheriff's Office requested can frequently emerge through the negotiation process, but Arpaio's discussions with the Justice Department were halted Tuesday after the Sheriff's Office refused to consider a court-appointed monitor as part of any solution to the discrimination federal investigators found.
If negotiations cannot resume, the Justice Department indicated a lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office is on the horizon.
Montgomery conceded that some examples of bad policing that the Justice Department cited in its February report were pf concern, but he said those appeared to be isolated incidents and he had yet to see any evidence that discriminatory policing has continued since he took office in November 2010.
Montgomery said he added new procedures to review the constitutionality of human-smuggling prosecutions and those related to the sheriff's work-site enforcement efforts. He said Justice Department investigators did not consider those new checks and balances when drafting their report on the Sheriff's Office.
"Arizona is not the federal government's playground for you to come in here and throw around accusations and assertions and not back it up," Montgomery said. "If they provide this information, I'll take back everything I just said."
Aside from asking for the government's cooperation, Montgomery conceded there is little he can do to demand the information.
Arpaio is represented by private attorneys the county appointed to the Sheriff's Office. Montgomery said the County Attorney's Office is not part of negotiations between the Sheriff's Office and Justice Department, and will not be a part of any lawsuit the federal government may bring against Arpaio.
Montgomery's office is also in the process of reviewing hundreds of sex-crime cases that sheriff's detectives failed to adequately investigate in the 2000s.
Federal investigators have raised concerns with those cases on several occasions, and Montgomery said county prosecutors are actively reviewing those cases. Any attempt by the federal government to withhold from county prosecutors information on the sex crimes could lead to disciplinary action before Bar associations regulating attorney conduct, Montgomery said.
"If they really shared that concern, then give me the information so I can do my job as well," Montgomery said. "Absent that information, I can only conclude that they are posturing for litigation sake and lying to the people of Maricopa County."
Andrew Thomas, Lisa Aubuchon stripped of their legal licenses
SourceThomas, Aubuchon stripped of their legal licenses
Disciplinary panel disbars former Maricopa County attorney
by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Kiefer - Apr. 10, 2012 09:19 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his onetime deputy, Lisa Aubuchon, were stripped of their law licenses today as a disciplinary panel handed down the toughest sanctions possible for ethical violations in a case that attracted national interest.
The panel also suspended Rachel Alexander, another Thomas deputy, from practicing law for six months and one day for her role in filing a federal civil racketeering lawsuit against judges and county officials.
The disbarment of Thomas and Aubuchon had been widely discussed as a possibility by members of the legal community. But the length of Alexander's suspension came as a surprise because the independent Bar counsel had recommended a shorter suspension.
The three attorneys can, and likely will, appeal the sanctions. None were present.
The discipline was handed down this morning by a three-member panel appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court to hear their cases.
"It's about the victims," said John Gleason, independent Bar counsel who prosecuted the case for the bar. "We gave them the opportunity to tell their story, and they won."
Together, they faced allegations of 33 ethical violations stemming from years of political and legal battles within Maricopa County government.
Though the battles that landed the attorneys before the State Bar of Arizona reach back to at least 2006, the investigation of the three began two years ago, a month before Thomas resigned as county attorney to run unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for state attorney general.
Thomas is implicated in 30 of the charges, Aubuchon in 28, and Alexander in seven. The disciplinary panel will consider each charge separately.
Charges cover a variety of allegations, including conflict of interest for holding press conferences to denounce the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which was his client, and threatening county officials with litigation; falsely claiming a judge had filed Bar complaints against Thomas, in order to have the judge removed from a case; and seeking indictments against county officials to burden or embarrass them. In one case, the charges allege, Thomas and Aubuchon brought criminal charges against a county supervisor even though they knew that the statute of limitations had already expired on the offenses.
The most serious allegations involve filing criminal charges against a sitting Maricopa County Superior Court judge without probable cause in order to stop a court hearing. Several of the allegations of ethical misconduct revolve around a federal civil racketeering lawsuit claiming that judges and county officials conspired against Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The independent Bar counsel appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court claims that the three prosecutors were incompetent in drafting the racketeering complaint, and that they filed it for purely political reasons against people they had already charged criminally or who they thought had filed earlier Bar complaints against them.
Given the number of complaints and the difficulty Thomas and the others had in mounting their defenses during the four-month-long hearing process, O'Neil is expected to come down hard on the three prosecutors.
Any sanctions imposed would take place 30 days from today. Appeals to the Arizona Supreme Court would have to be filed within ten days, and the respondents are expected to request stays of sanctions pending appeal, which could take another six months.
The Supreme Court could then choose to hold further hearings and could reverse or uphold any part of the disciplinary judge's ruling, or send it back to the disciplinary court for hearings there.
If the ruling is upheld, Thomas and Aubuchon can apply for reinstatement of their law licenses; they would have to demonstrate "by clear and convincing evidence" that they are rehabilitated, competent, and fit to practice law, and that they have complied with all of the court's orders. Alexander, meanwhile, also can apply for reinstatement of her license, but must re-take the Bar exam and also demonstrate that she is rehabilitated.
The eight weeks of trial brought testimony from a who's who of county government officials, including Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his former chief deputy, David Hendershott, who worked together with Thomas and his attorneys on many of the alleged corruption cases.
Two of the four retired Superior Court judges who were targeted by Arpaio and Thomas broke down on the stand during testimony. Sheriff's deputies testified about their discomfort with the way investigations against county officials were carried out, saying they took documents home to protect themselves and were asked to swear to facts they knew nothing about.
If you are interested in other crimes that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Andrew Thomas and Lisa Aubuchon have commited against the citizens of Maricopa County check out this URL it is full of articles on these government criminals that have been terrorizing the citizens of Phoenix and Maricopa County for years.
Ariz. ethics panel disbars ex-Maricopa prosecutor Thomas
SourcePosted: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 9:50 am
Associated Press
An Arizona ethics panel on Tuesday moved to disbar Maricopa County's former top prosecutor for failed corruption investigations he and America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff conducted targeting officials with whom they were having political and legal disputes.
The three-member disciplinary panel of the Arizona courts found that ex-County Attorney Andrew Thomas violated the professional rules of conduct for lawyers in bringing criminal charges against two county officials and a judge in December 2009.
All three cases were dismissed after a judge ruled that Thomas prosecuted one of the officials for political gain and had a conflict of interest in pressing the case. Other county officials and judges who were at odds with Thomas and his top ally, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, in disputes also were investigated by the pair, but weren't charged with crimes.
Lawyers pressing the case against Thomas said officials, judges and attorneys who crossed Thomas and Arpaio in disputes were often targeted for investigations.
Thomas and Arpaio contended they were trying to root out corruption in county government, while the targets of the prosecutions said the cases were trumped up.
The decision marked the first official comment by the state's legal establishment on the validity of the investigations.
Arpaio does not face any punishments in the disciplinary case, but investigations of county officials and judges by the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad took center stage at hearings in the Thomas case.
Separate from the attorney disciplinary case, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.
At Thomas' disciplinary hearing, the sheriff testified in September that he didn't follow the investigations closely and farmed out those cases to his then-top assistant. The former Arpaio aide had testified earlier that some allegations contained in the charges against the judge weren't in fact crimes.
Thomas was accused of bringing criminal cases against County Supervisors Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox to embarrass them and knowingly filing false bribery and obstruction of justice charges against then-Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe.
The panel ruled against Thomas and Lisa Aubuchon, one of his former deputy prosecutors, on the charges. Aubuchon also will be disbarred.
"Justice has been served for Maricopa County," Wilcox said.
The ethics board also found that Thomas and Aubuchon conspired with Arpaio and his former top aide, David Hendershott, to intimidate the judge. Still, the panel declined to sanction Thomas and Aubuchon on that violation.
Thomas and Aubuchon have 10 days to file an appeal with the state Supreme Court.
Donahoe was charged with bribery after the judge disqualified Thomas' office from its investigation into a construction of a court building. The judge was about to hold a hearing on Thomas' request to appoint special prosecutors to handle investigations against the officials, but that hearing was called off after the charges were filed against the judge.
Thomas said the decision to charge the judge had nothing to do with the decisions the judge issued against his office.
During his testimony, Thomas defended the investigations and said one of his aides had warned that charging Stapley would hurt him politically, but he brought the charges against the county supervisor because it was the right thing to do.
Stapley was accused, among other things, of getting mortgage loans under fraudulent pretenses. Wilcox was accused of voting on contracts involving a group that had given her loans and never filing conflict-of-interest statements.
Thomas, a Harvard Law School graduate, served as the county's top prosecutor from more than five years before resigning in April 2010 to run an unsuccessful campaign for state attorney general.
Thomas was known for confronting illegal immigration, prosecuting metro Phoenix's Baseline Killer and Serial Shooter cases and pursuing criminal cases against county officials.
Justice Dept. heads toward lawsuit vs. Sheriff Joe Arpaio
SourceJustice Dept. heads toward lawsuit vs. Sheriff Joe Arpaio
by JJ Hensley - Apr. 11, 2012 11:17 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The lead attorney in the U.S. Justice Department's efforts to resolve a civil-rights complaint with Sheriff Joe Arpaio has cut off verbal communication with Arpaio's attorney, saying the entire affair is best left for the courts to decide.
A Justice Department report in December accused the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office of rampant discrimination against Latinos in its police and jail operations, and asked the office to negotiate a solution to the problems or face legal action.
The most recent exchange of letters between Arpaio's lawyers and federal civil-rights prosecutors contained dueling and now-familiar accusations about failures to negotiate an agreement in good faith.
"It is clear that DOJ's concerted effort to attain voluntary compliance by your client has failed," Deputy U.S. Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin wrote to Arpaio attorney Joe Popolizio.
"It is also clear that we should not discuss anything else by telephone because you will not accurately portray those conversations," Austin continued. "At this point, it is best to let a court determine the appropriateness of appointing an independent monitor as well as imposing other relief in order to address MCSO's constitutional and federal statutory violations."
Popolizio responded that he believes the Justice Department's characterization of his requests for information as a "nuisance" was ridiculous and said the Sheriff's Office essentially has no choice but to wait for a federal lawsuit to be filed.
The Justice Department released findings from its three-year investigation in December, and the two parties were to begin negotiating this spring with the explicit threat of a federal lawsuit if negotiations were unsuccessful. But exchanges between attorneys for the two parties, which were recently released, indicate the negotiations were more of an aspiration, with dates scheduled and frequently canceled. Both sides blame the other for the lack of progress.
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not comment late Wednesday on when the federal government would sue the Sheriff's Office.
Arpaio and his attorneys claim it was the Justice Department's insistence on a court-appointed monitor that thwarted negotiations, saying the monitor's role would be akin to that of a de facto sheriff.
Monitors are routinely assigned to oversee compliance with court orders in Justice Department civil-rights cases. The initial Justice Department findings in December contained a reference to the need for a monitor to oversee any agreement in Maricopa County.
In February, the Justice Department presented Arpaio's office with a 128-page draft agreement that was supposed to serve as the basis for negotiations.
Arpaio's staff and attorneys claim the document detailed duties for the monitor that would give the monitor complete oversight of day-to-day operations in the Sheriff's Office.
"Here's why I reached that conclusion: Joe (Popolizio) and I both had the conversation with Mr. Austin on April 2 and his statement to us was, 'If you are not going to accept the monitor as laid out in the proposal, it's a non-starter,' " said John Masterson, an Arpaio attorney. "Our interpretation of that is, 'You agree to exactly what we say in that 128-page document as to the monitor.' "
That conversation was among the last before Austin decided to stop speaking with Popolizio.
Austin's letter, written Wednesday, said the sheriff's presumption about the monitor's role was premature.
"Considering that the word 'monitor' appears throughout the agreement and you never gave us the opportunity to negotiate the exact language of the agreement, it is silly for you to pretend that I or any other DOJ employee defined exactly what duties the monitor would have at the end of negotiations," he wrote. "Nothing of the kind was ever said and you know it."
