No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Jail to the Chief

Phoenix is in many ways a microcosm of Georgebushistan. Our compassionate conservative uniter commander-in-chief is Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County, the vast sprawling county which includes most of metropolitan Phoenix.

Arpaio has held the office of Sheriff since 1992, with overwhelming support from Maricopa's extreme-right voters, by posing as "America's Toughest Sheriff." He furthers this image, not by reducing violent crimes, but by humiliating his inmates in the county jail, most of whom are awaiting trial and therefore are innocent until proven guilty. He feeds them spoiled bologna at a cost of 30 cents a day, parades them in chain gangs in pink underwear (and once forced a chain gang to march through Downtown Phoenix in the summer heat, wearing nothing but underwear), points webcams at them (including in the women's bathroom) to rob them of all privacy, and generally is so brutal that he has come to the attention of Amnesty International. An Irish judge even refused to extradite an alleged pedophile priest to Arizona, citing Arpaio's "chillingly sadistic pleasure in his role as incarcerator."

Arpaio's department is a festering swamp of cronyism and incompetence. It's not uncommon for his testosterone-addled stormtroopers to destroy homes and terrify whole neighborhoods while attempting to serve a search warrant. And a long list of people has died suspiciously while in custody, forcing the county to pay out $50 million of taxpayers' money in settlement over the last few years. But Arpaio will never clean up his act; he's too busy with political intrigue and dirty tricks against Democratic politicians and the few local journalists who call him on his out-of-control brutality.

The one thorn in Arpaio's side has been the independent Phoenix New Times, which for years has been documenting Arpaio's corruption, criminality, incompetence and ever-increasing megalomania. Last night, Arpaio finally snapped and had the owners of the newspaper arrested. He's also subpoenaing all logs from the paper's web server, wanting to see dates, times, IP addresses, computer types and referring pages for everyone who viewed the website in the last several years. Good grief! Abolishing freedom of the press, shredding the Constitution, using the Sheriff's office as his private gang of goons and legbreakers, harassing ordinary people for the crime of visiting a website that criticizes him - how much does he think he can get away with?

The time is long overdue to rein in this petty, tinpot tyrant, this self-aggrandizing buffoon who has nothing but contempt for the rule of law. Let him spend a few years in his tent city, sweltering in the desert in pink underwear and eating rotten bologna. In fact I'd say that's too good for him!