Masterson last week said in a news conference Arpaio would never agree to a monitor or to enter into a consent decree.
On Wednesday, Masterson conceded the Sheriff's Office knew someone would be in place to make sure that Arpaio was adhering to a negotiated agreement that would resolve the Justice Department's concerns. But he said Austin left the sheriff's representatives with the impression that the monitor, as defined in the draft agreement, was the only non-negotiable point in the document.
"It's not an interpretation -- he stated it," Popolizio said. "There were no negotiations because if there were, we would have sat down and it (the monitor) would have been either the first thing we talked about or the last thing we talked about."
The compliance monitor whom Arpaio's attorneys now say the agency might be able to live with -- one whose duties do not usurp the sheriff's power -- is precisely the type the Justice Department seeks to have in place to resolve civil-rights issues with law-enforcement agencies, said Jim Ginger, who served as an independent monitor with police agencies in Pittsburgh and New Jersey.
Those investigations, like the Justice Department's into the Sheriff's Office, included allegations that officers were using enforcement actions to unlawfully target minority residents.
Ginger said every monitor approaches his or her job differently, but the Justice Department and police agency would define the monitor's role either through negotiations or litigation. Once Ginger was assigned as a monitor, he spent months creating systems to measure outcomes defined in the consent decree, such as requiring probable cause for all police stops.
Once those systems were in place, Ginger said, his role was to make sure law-enforcement administrators knew how they were being judged.
"I can virtually guarantee you the monitor will not take charge of day-to-day operations. I've never known one who did it and I've never known one who wanted to. You've got to rely on the people that are there," Ginger said. "That doesn't mean you might not have to do some training, communication and demonstration on how things are supposed to work. The key to the monitoring process really is to build the core competencies within the organization so that when you leave, they stay there."
The sheriff's refusal to consider such oversight has taken any input on the decision out of Arpaio's hands, Ginger said.
"That leaves the Sheriff's Office now, instead of being able to negotiate, they're just being told by the court what to do, and I can't imagine a worse scenario," he said. "It could be a critical error for the agency."
But Arpaio claims it is the Justice Department that is being intractable on the monitor. He said he believes the investigation is part of a coordinated effort between local activists and politicians and President Obama's administration and has nothing to do with protecting civil rights but everything to do with politics.
According to Arpaio, that also explains why the Justice Department chose to refer to former County Attorney Andrew Thomas' disbarment, which was ordered Tuesday, in a letter written less than 24 hours after a panel ordered Thomas stripped of his law license.
Austin's letter said the allegations that Arpaio and his deputies worked with Thomas to retaliate against their political opponents reinforced the Justice Department's reluctance to share information about the civil-rights probe. Austin said federal officials fear reprisals against the suspects, deputies and witnesses interviewed during the investigation.
"You can see the connection here. Every time that something happens they shove it in a letter," Arpaio said. "Don't forget (County Supervisor) Mary Rose Wilcox and certain people here want to put me under receivership. You have to be very careful with monitors. That's the game ... to put us under receivership."
Andrew Thomas & Sheriff Joe Arpaio's crimes to cost Maricopa County $2 million???
Source
Document: County aims to settle claims for about $2 million
by Michelle Ye Hee Lee - Apr. 12, 2012 11:31 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Maricopa County Manager David Smith recommended settling three county officials' claims for a total of nearly $2 million because legal advisers said it would be less costly than litigating them in court, according to a document obtained by The Arizona Republic.
All three officials claim they were damaged by errant investigations conducted over the last three years by former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, who was ordered disbarred this week, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Smith's offers would respectively settle claims filed by Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox for $975,000; Susan Schuerman, executive assistant to Supervisor Don Stapley, for $500,0000; and retired Superior Court Judge Barbara Rodriguez Mundell for $500,000.
The deals are not yet final.
Retired Superior Court Judge Christopher Skelly, acting as a mediator, analyzed the claims and recommended the settlement amounts, saying it is uncertain how a jury would decide if the three cases went to court, according to the document.
It would cost between $3 million and $6 million in adverse attorneys' fees if the jury "awarded even nominal damages to each of these three plaintiffs" and between $2 million and $4 million in defense expenses "even if the jury returned defense verdicts in all three cases," according to the document.
On April 9, U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake denied motions to dismiss some of the claims against the county, which include malicious prosecution, abuse of process, defamation and unconstitutional retaliatory conduct, exposing the county to more legal liability, the document said.
"These plaintiffs will most probably prevail and be awarded reasonable damages and, when they do, they will recover their attorneys' fees," Skelly warned Smith in an e-mail.
"It will cost a small fortune to work up and try these cases just to go get adverse verdicts in some amounts, added to which will be the plaintiffs' attorneys' fees," Skelly wrote.
Smith has authority to negotiate and settle claims relating to Arpaio and Thomas investigations into various county officials. Whether the county manager has ultimately approval of settlements is under discussion."
MCSO releases agreement terms in discrimination case
Source
MCSO releases agreement terms in discrimination case
by JJ Hensley - Apr. 15, 2012 10:53 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The draft agreement the U.S. Justice Department presented to resolve allegations of discrimination in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office contains detailed descriptions of the steps the Sheriff's Office needs to take to restore community trust, improve data collection and make information more accessible to suspects, family members and inmates.
The agreement also explicitly states that a court-appointed monitor who would oversee the sheriff's efforts to resolve the discrimination claims would not be designed or intended to take over the role and responsibility of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The agreement was supposed to serve as the basis for the negotiations, which were halted before they could begin last week after a dispute arose over the role a court-appointed monitor would play in ensuring the Sheriff's Office complied.
The dispute is now likely headed to court.
Arpaio and his attorneys said the monitor, as defined in the draft agreement, would usurp the powers of the elected sheriff.
"The monitor shall not, and is not intended to, replace or assume the role and duties of the defendants, including the sheriff," the agreement states.
The Justice Department released findings from its three-year investigation in December, and the two parties were to begin negotiating this spring with the explicit threat of a federal lawsuit if negotiations were unsuccessful. But exchanges between attorneys for the two parties, which were recently released, indicate the negotiations were more of an aspiration, with dates scheduled and frequently canceled. Each side blames the other for the lack of progress.
The Justice Department's allegations of widespread discrimination in the Sheriff's Office appear headed to court after Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Roy Austin cut off communication with Arpaio's attorneys last week and said it would be best to let a court resolve the claims.
A Justice Department representative could offer no timetable last week on when the agency would take legal action against the Sheriff's Office.
Negotiations between Arpaio's representatives and the Justice Department were supposed to take place in private, with the 128-page draft agreement serving as a starting point. After negotiations broke down, the Sheriff's Office fulfilled a standing public-records request and released a copy of the agreement.
The document offers the first view of how the federal government wanted to resolve the discrimination its investigators claim to have found in the Sheriff's Office. Suggestions included new efforts to engage the community, collect better data, create new bureaus within the Sheriff's Office to improve access and accountability, and require hours of additional training intended to hammer home the perils of racial profiling and the benefits of constitutional police practices.
The wide-ranging agreement was designed to address discrimination allegations in patrol operations and in the sheriff's jails, but the document focuses on several general areas.
Immigration enforcement: Under the terms of the agreement, the Sheriff's Office could continue to operate a human-smuggling unit and a work-site enforcement squad that focused on employees suspected of committing identity theft or fraud to get jobs, though neither could continue to use volunteer posse members during the operations. The agreement also would eliminate the use of the sheriff's immigration hotline unless the information contains credible evidence of a crime.
Training and data collection: Every element of the agreement included a training regimen for deputies, regardless of where they work. Supervisors in the human-smuggling unit would require an extra eight hours of training on supervising deputies engaged in sensitive operations. The agency also would have to change how it tracks and collects data on traffic stops, for example, with requirements including annual traffic studies and a breakdown of search and seizures by unit, shift, geographic area and demographic type.
Language access and staffing: To resolve allegations that non-English-speakers do not have adequate access to information in the jails, the Sheriff's Office would need to create a Language Access Unit with duties that include establishing quality controls for authorized interpreters. The Sheriff's Office also would need to add more supervisors in the agency to reduce the ratio of deputies to supervisors, a proposal that Arpaio's chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, said could cost millions of dollars annually.
Community outreach: Sheriff's patrol deputies and supervisors would be required to participate in at least two public meetings a year, with six meetings held in each of the sheriff's patrol districts. The agreement also would require the Sheriff's Office and a Police Community Advisory Board to present a program on the sheriff's bias-free policing policies at every high school in Maricopa County, and calls for the Sheriff's Office to hold community meetings within 30 days of crime-suppression operations.
In addition to the many internal controls detailed in the agreement, the county would be required to establish and pay for an Office of Inspector General to ensure the Sheriff's Office is complying with the terms of the agreement.
Each of the elements in the agreement would be long running if not permanent, with the Inspector General and terms of the agreement in place for at least a decade.
Sheridan said that the words and actions of Justice Department lawyers since the release of the profiling allegations have contradicted some of the agency's written and public statements. Sheridan said Austin's reference to the need for a "culture change" in the Sheriff's Office, and the characterization of Arpaio's office as the most egregious example of racial profiling in U.S. history, stand out in the minds of the sheriff's representatives. Everything Justice Department representatives say is filtered through that context, Sheridan said.
While an optimistic negotiator might have seized on the language that dictates the monitor will not assume the role of the sheriff, skeptics in Arpaio's office focused on a passage that gave the monitor "the opportunity to review and approve all new guidelines and plans before their implementation" in the Sheriff's Office.
"We're starting from a position where we don't believe what they're telling us," Sheridan said. "When I read this document and the words of Roy Austin are bouncing around in my head -- that they have to change the culture of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office because we are racist -- that's the frame of reference."
Why people falsely confess to committing murder
Experts examine Lake County's 'epidemic' of false confessions
If you are interested in why normal sane people confess to murders they are innocent of Google on the "9 Step Reid Method", which is the technique most police agencies in American use to get confessions.The "9 Step Reid Method" is essentially an interrogation which uses psychological rubber hoses to mentally beat a suspect into confessing to a crime.
It is very effective and people routinely confess to crimes they did not commit. Of the almost 300 cases people were released from death row when DNA testing proved they did not commit the crime, a large number of then had made false confessions admitting their guilt.
As the article says "False confessions are usually the result of brainwashing, wearing people down or physical abuse" and that is how the "9 Step Reid Method" works.
Experts examine Lake County's 'epidemic' of false confessions
By Lisa Black, Chicago Tribune reporter
11:05 p.m. CDT, April 15, 2012
Juan Rivera, exonerated through DNA in the 1992 rape and murder of an 11-year-old Waukegan girl, returned to Lake County on Sunday for the first time since he was released from prison in January to join a panel discussion on false confessions.
"I am very angry. I am very disappointed that I lost half my life," said Rivera, 39, who added that he wrestles with his emotions, feeling that he should be at peace after 19 years in prison.
"This is a struggle that I go through every day. I don't sleep well. I don't trust anyone," said Rivera, speaking at Lake Forest College.
About 75 people attended the event, which also featured panelists Rob Warden, executive director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, and Jed Stone, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in Waukegan.
Stone challenged prosecutors and judges to stop ignoring an "epidemic" of false confessions that result in wrongful convictions. He suggested the problem could be partially resolved if officials videotaped all interrogations and made sure that detectives who interview a suspect have no prior knowledge of the case.
He also called for prosecutors to stop relying on police that they know to be dishonest as witnesses, saying he could name five in Lake County.
"I know who is a truth-teller, and I know who I wouldn't buy a car from — and so do the prosecutors," Stone said.
The public generally has a hard time understanding why someone would admit to a crime they did not commit, said Warden, who suggested that police interrogations be limited to four hours per session.
"Our research shows that truthful confessions tend to come relatively quickly," he said. Rivera, for instance, was interrogated off and on for more than 23 hours during one session.
False confessions are usually the result of brainwashing, wearing people down or physical abuse, Warden said.
Rivera's case, he said, was probably an example of when "people are simply worn down to the point they will say absolutely anything to stop the interrogation, thinking: 'If I can just sleep, I'll clear this up tomorrow.'"
"It happens everywhere," Warden said. "It happens nationally. We really need to start taking this phenomenon seriously."
Both candidates for the state's attorney's job, Democrat Chris Kennedy and Republican Michael Nerheim, attended the panel, as did friends and family of people involved in other high-profile cases in Lake County.
During a question-and-answer session, Paul Calusinski stood up and spoke in defense of his daughter, Melissa Calusinski, recently sentenced to 31 years for killing a toddler at a Lincolnshire day center.
Another man handed out fliers advertising a "10,000 Man March Against Injustice" planned for Saturday in North Chicago that stems from the death of Darrin Hanna, 45, who died in November after a violent encounter with police.
Officers tackled, punched and used a Taser on Hanna while trying to subdue him after reports that he was beating a pregnant woman. A Lake County coroner's autopsy blamed his death on chronic cocaine use and sickle cell disease, along with police restraint and trauma.
lblack@tribune.com
FBI didn't notify framed convicts that lab screw up falsely convicted them
FBI didn't notify framed convicts that lab screw up falsely convicted themYea, sure you can get a fair trail. The Federal Court system is just as corrupt and unjust as the Arizona courts are! In fact one man may have been falsely executed because of the corrupt FBI crime labs.
I suspect getting a "fair trial" in the American criminal injustice system is about as easy as going to Las Vegas and willing a billion dollars!!!! Honest! Maybe even a little bit easier!
Convicted defendants left uninformed of forensic flaws found by Justice Dept.
By Spencer S. Hsu, Published: April 16
Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.
Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.
In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.
As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects.
In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in 1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review. Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.
The case of a Maryland man serving a life sentence for a 1981 double killing is another in which federal and local law enforcement officials knew of forensic problems but never told the defendant. Attorneys for the man, John Norman Huffington, say they learned of potentially exculpatory Justice Department findings from The Washington Post. They are seeking a new trial.
Justice Department officials said that they met their legal and constitutional obligations when they learned of specific errors, that they alerted prosecutors and were not required to inform defendants directly.
The review was performed by a task force created during an inspector general’s investigation of misconduct at the FBI crime lab in the 1990s. The inquiry took nine years, ending in 2004, records show, but the findings were never made public.
In the discipline of hair and fiber analysis, only the work of FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone was questioned. Even though Justice Department and FBI officials knew that the discipline had weaknesses and that the lab lacked protocols — and learned that examiners’ “matches” were often wrong — they kept their reviews limited to Malone.
But two cases in D.C. Superior Court show the inadequacy of the government’s response.
Santae A. Tribble, now 51, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978, and Kirk L. Odom, now 49, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1981.
Key evidence at each of their trials came from separate FBI experts — not Malone — who swore that their scientific analysis proved with near certainty that Tribble’s and Odom’s hair was at the respective crime scenes.
But DNA testing this year on the hair and on other old evidence virtually eliminates Tribble as a suspect and completely clears Odom. Both men have completed their sentences and are on lifelong parole. They are now seeking exoneration in the courts in the hopes of getting on with their lives.
Neither case was part of the Justice Department task force’s review.
A third D.C. case shows how the lack of Justice Department notification has forced people to stay in prison longer than they should have.
Donald E. Gates, 60, served 28 years for the rape and murder of a Georgetown University student based on Malone’s testimony that his hair was found on the victim’s body. He was exonerated by DNA testing in 2009. But for 12 years before that, prosecutors never told him about the inspector general’s report about Malone, that Malone’s work was key to his conviction or that Malone’s findings were flawed, leaving him in prison the entire time.
After The Post contacted him about the forensic issues, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District said his office would try to review all convictions that used hair analysis.
Seeking to learn whether others shared Gates’s fate, The Post worked with the nonprofit National Whistleblowers Center, which had obtained dozens of boxes of task force documents through a years-long Freedom of Information Act fight.
Task force documents identifying the scientific reviews of problem cases generally did not contain the names of the defendants. Piecing together case numbers and other bits of information from more than 10,000 pages of documents, The Post found more than 250 cases in which a scientific review was completed. Available records did not allow the identification of defendants in roughly 100 of those cases. Records of an unknown number of other questioned cases handled by federal prosecutors have yet to be released by the government.
The Post found that while many prosecutors made swift and full disclosures, many others did so incompletely, years late or not at all. The effort was stymied at times by lack of cooperation from some prosecutors and declining interest and resources as time went on.
Overall, calls to defense lawyers indicate and records documented that prosecutors disclosed the reviews’ results to defendants in fewer than half of the 250-plus questioned cases.
Michael R. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and the inspector general who investigated the FBI lab, said in a statement that even if more defense lawyers were notified of the initial review, “that doesn’t absolve the task force from ensuring that every single defense lawyer in one of these cases was notified.”
He added: “It is deeply troubling that after going to so much time and trouble to identify problematic conduct by FBI forensic analysts the DOJ Task Force apparently failed to follow through and ensure that defense counsel were notified in every single case.”
Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the federal review was an “exhaustive effort” and met legal requirements, and she referred questions about hair analysis to the FBI. The FBI said it would evaluate whether a nationwide review is needed.
“In cases where microscopic hair exams conducted by the FBI resulted in a conviction, the FBI is evaluating whether additional review is warranted,” spokeswoman Ann Todd said in a statement. “The FBI has undertaken comprehensive reviews in the past, and will not hesitate to do so again if necessary.”
Santae Tribble and Kirk Odom
John McCormick had just finished the night shift driving a taxi for Diamond Cab on July 26, 1978. McCormick, 63, reached the doorstep of his home in Southeast Washington about 3 a.m., when he was robbed and fatally shot by a man in a stocking mask, according to his widow, who caught a glimpse of the attack from inside the house.
Police soon focused on Santae Tribble as a suspect. A police informant said Tribble told her he was with his childhood friend, Cleveland Wright, when Wright shot McCormick.
After a three-day trial, jurors deliberated two hours before asking about a stocking found a block away at the end of an alley on 28th Street SE. It had been recovered by a police dog, and it contained a single hair that the FBI traced to Tribble. Forty minutes later, the jury found Tribble guilty of murder. He was sentenced in January 1980 to 20 years to life in prison.
Tribble, 17 at the time, his brother, his girlfriend and a houseguest all testified that they were together preparing to celebrate the guest’s birthday the night McCormick was killed. All four said Tribble and his girlfriend were asleep between 2 and 4:30 a.m. in Seat Pleasant.
Tribble took the stand in his own defense, saying what he had said all along — that he had nothing to do with McCormick’s killing.
The prosecution began its closing argument by citing the FBI’s testimony about the hair from the stocking.
This January, after a year-long effort to have DNA evidence retested, Tribble’s public defender succeeded and turned over the results from a private lab to prosecutors. None of the 13 hairs recovered from the stocking — including the one that the FBI said matched Tribble’s — shared Tribble’s or Wright’s genetic profile, conclusively ruling them out as sources, according to mitochondrial DNA analyst Terry Melton of the private lab.
“The government’s entire theory of prosecution — that Mr. Tribble and Mr. Wright acted together to kill Mr. McCormick — is demolished,” wrote Sandra K. Levick, chief of special litigation for the D.C. Public Defender Service and the lawyer who represents Gates, Tribble and Odom. In a motion to D.C. Superior Court Judge Laura Cordero seeking Tribble’s exoneration, Levick wrote: “He has waited thirty-three years for the truth to set him free. He should have to wait no longer.”
In an interview, Tribble, who served 28 years in prison, said that whether the court grants his request or not, he sees it as a final chance to assert his innocence.
“Ms. Levick has been like an angel,” Tribble added, “. . . and I thank God for DNA.”
Details of the new round of hair testing illustrate how hair analysis is highly subjective. The FBI scientist who originally testified at Tribble’s trial, Special Agent James A. Hilverda, said all the hairs he retrieved from the stocking were human head hairs, including the one suitable for comparison that he declared in court matched Tribble’s “in all microscopic characteristics.”
In August, Harold Deadman, a senior hair analyst with the D.C. police who spent 15 years with the FBI lab, forwarded the evidence to the private lab and reported that the 13 hairs he found included head and limb hairs. One exhibited Caucasian characteristics, Deadman added. Tribble is black.
But the private lab’s DNA tests irrefutably showed that the 13 hairs came from three human sources, each of African origin, except for one — which came from a dog.
“Such is the true state of hair microscopy,” Levick wrote. “Two FBI-trained analysts, James Hilverda and Harold Deadman, could not even distinguish human hairs from canine hairs.”
Hilverda declined to comment. Deadman said his role was limited to describing characteristics of hairs he found.
Kirk Odom’s case shares similarities with Tribble’s. Odom was convicted of raping, sodomizing and robbing a 27-year-old woman before dawn in her Capitol Hill apartment in 1981.
The victim said she spoke with her assailant and observed him for up to two minutes in the “dim light” of street lamps through her windows before she was gagged, bound and blindfolded in an hour-long assault.
Police put together a composite sketch of the attacker, based on the victim’s description. About five weeks after the assault, a police officer was talking to Odom about an unrelated matter. He thought Odom looked like the sketch. So he retrieved a two-year-old photograph of Odom, from when he was 16, and put it in a photo array for the victim. The victim picked the image out of the array that April and identified Odom at a lineup in May. She identified Odom again at his trial, telling jurors her assailant “had left her with an image of his face etched in her mind.”
At trial, FBI Special Agent Myron T. Scholberg testified that a hair found on the victim’s nightgown was “microscopically like” Odom’s, meaning the samples were indistinguishable. Prosecutors explained that Scholberg had not been able to distinguish between hair samples only “eight or 10 times in the past 10 years, while performing thousands of analyses.”
But on Jan. 18 of this year, Melton, of the same lab used in the Tribble case, Mitotyping Technologies of State College, Pa., reported its court-ordered DNA test results: The hair in the case could not have come from Odom.
On Feb. 27, a second laboratory selected by prosecutors, Bode Technology of Lorton, turned over the results of court-ordered nuclear DNA testing of stains left by the perpetrator on a pillowcase and robe.
Only one man left all four partial DNA profiles developed by the lab, and that man could not have been Odom.
The victim “was tragically mistaken in her identification of Mr. Odom as her assailant,” Levick wrote in a motion filed March 14 seeking his exoneration. “One man committed these heinous crimes; that man was not Kirk L. Odom.”
Scholberg, who retired in 1985 as head of hair and fiber analysis after 18 years at the FBI lab, said side-by-side hair comparison “was the best method we had at the time.”
Odom, who was imprisoned for 20 years, had to register as a sex offender and remains on lifelong parole. He says court-ordered therapists still berate him for saying he is not guilty. Over the years, his conviction has kept him from possible jobs, he said.
“There was always the thought in the back of my mind . . . ‘One day will my name be cleared?’ ” Odom said at his home in Southeast Washington, where he lives with his wife, Harriet, a medical counselor.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment on Tribble’s and Odom’s specific claims, citing pending litigation.
One government official noted that Odom served an additional 16 months after his release for an unrelated simple assault that violated his parole.
However, in a statement released after being contacted by The Post, Machen, the U.S. attorney in the District, acknowledged that DNA results “raise serious questions in my mind about these convictions.”
“If our comprehensive review shows that either man was wrongfully convicted, we will promptly join him in a motion to vacate his conviction, as we did with Donald Gates in 2009,” Machen said.
The trouble with hair analysis
Popularized in fiction by Sherlock Holmes, hair comparison became an established forensic science by the 1950s. Before modern-day DNA testing, hair analysis could, at its best, accurately narrow the pool of criminal suspects to a class or group or definitively rule out a person as a possible source.
But in practice, even before the “ ‘CSI’ effect” led jurors to expect scientific evidence at every trial, a claim of a hair match packed a powerful, dramatic punch in court. The testimony, usually by a respected scientist working at a respected federal agency, allowed prosecutors to boil down ambiguous cases for jurors to a single, incriminating piece of human evidence left at the scene.
Forensic experts typically assessed the varying characteristics of a hair to determine whether the defendant might be a source. Some factors were visible to the naked eye, such as the length of the hair, its color and whether it was straight, kinky or curly. Others were visible under a microscope, such as the size, type and distribution of pigmentation, the alignment of scales or the thickness of layers in a given hair, or its diameter at various points.
Other judgments could be made. Was the hair animal or human? From the scalp, limbs or pubic area? Of a discernible race? Dyed, bleached or otherwise treated? Cut, forcibly removed or shed naturally?
But there is no consensus among hair examiners about how many of these characteristics were needed to declare a match. So some agents relied on six or seven traits, while others needed 20 or 30. Hilverda, the FBI scientist in Tribble’s case, told jurors that he had performed “probably tens of thousands of examinations” and relied on “about 15 characteristics.”
Despite his testimony, Hilverda recorded in his lab notes that he had measured only three characteristics of the hair from the stocking — it was black, it was a human head hair, and it was from an African American. Similarly, Scholberg’s notes describe the nightgown hair in Odom’s case in the barest terms, as a black, human head hair fragment, like a sample taken from Odom.
Hilverda acknowledged that results could rule out a person or be inconclusive. However, he told jurors that a “match” reflected a high likelihood that two hairs came from the same person. Hilverda added, “Only on very rare occasions have I seen hairs of two individuals that show the same characteristics.”
In Tribble’s case, federal prosecutor David Stanley went further as he summed up the evidence. “There is one chance, perhaps for all we know, in 10 million that it could [be] someone else’s hair,” he said in his closing arguments, sounding the final word for the government.
Stanley declined to comment.
Flaws known for decades
The Tribble and Odom cases demonstrate problems in hair analysis that have been known for nearly 40 years.
In 1974, researchers acknowledged that visual comparisons are so subjective that different analysts can reach different conclusions about the same hair. The FBI acknowledged in 1984 that such analysis cannot positively determine that a hair found at a crime scene belongs to one particular person.
In 1996, the Justice Department studied the nation’s first 28 DNA exonerations and found that 20 percent of the cases involved hair comparison. That same year, the FBI lab stopped declaring matches based on visual comparisons alone and began requiring DNA testing as well.
Yet examples of FBI experts violating scientific standards and making exaggerated or erroneous claims emerged in 1997 at the heart of the FBI lab’s worst modern scandal, when Bromwich’s investigation found systematic problems involving 13 agents. The lab’s lack of written protocols and examiners’ weak scientific qualifications allowed bias to influence some of the nation’s highest-profile criminal investigations, the inspector general said.
From 1996 through 2004, a Justice Department task force set out to review about 6,000 cases handled by the 13 discredited agents for any potential exculpatory information that should be disclosed to defendants. The task force identified more than 250 convictions in which the agents’ work was determined to be either critical to the conviction or so problematic — for example, because a prosecutor refused to cooperate or records had been lost — that it completed a fresh scientific assessment of the agent’s work. The task force was directed to notify prosecutors of the results.
The only real notice of what the task force found came in a 2003 Associated Press account in which unnamed government officials said they had turned over results to prosecutors and were aware that defendants had been notified in 100 to 150 cases. The officials left the impression that anybody whose case had been affected had been notified and that, in any case, no convictions had been overturned, the officials said.
But since 2003, in the District alone, two of six convictions identified by The Post in which forensic work was reassessed by the task force have been vacated. That includes Gates’s case, but not those of Tribble and Odom, who are awaiting court action and were not part of the task force review.
The Gates exoneration also shows that prosecutors failed to turn over information uncovered by the task force.
In addition to Gates, the murder cases in Texas and Maryland and a third in Alaska reveal examples of shortcomings.
All three cases, in addition to the District cases, were handled by FBI agent Malone, whose cases made up more than 90 percent of scientific reviews found by The Post.
In Texas, the review of Benjamin Herbert Boyle’s case got underway only after the defendant was executed, 16 months after the task force was formed, despite pledges to prioritize death penalty cases.
Boyle was executed six days after the Bromwich investigation publicly criticized Malone, the FBI agent who worked on his case, but the FBI had acknowledged two months earlier that it was investigating complaints about him.
The task force asked the Justice Department’s capital-case review unit to look over its work, but the fact that it failed to prevent the execution was never publicized.
In Maryland, John Norman Huffington’s attorneys say they were never notified of the findings of the review in his case, leaving them in a battle over the law’s unsettled requirements for prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence and over whether lawyers and courts can properly interpret scientific findings.
In Alaska, Newton P. Lambert’s defenders have been left to seek DNA testing of remaining biological evidence, if any exists, while he serves a life sentence for a 1982 murder. Prosecutors for both Huffington and Lambert claim they disclosed findings at some point to other lawyers but failed to document doing so. In Lambert’s case, The Post found that the purported notification went to a lawyer who had died.
Senior public defenders in both states say they received no such word, which they say would be highly unlikely if it in fact came.
Malone, 66, said he was simply using the best science available at the time. “We did the best we could with what we had,” he said.
Even the harshest critics acknowledge that the Justice Department worked hard to identify potentially tainted convictions. Many of the cases identified by the task force involved serious crimes, and several defendants confessed or were guilty of related charges. Courts also have upheld several convictions even after agents’ roles were discovered.
Flawed agents or a flawed system?
Because of the focus on Malone, many questionable cases were never reviewed.
But as in the Tribble and Odom cases, thousands of defendants nationwide have been implicated by other FBI agents, as well as state and local hair examiners, who relied on the same flawed techniques.
In 2002, the FBI found after it analyzed DNA in 80 selected hair cases that its agents had reported false matches more than 11 percent of the time. “I don’t believe forensic science truly understood the significance of microscopic hair comparison, and it wasn’t until [DNA] that we learned that 11 percent of the time, two hairs can be microscopically similar yet come from different people,” said Dwight E. Adams, who directed the FBI lab from 2002 to 2006.
Yet a Post review of the small fraction of cases in which an appeals court opinion describes FBI hair testimony shows that several FBI agents gave improper testimony, asserting the remote odds of a false match or invoking bogus statistics in the absence of data.
For example, in testimony in a Minnesota bank robbery case, also in 1978, Hilverda, the agent who worked on Tribble’s case, reiterated that he had been unable to distinguish among different people’s hair “only on a couple of occasions” out of more than 2,000 cases he had analyzed.
In a 1980 Indiana robbery case, an agent told jurors that he had failed to tell different people’s hair apart just once in 1,500 cases. After a slaying in Tennessee that year, another agent testified in a capital case that there was only one chance out of 4,500 or 5,000 that a hair came from someone other than the suspect.
“Those statements are chilling to read,” Bromwich said of the exaggerated FBI claims at trial.
Todd, the FBI spokeswoman, said bureau lab reports for more than 30 years have qualified their findings by saying that hair comparisons are not a means of absolute positive identification. She requested a list of cases in which agents departed from guidelines in court.
The Post provided nine cases.
Todd declined to say whether the bureau considered taking steps to determine whether other agents intentionally or unintentionally misled jurors. “Only Michael Malone’s conduct was questioned in the area of hair comparisons,” Todd said. “The [inspector general] did not question the merits of microscopic hair comparisons as a scientific discipline.”
Experts say the difference between laboratory standards and examiners’ testimony in court can be important, especially if no one is reading or watching what agents say.
“It seemingly has never been routine for crime labs to do supervision based on trial testimony,” said University of Virginia School of Law professor Brandon L. Garrett. “You can have cautious standards, but if no one is supervising their implementation, it’s predictable that analysts may cross the line.”
‘Veil of secrecy’
A review of the task force documents, as well as Post interviews, found that the Justice Department struggled to balance its roles as a law enforcer defending convictions, a minister of justice protecting the innocent, and a patron and practitioner of forensic science.
By excluding defense lawyers from the process and leaving it to prosecutors to decide case by case what to disclose, authorities waded into a legal and ethical morass that left some prisoners locked away for years longer than necessary. By adopting a secret process that limited accountability, documents show, the task force left the scope and nature of scientific problems unreported, obscuring issues from further study and permitting similar breakdowns.
“The government has hidden behind the veil of secrecy to shield these abuses despite official assurances that justice would be done,” said David Colapinto, general counsel of the National Whistleblowers Center.
The American Bar Association and others have proposed stronger ethics rules for prosecutors to act on information that casts doubt on convictions; opening laboratory and other files to the defense; clearer reporting and evidence retention; greater involvement by scientists in setting rules for testimony at criminal trials; and more scientific training for lawyers and judges.
Other experts propose more oversight by standing state forensic-science commissions and funding for research into forensic techniques and experts for indigent defendants.
A common theme among reform-minded lawyers and experts is taking the oversight of the forensic labs away from police and prosecutors.
“It’s human to make mistakes,” said Steven D. Benjamin, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It’s wrong not to learn from them.”
More specifically, the D.C. Public Defender Service, Benjamin’s group and others said justice would be served by retesting hair evidence in convictions nationwide from 1996 and earlier. “If microscopic hair analysis was a key piece of evidence in a conviction, and it was one of only a limited amount of evidence in a case, would it be worthwhile to retest that using mitochondrial DNA? I would say absolutely,” said Adams, the former FBI lab director.
The promised review by federal prosecutors of hair convictions in the District would not include cases before 1985, when FBI records were computerized, and would not disclose any defendant’s name. That approach would have missed Gates, Odom and Tribble, who were convicted earlier.
Representatives for Machen, the FBI and the Justice Department also declined to say why the review should be limited to D.C. cases. The Post found that 95 percent of the troubled cases identified by the task force were outside the District.
Avis E. Buchanan, director of the D.C. Public Defender Service, said her agency must be “a full participant” in the review, which it has sought for two years, and that it should extend nationwide. “Surely the District of Columbia is not the only place where such flawed evidence was used to convict the innocent,” she said.
Staff researcher Jennifer Jenkins and database editor Ted Mellnik contributed to this report.
Time for a cleanup operation at Maricopa County HQ
SourceTime for a cleanup operation at Maricopa County HQ
“I will demand effectiveness in the sheriff’s office, increase citizen involvement and serve one term and take the office out of politics.”
--
Twenty years ago, a candidate for Maricopa County sheriff made a pledge to serve only one term and to spend that term working to professionalize the office of sheriff by turning it into an appointed post.
The agency was mired in controversy at the time over the botched investigation into the 1991 massacre of nine people at a Buddhist temple west of Phoenix. The man responsible for the botch job, Sheriff Tom Agnos, was running for re-election.
Agnos’ challenger, a guy by the name of Joe Arpaio, said the job was too important to be left to a politician.
“Nor do I want to use my last year on the job to campaign to be re-elected,” he said.
Arpaio was a man before his time. About 20 years before his time, as it turns out.
For several years, we’ve watched the Maricopa County wars – the bombs bursting in midair over what started as a budget dispute and the resulting hemorrhaging of taxpayer money.
We all know how it’s turned out, with former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas disbarred and Arpaio under investigation. But remember, too, that neither Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox (she who is poised to collect nearly $1 million from taxpayers) nor Supervisor Don Stapley (still awaiting his bonanza) was exactly vindicated.
The charges against Wilcox -- stemming from allegations that she voted to grant funds to Chicanos Por La Causa while contracting for business loans from one of the group’s subsidiaries – were dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct. The Pima County judge never considered the merits of the case. The charges against Stapley – related to suspected misuse of campaign funds – were also dropped but the Gila County attorney noted that Stapley could have been prosecuted for seven felonies.
So we are left with a mess and an opportunity.
Two words: charter government.
The state constitution allows voters in Maricopa and Pima counties to reshape county government. The current system, with its five elected supervisors and seven elected “row officers”, leaves everybody and nobody in charge and ample turf to be protected (always at taxpayer expense).
In 1996, after the county teetered on the brink of bankruptcy even as Arpaio sued the supervisors for cutting his budget, voters authorized an effort to create a more professional operation. A voter-selected committee proposed a seven-member Board of Supervisors, with the chairman elected countywide. The plan called for non-partisan elections, term limits and an option for converting “row officers” -- sheriff, county attorney, treasurer, recorder, assessor, superintendent and court clerk -- into appointed posts.
Exactly as Arpaio had proposed in 1992 but opposed by 1996.
Voters turned it down flat.
That, however, was then and this is now, when the bills are mounting and the smoke is refusing to clear. In other words, a good time to consider a clean-up operation. The supervisors could initiate the process or it could be done by voter petition.
Former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, who sat on the 1996 charter committee, says he believes voters might support reform now, despite the inevitable political opposition.
“It’s probably one of the few times it would be able to happen because right now the public, I think they’re disgusted with what they are seeing,” Johnson said. “There’s a level of …. corruption that they see involved in their government. But given a chance to change it, I think right now would be an ideal time.”
Count Arpaio out.
The five-term sheriff says he quickly came to realize that his 1992 campaign vow – one term and an appointed sheriff -- was a mistake.
“I made a critical mistake when I said that,” he told me Tuesday. “I learned right off when I took office what stupid, stupid remarks I made because I know I would have been fired 20 years ago if I had to report to some governor or mayor or council or city manager. I would not have had the luxury to do what I felt was right for the people that I serve.”
Arpaio, like Wilcox, is now running for his sixth term and beyond that, who knows?
“Is it going to be my last term? I don’t know,” he said. “I'm not lying to you, I don’t know. I’ll be what, 84? I’ll be like Ironside (a TV detective). Remember he was in a wheelchair, so if I have to be in a wheelchair, I’ll have my machine gun with me.”
Arizona Republic, 12 News settle lawsuit with MCSO over records
County pays $45,000 to Republic, 12 News
by Michael Kiefer - Apr. 26, 2012 10:37 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Arizona Republic and 12 News have settled a lawsuit with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office over its refusal to promptly turn over public records detailing an investigation of misconduct in that office.
On Thursday, the county submitted a check for $45,000 to the newspaper and the TV station, which share a newsroom, to cover a portion of their litigation costs in obtaining the public records.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge last December awarded $50,546 in attorney's fees in the lawsuit after the news organizations won release of the records they sought. The Sheriff's Office appealed the judgment for fees, and the parties settled for the amount paid Thursday.
"I hope the award and payment will prompt the Sheriff's Office to think carefully before instinctively withholding public records," said attorney David Bodney, who represents The Republic and 12 News.
"We're glad to have prevailed in this lengthy legal struggle with the Sheriff's Office. At its heart, this case was about accountability within the department and transparency to the public for how the sheriff runs his office," said Randy Lovely, senior vice president for news and audience development for Republic Media/Phoenix.
But Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tom Liddy, who represented Sheriff Joe Arpaio's agency in the matter, said the settlement was reached only to save taxpayers the cost of further litigation.
"We were correct and The Arizona Republic was wrong," Liddy said. "The sheriff did everything he could to turn over the documents and to protect the private information of individuals mentioned in the report as required by law."
But when a new judge took over the case, Liddy said, the Sheriff's Office felt it would be too costly to defend further.
"I didn't want to spend $100,000 to $150,000 of taxpayer money over a squabble with The Arizona Republic," he said.
Bodney said, "It really shouldn't cost a person money to get a public official like Sheriff Arpaio to comply with the Public Records Law."
"Ideally, taxpayers should not be liable for this payment, and the best news is that the sheriff settled the case instead of appealing it as he threatened to do," Bodney said.
On April 14, 2011, the news organizations filed a request under the Arizona Public Records Law for a copy of an investigative report prepared by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu detailing internal Sheriff's Office activities that eventually led to the firings of then-Maricopa County Sheriff's Chief Deputy David Hendershott, Deputy Chief Larry Black and Capt. Joel Fox. Fox's termination was appealed and a decision is pending before the county Merit Commission.
The investigative report sought by The Republic and 12 News included a 1,022-page summary, 400 pages of findings and 20,000 pages of transcripts and other documents.
Arpaio denied the request for its release, saying that it should remain confidential while the three men were still employed by the office or appealing their firings. The Republic and 12 News sued.
"They cited a hodgepodge of reasons for withholding the Babeu report, so it appeared the sheriff was merely stonewalling," Bodney said. "Plainly, the Babeu report identified public corruption at the highest levels of the Sheriff's Office. It was not a flattering look at some very public officials, and of course the sheriff himself."
Days later, the Sheriff's Office began releasing pieces of the report, but refused to release it in its entirety until ordered to do so by a Superior Court judge in mid-November. It revealed, among other things, that Arpaio had been made aware of some instances of misconduct and mismanagement in his organization. Issues identified in the report ranged from financial problems and inappropriate campaign fundraising to abuse of employees and ignoring sex-crime investigations to focus on pet projects.
The settlement of attorney's fees was finalized Tuesday, the same day that Hendershott, Black and Fox filed a lawsuit against the county and the Sheriff's Office alleging defamation of character because of the contents of the Babeu report and its release to the media.
Reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this story
Some charities run by con artists and crooks
spend most of the money you give them to benefit the people
that run the charity, not the causes the charity claims to support.
From this
article
it sounds like PACs are the same way.
I wonder how much of the money people gave Sheriff Joe's PAC will be pocketed by Sheriff Joe
and the folks that run his PAC???
According to this
article
more then 50 percent of the money spent
by Sheriff Joe's PAC went to overhead!
I cut out most of the
article
to highlight Sheriff Joe's abuses but you can read the full
article
here.
Few rules govern local PAC spending
by Ronald J. Hansen - Apr. 29, 2012 10:54 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Last summer Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio formed his own federal political-action committee, saying it would help him "have a more active role in helping good people get elected."
So far, campaign-finance records show the PAC's biggest expenses were overhead, and it banked most of the rest of its cash. Out of $100,000 raised, $3,000 went to candidates for office.
The picture is similar for Jan PAC, a super PAC set up last year by Gov. Jan Brewer for independent political spending, meaning the spending isn't coordinated with any candidate. That PAC has not yet spent anything on any particular races, records show.
<SNIP>
Some PACs aggressively spend nearly all of their contributions supporting their favored candidates or issues. Others ring up a variety of overhead expenses that leave room for little else. In some cases, critics say the funds have served as little more than slush funds for the powerful and well-connected, with spending on travel, salaries and other perks.
<SNIP>
Arpaio's California-based PAC was formed last August. Records show that donors to the PAC so far have had little impact on the political landscape.
The PAC paid more to process its contributions made by donors, $3,151, than it gave to candidates for office, $3,000.
Joe PAC paid Campaign Solutions, a consulting firm in Alexandria, Va., at least $17,000 through March, most of it as a commission for its fundraising assistance. Its sister firm, Connell Donatelli Inc., collected an additional $15,000 for advertising expenses.
In addition to what Joe PAC paid out, it also owed nearly $17,000 in debt.
<SNIP>
Through March, Arpaio's PAC had given two campaigns a total of $3,000. Matt Salmon, a Mesa Republican, received $2,500. The PAC also gave $500 to Phil Liberatore, a Republican running in an open district near San Francisco.
Woman to sue over Maricopa County jail conditions
Officers ignored inmate with plastic bag over her head for more than 40 minutes
by JJ Hensley - May. 3, 2012 10:05 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A woman booked into Maricopa County's Fourth Avenue Jail in late February held a plastic garbage bag over her head for more than 40 minutes in a holding cell before sheriff's detention officers noticed or took action, even though at least two officers put other detainees into the cell while the woman lay motionless on the floor with the bag over her head.
Now Angela Rose Metzger, 44, is planning a claim against the Sheriff's Office for what her attorney says is a culture of neglect in Maricopa County jails that stretches back decades.
"I think the most important aspect is the question of, 'How often does this happen in this jail?' " said Joy Bertrand, a Phoenix attorney. "We see in the footage another prisoner face down and not moving for a period of time, and no one offers her assistance, either. These are the kind of incidents that the U.S. Department of Justice and (U.S. District Court) Judge (Neil) Wake have been calling on the jail and Sheriff Arpaio to fix."
But Wake's 2008 ruling that conditions in the jail are unconstitutional, and the way the Sheriff's Office chose to address Wake's ruling, might have inadvertently contributed to how Metzger injured herself. As part of the sheriff's efforts to improve unsanitary conditions that were criticized by Wake, the agency began using plastic bags in garbage cans -- the same kind of bag that Metzger used to attempt to commit suicide.
Two detention officers received additional training and formal counseling after Metzger's incident.
"Our officers down there try to do the best they can with what they have. Sometimes it can be chaotic, but there's no excuse to miss something like that," said Sheriff's Capt. Brian Lee.
Metzger had been booked into the jail late in the evening of Feb. 28 on suspicion of assaulting her husband. Metzger concedes she was heavily under the influence of prescription pills. She believes she told Phoenix police and firefighters that she was suicidal.
But police records do not include any mention of suicide, according to a police spokesman, and records of the two calls to Metzger's home that night do indicate that she denied a paramedic's offer to go to the hospital. Instead, she chose to remain home with her family.
Police returned to the home less than an hour later and arrested Metzger on suspicion of striking her husband, said Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump.
"Our officers did their due diligence. We're not going to let impairment keep us from booking a domestic-violence suspect," Crump said. "Nowhere in the report does her family indicate that she is a hazard to herself, nor is it even brought up that she is a danger to herself."
Once Metzger got to jail, medical screeners who work for the county's Correctional Health Services would have asked Metzger about her condition and mental state, and then sought psychological care or moved her to a special holding facility if she showed signs of being suicidal. The Sheriff's Office referred nearly 1,900 inmates to psychological care last month. It books about 9,000 people into jail on a monthly basis.
Metzger said the prescription drugs caused her to black out and she does not remember the incident. She ended up in a holding cell with a few other women.
Surveillance footage from inside the cell shows Metzger stumbling around the small rectangular cell for about 90 minutes before she lay on the floor. Eventually, she drags herself across the cell floor toward a trash can from which she removes the bag and places it over her head and torso.
More than 30 minutes later, though Metzger had barely moved in that time, a detention officer drops off an inmate who steps over Metzger's body while the officer leaves. Less than five minutes later, another detention officer looks into the cell, but the officer also does not take any action with Metzger.
It is not until a third officer drops another inmate off in the cell that a jail employee notices Metzger, removes the bag and calls others to begin performing medical treatment.
"Whether she's so out of it that she thinks (the bag) is a blanket, whether she was committing suicide, whether she didn't know where she was, it doesn't matter," Bertrand said. "She is completely at the mercy of the jail. It is their responsibility, when they see someone engage in dangerous behavior, to stop the behavior, not wait and see how it plays out."
Hospital records indicate Metzger was crying and breathing normally when she arrived at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center about 3:40 a.m., and she was released back to the sheriff's custody about two hours later. Tests showed Metzger had abnormal levels of benzodiazepine, an antidepressant, in her system.
Part of the discipline meted out to sheriff's officers in the case included training on how to pay closer attention to inmates during security walks, which are scheduled every 25 minutes -- another outcome of Wake's federal court ruling.
"We're always looking to improve things," Lee said. "We're happy that something more serious didn't happen."
Feds to pursue lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
by JJ Hensley - May. 10, 2012 07:29 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Department of Justice called a 10 a.m. news conference in Phoenix where the head of the agency's civil-rights division will announce a lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office after the two sides were unable to resolve allegations that the agency discriminates against Hispanic residents.
The Justice Department released the findings of a three-year investigation in December that included numerous allegations that the Sheriff's Office fostered a culture of discrimination that resulted in deputies and detention officers violating the constitutional rights of Hispanic residents during the sheriff's patrol and jail operations.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his supporters have called the investigation a ploy by President Barack Obama's administration to curry favor with Hispanic voters and say the findings concentrate on several isolated incidents but fail to demonstrate a pattern of discrimination.
Representatives for the Sheriff's Office and the Justice Department were scheduled to negotiate a settlement to the claims, which would like include increased training and some court-mandated oversight of the settlement, but the negotiations stalled when the Sheriff's Office refused to consider the government's desire to appoint a monitor to oversee the decision.
The Justice Department will now bring their allegations before a federal judge who will rule on their merits and determine what remedies are necessary in the Sheriff's Office to correct any deficiencies in the agency.
Arpaio case: Justice Department plans to sue sheriff
by JJ Hensley - May. 9, 2012 10:16 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
On the eve of the U.S. Justice Department's anticipated filing of a lawsuit alleging racial profiling by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Joe Arpaio unveiled the most public effort to overhaul the office since he took the job nearly 20 years ago.
A source close to the federal investigation said the Justice Department expected to file a civil lawsuit Thursday against the Sheriff's Office, and the federal government made that intention known again to Arpaio with a two-paragraph letter delivered Wednesday that noted stalled negotiations between Arpaio's representatives and the department.
Sheriff's officials were under no impression that the reform plan unveiled Wednesday would stop the Justice Department from taking legal action. But they hope the initiative will provide a framework for improvement within the Sheriff's Office while the legal dispute makes its way through court.
The sheriff's initiative, highlighted in a 17-page document, focuses on community outreach, accountability within the agency, transparency in how the office conducts its operations and more robust data collection. The overall goal is to improve the Sheriff's Office and build trust within certain segments of the community.
"We've been talking about this philosophy for months, and we finally decided -- the sheriff decided -- it's no longer time to sit on our hands waiting for the Department of Justice to take us to court. Let's do something about it," Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan said.
The Justice Department in December released findings of a three-year investigation into the Sheriff's Office. It accused Arpaio's agency of widespread discrimination against Hispanic residents in the sheriff's patrol and jail operations. The two sides were scheduled to begin negotiating a resolution to the discrimination claims, with the threat of a lawsuit lingering if they could not reach agreement.
The sheriff's proposal mirrors many of the recommendations contained in a 128-page draft agreement that federal officials shared with the Sheriff's Office earlier this year.
That document was supposed to serve as the basis for negotiations as the two sides worked to resolve the discrimination allegations. But talks broke down before they got started, as Arpaio's team refused to meet the Justice Department's demand for a court-appointed monitor to oversee whatever agreement was reached.
Though the sheriff's proposal mentions someone who would "monitor enforcement actions and jail practices for adherence to constitutional requirements," Sheridan said the sheriff envisions that position having a relatively limited role within his agency.
Arpaio's representatives have contended that the Justice Department's definition of a monitor was someone with day-to-day oversight of all operations in the Sheriff's Office. The monitor envisioned in the sheriff's initiative would answer to Arpaio, Sheridan said.
"I've been in contact with the county manager about hiring an internal monitor that works for the sheriff, reports to the sheriff," Sheridan said. "We also have opened recruitment for a jail monitor, two weeks ago, to do that, and those would be the two people that I would consider to do the internal monitor.
"The issue that we had with the Department of Justice was very clear: They wanted an external monitor that we had to go through to do any changes in the Sheriff's Office."
Sheriff's officials concede the agency made mistakes in the past, particularly mismanaging sex-crime investigations from 2004 through 2008 and failing to nurture relations with the Hispanic community. The reform initiative discussed Wednesday is the office's attempt to publicly discuss improvement efforts.
But the agency has 20 years of history with Arpaio to overcome, said Alessandra Soler-Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, whose group has filed several lawsuits against the Sheriff's Office alleging racial profiling.
The document Arpaio revealed Wednesday would have carried more weight had it included input from the Justice Department -- or, at the very least, an independent, court-appointed monitor, she said.
"The same person who has condoned and implemented these racially discriminatory practices is in no position to lead a community-relations effort to build trust," she said. "I have absolutely no confidence that any of this is going to happen, given who is in charge of implementing it."
The Sheriff's Office said its internal-reform effort began several weeks ago and relied on a cadre of patrol supervisors, jail commanders and office administrators to together identify what they viewed as the agency's most pressing needs.
The results break down into a few basic areas that need improvement: oversight within the office, data collection and community relations.
A computer-management system being installed in the sheriff's new $80 million headquarters/dispatch center, under construction at Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street, will address the agency's data-collection needs. Efforts to secure money from the county to hire an outside monitor should help meet the need for oversight.
The biggest challenge might be getting a skeptical public to accept the sincerity of the sheriff's reform efforts, particularly when he has accused the federal investigation of being politically motivated. Even Arpaio admits it is a tough sell.
"When you're talking about this sensitive problem called illegal immigration, you can't make everyone happy," Arpiao said. "Everyone has their own ideas. ... I'm not going to stop enforcing those laws as long as I'm the sheriff. You have to try to let the public know that, (and) the Hispanic community, and try to educate them and let them know what we're doing. It's difficult sometimes to get the message across."
The bluster just went poof
May. 9, 2012 07:01 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
"This is to show that we did not need the federal authority to do our jobs."
-- A defiant Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, at the end of a two-day "crime-suppression sweep" conducted in the northwest Valley in October 2009.
Mark your calendars. Wednesday, May 9, 2012, is the day the defiance died.
The defiance, the bluster, the self-important my-way-or-highway sense of invulnerability. Twenty years of self-aggrandizing braggadocio. The pink underwear. The green bologna. The purple delusion about sitting astride the "America's Sheriff" royal throne. Poof. All gone.
It has been deflated by Arpaio's own hand. The sheriff has released a 17-page, four-color document titled "Integrity, Accountability, Community" that purports to assure the reader that no one in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office ever would "abuse the authority invested in me."
In a statement of his own on the document, Arpaio declares his personal astonishment that his "willingness to take on difficult and at times controversial issues, (has) led some people to feel dismayed, even alienated, particularly as it relates to our Hispanic community."
In fact, Arpaio released his 17-page declaration of good intentions and good citizenship on the very day the U.S. Justice Department announced its plan to file a civil-rights lawsuit against Arpaio and his department.
At the heart of the lawsuit will be the claim that by conducting his so-called crime-suppression sweeps, Arpaio violated the tenets of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It will claim he racially profiled his targets, which largely were Hispanics.
Whether Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez has documented adequately the precise claim of racial profiling is open to question.
Nevertheless, Arpaio's 17-page declaration of innocence -- replete with full-color photos that seem to suggest Arpaio hires almost no deputies that are not women or minorities -- constitutes evidence that, at long last, he knows the free-wheeling gig is up, regardless where the legal trail ends.
With its promised lawsuit, the Justice Department seeks to force a consent agreement upon Arpaio similar to agreements reached with numerous other police agencies. Those typically involved assigning a presiding "special master" to take effective control.
Not many, if any, of those departments are headed by elected sheriffs, however. None, certainly, is headed by an elected sheriff with Arpaio's national following.
Still, this eleventh-hour posturing strongly suggests Arpaio believes Justice lawyers have a case against him.
Arpaio conducted more than 17 "crime-suppression sweeps" over the years with an absolute contempt for their effects on those communities. He sent waves of deputies into Hispanic neighborhoods fully cognizant that tactically stopping vehicles for having broken license-plate lights would push the limits of racial-profiling laws, at the very least.
Now, he wants to declare his compassion? His commitment to "bias-free practices"?
Arpaio should have thought of his commitment to community back in 2009 or beyond.
Not now. Not when such a very good reason all that defiance suddenly has died is staring him down at last.
U.S. sues Arpaio's office over treatment of Latinos
by JJ Hensley - May. 10, 2012 11:17 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The U.S. Justice Department's racial-profiling lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will prolong a case that already has languished for years unless negotiators find common ground for a settlement.
The suit, filed Thursday, accuses deputies of discriminating against Latino residents and seeks injunctive relief from a federal judge. It marks just the second time since the federal police-reform act was passed in 1994 that the Justice Department has been forced to file a contested lawsuit against a law-enforcement agency, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez said.
If experience is any barometer, finding common ground for a settlement could prove difficult.
The only other such case the Justice Department has taken to court took three years and several million dollars to settle, and the parties in that case were less polarized than Arpaio and his federal nemesis.
Perez said Thursday that his agency was left with no choice but to file suit against the five-term sheriff, his office and the county after Arpaio's attorneys balked at a demand for a court-appointed monitor to ensure the Sheriff's Office complied with any settlement terms.
The sheriff has repeatedly rejected the notion of a court-appointed monitor with sweeping powers, and his attorneys blamed the Justice Department for being intractable on the issue. Arpaio said he welcomed the court challenge.
"We are not racist, we do not racial- profile. There's no systemic proof of that," Arpaio said Thursday. "Quite frankly, I'm happy (they sued)."
But Perez said he was saddened by the turn of events that led the federal government to file only its second lawsuit since reforms were enacted after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.
"I come here today with a profound sense of disappointment ... because, based on our experience, I feel like we had a pretty good handle on some of the solutions that would work and would make (Arpaio) look good and would make the community better and would make the community safer," Perez said.
A three-year Justice Department investigation concluded in December that sheriff's deputies and detention officers discriminated against Latinos in patrol and jail operations. The investigation initially was stalled by the sheriff's refusal to turn over records, which delayed the probe for 18 months and forced the federal government to sue for the documents in September 2010. That suit was resolved in 2011.
Arpaio has repeatedly charged that the investigation was politically motivated and that the suit is timed to coincide with President Barack Obama's re-election bid.
On Thursday, Arpaio said he believed that even if his office had cooperated with investigators in 2009, it would not have completed the case until now.
Perez said nothing could be further from the truth.
"This case could have been brought to resolution much sooner," he said. "Frankly, we were stonewalled."
Neither side will be able to stonewall now that the matter is headed to court, but there are few precedents by which to predict how the case might proceed.
When the Justice Department sued the Columbus (Ohio) Division of Police in 1999, the federal police-reform statute was fairly new, and some thought it was ripe for a challenge, said William Yeomans, an American University professor who spent 25 years in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
The Ohio case was complicated by the Columbus police union's insistence that any negotiated changes needed to include the labor group, said Robert Driscoll, a former Arpaio attorney who worked in the Civil Rights Division at that time and helped litigate the Ohio case for the government.
Negotiations proceeded during the three years that the Ohio lawsuit was active, Driscoll said, but the Justice Department ultimately agreed to settle the case because a U.S. magistrate's opinion did not clearly favor the federal government's position.
"We were a bunch of Republicans," he said. "We had a relatively pro-law-enforcement bent, and we didn't want to absolutely hammer the cops if we didn't need to. I think it was, relatively speaking, a good exit for everybody."
The city spent about $2 million on its defense, according to a report published in the Columbus Post-Dispatch after the settlement was reached.
Though Arpaio's dispute with the Justice Department has now been going for more than three years, attorneys on both sides say settlement remains possible.
"It would be a wonderful thing for this community if we could come together and forge solutions," Perez said. "I hope (Arpaio) will change his position on (the monitor)."
But it remains the sticking point for the Sheriff's Office.
The Justice Department sent Arpaio a 128-page draft agreement earlier this spring that was supposed to serve as the basis of negotiations that the two sides were about to begin.
It included the government's proposed remedies.
Arpaio incorporated many of those suggestions into a 17-page booklet he released Wednesday. It outlined the sheriff's efforts to repair community relations by having deputies who are more active and accountable, and by improving the office's training and grievance process.
The sheriff's proposed reforms included a monitor -- but one who would report to Arpaio.
"This too-little, too-late document, cobbled together at beyond the eleventh hour, is no substitute for meaningful reform," Perez said.
Arpaio and his attorneys are convinced that a court-appointed monitor is a ruse for the federal government to take control of the agency. They base that claim on language in the 128-page draft agreement.
However, in addition to the government's proposed changes in policies, training and oversight, the document includes a line that explicitly states, "The monitor shall not, and is not intended to, replace or assume the role and duties of the defendants, including the sheriff."
Despite that, Arpaio attorney Joe Popolizio said Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Roy Austin told him in a phone conversation in April that the sheriff would have to agree to a monitor with broader powers if negotiations were to begin.
Austin said Thursday that Popolizio was incorrect.
"The only thing that was stated was that independent, outside oversight had to be a part of the agreement. There is no way we could discuss what the monitor would look like before negotiations," he said. "We absolutely never said what a monitor would look like."
In addition to ensuring the sheriff is in compliance with any court order to resolve the allegations of discrimination, the monitor would also assure the public that change was taking place, Perez said.
Yeomans said after so much rancor it seems that Arpaio will resist any change.
"When you get cases like this, relations with the community have been strained. Rebuilding those relations is a key part of rebuilding trust with a law-enforcement agency," he said. "At this point, he's established that it's going to be essential to have oversight of the implementation of the changes."
Beydler: Arpaio is a criminal and should go to jail
Posted: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:58 am
Guest Commentary by Jon Beydler
The U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the sheriff’s department and Maricopa County on Thursday, May 10, in Los Angeles.
It was only the second time in its 18 years of civil police reform work that it has had to file a contested lawsuit. Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights Tom Perez said that “all the allegations in the complaint result from a culture of disregard for basic human rights within the agency that starts at the top.” He went on to say that “at its core, this is an abuse of power case, involving a sheriff and a sheriff’s office that disregarded the Constitution, ignored sound police practices, compromised public safety and did not hesitate to retaliate against perceived critics.”
Arapio’s response to the lawsuit was to make himself out to be an innocent victim of the Obama re-election campaign, which is absurd. It goes along with his narcissism. Oh boo hoo Arapio. You’ve pounded yourself on the chest over the years more times than Barnum and Bailey ever promoted their “Greatest Show on Earth.”
Speaking of shows, you have created one, but it’s not funny or entertaining any longer. You have cost the taxpayers of this county incredible sums of money for you and your staff’s malfeasance and ineptitude. You have consistently trampled on the civil rights of people of all races, color and creed. You have either attempted to or have succeeded in ruining the lives and careers of many upstanding and innocent members of our community who have taken issue with you or your policies.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s now time for you to stand up and take your medicine like a man. After the lawsuit was filed, you boasted to the media that you would never go out without a fight. What are you going to do if you lose in court? Barricade yourself in your office and start shooting?
We shouldn’t be shocked. This man is not of sound mind. He is and always has conducted himself in a narcissistic and sociopathic manner.
Frankly, we should not be all that happy with this CIVIL lawsuit. The Department of Justice should have filed CRIMINAL charges. They have the evidence. People have died. People have been hurt badly. This watered-down, weak-kneed civil lawsuit that demands that Arpaio allow the feds to monitor the activities of the sheriff and his employees is almost laughable. Can’t imagine that scenario having any legs. Facts are: Arpaio is a criminal and should go to jail. How about pink underwear and Tent City?
It’s a dry heat.
Jon Beydler is a 34-year Valley resident and the former Mayor of Fountain Hills who lives in south Chandler.
Ex-officer accused of taking Arpaio poster
May. 21, 2012 02:18 PM
Associated Press
WICHITA, Kan. -- A former southeast Kansas police officer is accused of stealing a framed poster of a controversial Arizona sheriff while executing a search warrant for narcotics.
A criminal information filed Monday in federal court charges 42-year-old Spencer Coate with a misdemeanor count of depriving a citizen of his constitutional rights.
The document says Coate was taking part in a search for drugs at a Galena building in June 2009 when he took the poster of Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County. Arpaio is known nationwide for his tough talk and hardline stance on illegal immigration.
Coate is also accused of stealing a framed print of a duck.
His attorney, Robin Fowler, says he will make the "appropriate comment" in court.
Galena Police Chief Larry Delmont says Coate was fired in May 2010.
If you ask me this Obama birth certificate thing sounds like a lame excuse for some of Sheriff Joe's thugs to take a vacation in Hawaii that is paid for by the taxpayers.
Arpaio using deputy to help in Obama birth investigation
by JJ Hensley - May. 22, 2012 09:49 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer investigation into documents pertaining to President Barack Obama's place of birth and citizenship now includes the services of a taxpayer-funded deputy, according to Arpaio.
The deputy joined Mike Zullo, a volunteer member of Arpaio's cold-case posse, in Hawaii this week in part due to "security issues," according to Arpaio, and because the investigation has progressed.
"It's one deputy, so what? We have security issues, too, that I can't get into," Arpaio said on Friday. "For six months, we were not spending any money. When you're doing investigations, sometimes things change, you put more resources into it."
The cold-case posse has spent about $40,000 on the investigation so far, according to the Sheriff's Office. The posse is funded through donations.
Arpaio has in the past touted the investigation's total reliance on donated funds and volunteers, but he said the investigation now requires the use of a sworn deputy. Arpaio said the volunteer posse is in the midst of a criminal investigation but refused to discuss details of the probe or what drove the posse member and deputy to Hawaii.
The Sheriff's Office also had to cover the costs of airfare and hotel rooms for the deputy, Arpaio said, but he expects the posse to reimburse the agency for those costs.
The detective assigned to the Obama investigation works in the sheriff's threats unit and continues to work on other cases while assisting with the posse's investigation, according to the Sheriff's Office.
"He's not going to make any arrests," Arpaio said. "I didn't say we're going to keep using him. We're not going to use him constantly. He's not assigned to it. For this trip, I feel it's important to have a deputy there. He's just a liaison to give advice if needed. He's not doing anything. The posse's been doing the research. I'm not going to say what other trips they've been taking, but they haven't had a deputy with them."
Arpaio is not the only Arizona official with an election-year interest in discussing records related to Obama's birth.
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett recently asked for confirmation of President Obama's birth as he worked to confirm the President is illegible to be on the Arizona ballot. Bennett recieved verification Tuesday night and said the matter is closed.
The sheriff's investigation was launched last year, Arpaio said, at the request of 250 members of the Surprise Tea Party.
In March, the sheriff held a news conference with Zullo; author Jerry Corsi, whose research initially guided the investigation; and members of the Surprise Tea Party. Zullo detailed the posse's allegations that Obama's birth certificate and Selective Service card were fraudulent.
The White House pointed to documents available on the government's website that verify the president's birth in Hawaii. Copies of those documents were what Zullo relied on in the investigation.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil-rights lawsuit alleging that the Sheriff's Office has discriminated against Latinos in jail and patrol operations and that his office has retaliated against people who speak out against Arpaio and his policies.
Arpaio has denied that the Obama investigation is politically motivated, though critics have pointed out that other skeptics and many mainstream Republicans long ago abandoned the topic.
Arpaio said his investigation isn't focused on Obama's birthplace, but rather the potential that some of the documents produced to verify his birth are fraudulent.
"I have enough deputies around to spare one," Arpaio said. "One deputy out of 900 and we're going to have problems? No way."
Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.
According to this article it has taken a lawsuit 35 years to get the Maricopa County jail to treat and house prisoners in a legal constitutional way.
If our government masters refuse to obey the laws and treat us in a way required by the constitution why should us serfs be required to obey the laws????
Judge: MCSO jail conditions better
Sheriff's Office's improvements end court-ordered oversight
by JJ Hensley - May. 24, 2012 10:02 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has sufficiently corrected jail deficiencies like overcrowding and poor sanitation to emerge in part from under a 35-year-old federal civil-rights lawsuit.
The decision by a federal judge will effectively end court-ordered oversight of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail facilities when it comes to food quality, sanitary conditions and overcrowding in holding areas. But attorneys representing a class of not-yet-sentenced inmates in the decades-old lawsuit say the county's health-care system in the jails and the Sheriff's Office still have plenty of work to do to bring their facilities and programs into compliance with constitutional standards.
Arpaio on Thursday touted U.S. District Judge Neil Wake's approval of the sheriff's efforts to improve his jails.
"As the years went by, we've improved out internal procedures. We're always trying to improve our jail system," Arpaio said. "I will repeat again: We run an excellent jail system, even though I may have some get-tough policies running those jails."
The lawsuit was filed in 1977 by three inmates living in the old First Avenue Jail when Jerry Hill was Maricopa County sheriff. The jails, inmates and sheriffs have continued to change through the years, but many issues related to sanitary conditions, food quality and access to recreation have remained, according to inmates and their attorneys.
Courts have generally agreed. The first judgment against the Sheriff's Office was handed down in 1981. Fourteen years later, the Sheriff's Office and inmates' attorneys entered into a negotiated agreement that stipulated changes in jail conditions. By 1998, the Sheriff's Office decided it had complied and tried to terminate the lawsuit. The matter languished for a decade before Wake took up the case and in 2008 ruled that conditions in the jails still fell below minimum requirements.
Wake's 2008 ruling focused on a dozen specific areas, and the Sheriff's Office spent the last four years trying to satisfy the court by reducing overcrowding in holding cells, providing cleaning supplies for inmates in the Durango Jail, modifying recreation areas to allow for more inmates to be out of their cells, and bringing the sheriff's famously spartan menu into compliance with federal dietary guidelines that required Arpaio to provide inmates with an average of 2,600 calories each day. A dietician was hired to ensure compliance.
"(Local attorneys) continue to say I promote a culture of cruelty in the jails, and I presume if that was true, with all the inmates they have interviewed throughout the years, they never found any culture of cruelty in our jails," Arpaio said.
Larry Hammond, an attorney with a Phoenix firm that represented inmates in recent years, said while Arpaio will claim victory, Wake's influence played a vital role in improving the jail conditions.
"The people complained so bitterly about the federal courts getting involved in matters that ought to be left to the local level," Hammond said. "Were it not for this federal court, the extraordinary result that came out of this case I'm just convinced would never have occurred."
Reaction from Maricopa County officials was mixed.
Supervisor Max Wilson said Wake's ruling demonstrated the positive results that can come from the sheriff's cooperation with county officials. But Mary Rose Wilcox, a frequent critic of Arpaio's, was less enthusiastic.
"This is an important first step," Wilcox said. "We have much further to go."
The plaintiffs' attorneys and court-appointed experts would agree with Wilcox.
With the issues in the sheriff's facilities largely resolved, sheriff's administrators will focus with county officials on improving inmate access to medical and mental-health care in an effort to satisfy those portions of Wake's ruling.
A pair of court-appointed experts visited the jails in April. While they noted the increased staffing levels and reduced mortality rates in the jails, the experts still had serious concerns about inmates' access to mental-health care and the ability of detention officers, nurses, doctors and psychiatrists to communicate with each other.
One expert also reviewed the case of Ernest "Marty" Atencio, who died in December after Phoenix police and Maricopa County detention officers had an altercation with Atencio at the Fourth Avenue Jail and deployed a Taser.
Atencio's case highlights the need for more training, particularly when patients with potential mental illness or those going through drug or alcohol withdrawal come into the system.
Some of those issues will be addressed when the county installs an electronic health-record system, the report notes, and others are the result of inherent flaws in the way mentally ill inmates are treated.
"(Correctional Health Services) has investigated many options/opportunities to secure more timely access to psychiatric hospitalization but have been stymied by the bounds of Arizona's civil commitment laws, local court interpretation, criminal court processes, defense attorney strategy and frankly, the larger political decision of the courts/counties to use the jail rather than a psychiatric hospital for competency assessment and restoration," wrote Kathryn Burns, a court-appointed expert.
But officials will have to work within those restrictions to improve access to medical and mental-health care if they want to emerge from under that portion of Wake's judgment, said an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, which represents the inmates.
"The sheriff, like the county, as defendants, are required to comply with the medical and mental-health provisions of the judgment. As of now, neither the sheriff nor the county are in compliance with those," said Gabe Eber. "The court has treated them both as co-defendants. There are clearly areas the sheriff needs to be involved in. ... There are going to be areas of access to care where the sheriff needs to cooperate with CHS and make changes."
On the other hand just because she is a bit dysfunctional that should not be an excuse for our government masters to lock here up under government guardianship in a mental institution or old folks home. As long as Lucienne Touboul is behaving herself she should be allowed to live in her own home without any interference from our government masters.
Cat hoarder, 81, should be pitied
May. 26, 2012 01:49 PM
When an 81-year-old woman takes in 64 cats and makes soup out of those that die, she is to be pitied not prosecuted ("Wittmann cat hoarder arrested in new cruelty case," Valley & State, Thursday).
Ironically, her acts were probably motivated by love of animals, not a desire to be cruel to them.
We can't say for certain that those cats had worse lives than they otherwise would have.
Feral cats have high death rates and live in bad conditions. Many of them are run over by cars. Many of them are killed by coyotes. Many of them starve or die of disease, not better fates than those that were under her care.
Lucienne Touboul's behavior was clearly dysfunctional, but it was not depraved or evil. She is a sick, old woman who belongs in a nursing home, not a criminal who belongs in jail.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's decision to treat her like a criminal is the real cruelty.
The proper way to address this issue is to have Touboul declared incapacitated and placed in guardianship, not to have her prosecuted and placed in jail.
-- Kevin Walsh, Phoenix
Long gap in Sheriff Arpaio’s immigration patrols
Posted: Thursday, June 7, 2012 6:00 am
Associated Press
The Arizona sheriff known for his hardline stance on illegal immigration has gone months without using his most controversial law enforcement tactic.
Critics of America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff say legal pressure has led Joe Arpaio to suspend his immigration sweeps. But the Maricopa County lawman says his opponents have it all wrong.
“I haven’t stopped anything,” Arpaio said. “I don’t know why anybody thinks we stopped.”
The special immigration patrols are at the center of two separate federal lawsuits, one from the U.S. Justice Department, accusing Arpaio’s office of discriminating against Latinos.
During the sweeps, as many as 200 deputies and volunteer posse members flood a designated area, making dozens of traffic stops and arrests. The enforcement zones are sometimes in areas with a large Hispanic population. Illegal immigrants account for nearly 60 percent of the approximately 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps Arpaio has launched since January 2008.
It’s been nearly eight months since the last such patrol, marking the longest pause in more than four years.
Arpaio said the break isn’t unusual. He added that the news media have not reported about immigration arrests made during more routine patrols by his deputies.
“I am not backing down regardless of them taking me to court,” he said. “I am still enforcing immigration laws. They are being arrested and are going to jail.”
But Arpaio’s critics, such as the ACLU of Arizona, say he has backed away from the patrols because they make it more difficult to defend against the lawsuits that say his deputies racially profile Hispanics in immigration enforcement efforts.
“It’s not in his best interest to conduct these high-profile sweeps before he is put on the stand to defend his practices,” said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.
The sheriff’s office completed its last sweep in southwest Phoenix in October. Previously, the longest break was a six months stretch during the first half of 2009, when civil rights officials with the Department of Justice told the sheriff they were investigating him.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit last month saying the sheriff’s office carried out a pattern of discrimination against Latinos in his sweeps and had a culture of disregard for basic constitutional rights. Arpaio is accused of launching some sweeps based on citizen letters that complained about people with dark skin congregating in a given area or speaking Spanish but never reported an actual crime.
The department is seeking an agreement requiring the sheriff’s office to train officers in how to make constitutional traffic stops, collect data on people arrested in traffic stops and reach out to Latinos to assure them that the sheriff’s department is there to also protect them.
A second lawsuit focusing on the patrols is scheduled for trial next month in federal court. The handful of Latinos who filed the suit say officers based some traffic stops on the race of Hispanics in vehicles and made the stops solely to check their immigration status. The plaintiffs aren’t seeking money. Instead, they want Arpaio to enact changes to guard against what they said is discriminatory policing at his agency.
Arpaio is fighting both lawsuits, denying the charges and saying his patrols are within the law.
In December, a judge considering the lawsuit brought by two groups, including the ACLU, on behalf of the Latinos who say officers pulled them over with no probable cause ruled that deputies enforcing Arizona’s immigrant smuggling law cannot detain people based solely on the suspicion that they’re in the country illegally. Arpaio has appealed that decision.
In that same ruling, U.S. District Judge Murray Snow noted the case’s evidence could lead a judge or jury to conclude that Arpaio’s office racially profiles Latinos.
The sheriff remains defiant. He vowed to launch another sweep in the future and said he is still raiding businesses suspected of hiring illegal immigrants and arresting suspects in more routine traffic stops along roadways that are known smuggling routes.
“I am not backing off,” he said. “You can tell all the critics, ‘Look at the statistics, and look at all the illegal immigrants we have arrested.’”
Saying 'no' to rent-a-sheriff
Is the sheriff’s office for hire?
Should any kook willing to pay for an investigation be able to retain the services of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s volunteer posse, along with the air of legitimacy that goes with an official law enforcement agency?
If that’s OK with you, then you should be angry with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which in a split vote Wednesday refused to accept private funds to offset the roughly $10,000 spent by the sheriff on his ridiculous “birther” investigation into President Barack Obama's residency status. An investigation that involved posse members and an actual deputy.
The sheriff said that he didn’t want taxpayers paying for the investigation, which involved sending a deputy to Hawaii, and he has asked the board to accept money from outsiders to cover the costs.
The board said “no thanks.
This essentially forces the sheriff to take the money from his own budget. In response, an Arpaio spokeswoman to said, "(Supervisors) are letting their politics hurt taxpayers. We said we weren't using taxpayer money, we're trying to live up to our end of the bargain, and they're trying to keep the sheriff from living up to his end of the deal. That's bad business."
Is it? Or is good government?
After all, if the sheriff can use outside funds on one wild goose chase, why not others?
If a UFO aficionado in Arizona doesn’t believe that the “Phoenix lights” have been adequately explained could he use private funds to get the sheriff to assign a squad of posse investigators to the case?
How about “hiring” with private money a squad posse members to locate a jackalope or a chupacabra?
Or maybe it's not a kook. What about a wealthy victim of, say, a burglary? What if such a person told the sheriff he would "donate" $10,000 or so to the posse in order to get some additional investigators on his case?
The reason that offices like the sheriff’s are funded by taxpayers is to make sure that all investigations are done in an unbiased, aboveboard fashion.
No one is supposed to be able to buy the agency’s services.
Even its volunteer posse.
If the sheriff wants a cash-and-carry rent-a-sheriff operation he should turn in his badge, lease a private office and put up a shingle:
“Joe Arpaio, P.I.”
Activists protest SB 1070, Tent City Jail in Phoenix
by Philip Haldiman - Jun. 23, 2012 07:45 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Even before a protest against alleged civil rights violations by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office had begun Saturday night, dozens of activists had gathered with signs and loud voices.
Officials with the Unitarian Universalist Association organized the nighttime protest to bring attention to Senate Bill 1070 and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Tent City, which they say, violate human rights.
Monday is the next day the Supreme Court could issue a ruling on the controversial immigration bill signed into law two years ago by Gov. Jan Brewer.
About 1,000 to 4,000 activists were expected at Tent City Jail near 29th Avenue and Durango Road in Phoenix, officials said.
Arpaio said that no matter what the Supreme Court decides about SB 1070, he will continue the practices he has long been practicing.
"We've had the Rev. Al Sharpton here protesting and Linda Ronstadt. They wanted us to close Tent City, too. But that will never happen," Arpaio said.
The sheriff's office shut down all six of its jails Saturday in anticipation of the protest. Because of the shutdown, family and friends were not allowed to visit inmates at the jails for the day.
The Saturday night protest also included a candle light vigil and a tour of Tent City given to a four-member delegation of inter-faith leaders.
Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said SB 1070 is clear discrimination of a class of people.
"It promotes profiling, breaks up families and is fundamentally contrary to American Values," he said.
Morales was charged with a misdemeanor count of failure to obey an order after dozens of protesters took to Phoenix streets on July 29, 2010, when SB 1070 was set to take effect.
He said social justice is core to the organization, which was instrumental in a movement to legalize same sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2004.
"This not a deviation from what we do," Morales said.
The protest is part of a four-day convention at the Phoenix Convention Center for thousands of interfaith and social justice advocates from around the world.
Officials said the convention was booked at least four or five years ago.
An association spokeswoman, Rachel Walden, said the group books its national annual conventions at least four or five years in advance. In 2010, when the controversial Arizona bill became law, members nationwide said they opposed holding the 2012 conference at the Phoenix Convention Center.
"We took a majority vote then, and we decided to come to Phoenix in order to shine a light on some of these immigration issues," Walden said.
On Friday, the unitarian group met and mingled at Civic Space Park in downtown Phoenix with immigrant-rights groups Barrios Defense Committees, Promise Arizona, Puente and Somos America.
Check out these
articles
on the New York City Indymedia web site about Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
Andrew Thomas and Lisa Aubuchon.
For that matter most folks on this planet consider Sheriff Joe
the worst Sheriff on the planet.
And here are even more
articles
on Sheriff Joe.
And
here
are even some more
articles on Sheriff Joe and this thugs
in Phoenix, Arizona and Maricopa County, Arizona.
Refusing to give out public records costs Sheriff Joe $45,000
Lawsuit give Republic $45,000 because Sheriff Joe's goons refused to turn over public records
Is Sheriff Joe's PAC run by a bunch of Crooks???
PACs are a lot like charities. They may not spend the money you give them on what you hoped they would spend it on.
Woman to sue Sheriff Joe over Maricopa County jail conditions
Source
Feds to sue Sheriff Joe???
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Feds to punish Sheriff Joe, it ain't going on.
Sheriff Joe continues to shovel the BS
And Sheriff Joe continues to shovel the BS!!!
The bluster just went poof
Source
Sheriff Joe sue for treating Mexican's like criminals
Source
Arpaio is a criminal and should go to jail
Source
Other police criminals love Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Source
Obama birth certificate is a great excuse for cops to take a Hawaii vacation
Sheriff Joe is sending man to Hawaii to check out President Obama's birth certificate!
It took 35 years to get Maricopa County jail to house prisoners in a legal, constitutional way??
Lets face it government doesn't work at all. Our government masters routinely disobey the laws they order us to obey.
Cat hoarder, 81, should be pitied
I agree with this guy that Lucienne Touboul is not a criminal for the cats she lets live in her home. The only criminal here is Sheriff Joe and his gang of thugs who arrested the harmless woman.
Sheriff Joe stops shaking down Mexicans while the Feds are watching him
Source
Saying 'no' to rent-a-sheriff
Source
Activists protest SB 1070, Tent City Jail in Phoenix
Source
New York City thinks Sheriff Joe Stinks
Hell, even in New York City, where they call cactuses - cacti,
where guns are illegal (expect for police state thugs like cops)
they also think Sheriff Joe stinks, even though those drug store
cowboys have never seen Sheriff Joe, seen a real cactus, nor
ever shot a real gun.
Previous Articles about Sheriff Joe
Here are some previous
articles
about Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arapio, who most folks
in Maricopa County consider the worst sheriff on the planet.