Sheriff Joe Arpaio

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Toughest Sheriff in the Universe -- Joe Arpaio!

Joseph M. Arpaio (born June 14, 1932 in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States) is a law enforcement officer and the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. Arpaio, who promotes himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff," is controversial for his approach to operating the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. He has a large number of vocal supporters. His practices have been harshly criticized by organizations such as Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Arizona Ecumenical Council, the American Jewish Committee, and the Arizona chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.
Wikipedia

Love Him or Hate Him, Joe has Accomplished a Lot
And now, Joe Tweets!
Joe "I can arrest everybody" Arpaio

more...

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Joe's Background

Nickel Bag Joe

Joe Arpaio was the child of immigrants from Naples, Italy. His mother died during childbirth and his father had little interest in raising young Joe. As a result, Arpaio spent his childhood being shuffled back and forth between different families, depending on who was able to care for him.

Arpaio enlisted in the United States Army and served from 1950 to 1953. Following his discharge from the Army, he moved to Washington, D.C. and then to Las Vegas, Nevada, serving on the police force of both cities over a five-year period.

He married Ava Arpaio in 1956. The couple currently have two children and four grandchildren. They live in upscale Fountain Hills.

After his stints with the local police forces of Washington and Las Vegas, Arpaio obtained a job as a Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He worked for the DEA for 32 years, earning the nickname "Nickel bag Joe" for his frequent small-time arrests. During that time, he was stationed in both Turkey and Mexico, and advanced to the position of head of the DEA's Arizona branch. He served in this position for four years before retiring.

A Republican, he was elected as Sheriff of Maricopa County in 1992, at which time he signed a notarized document, stating he would only serve one term as sheriff. He is now in his fourth term, and has just won his fifth.

Joe loves publicity!

Does he ever!

Is Joe a publicity hound? You decide.....

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automatically generated by YouTube"

Love Him or Hate Him, Joe has Accomplished a Lot

During His One... oops... 5 Terms as Sheriff

During his tenure as Maricopa County Sheriff, Arpaio has instituted or strengthened several of the following crime prevention programs:

* bicycle registration
* block watches
* child identification and fingerprinting
* Operation Identification (for marking valuables)
* Operation Notification (which identifies business owners during times of emergency)
* Project Lifeline (which provides free cellular phones to domestic violence victims)
* S.T.A.R.S. (Sheriffs Teaching Abuse Resistance to Students)
* an annual summer camp for kids near Payson.

One of the most successful programs maintained by Arpaio is the all-volunteer Posse program. Though Maricopa County operated the Posse for 50 years prior to Arpaio's election, Arpaio greatly expanded the program through heavy recruiting. The volunteers perform many duties for the sheriff's office:

* search and rescue
* emergency communications
* prisoner transport
* traffic control
* backup for sworn deputies
* office administrative duties
* Holiday Mall Patrol (which provides motorist assistance and security for shoppers during the holiday shopping season)
* deadbeat parent details targeting men and women with outstanding arrest warrants for failure to pay child support.

Arpaio has also included on the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office website an online deck of cards featuring pictures of deadbeat parents, amounts owed and last known whereabouts. Later, he published mugshots of all inmates booked into the county jail, which are available for viewing on the county website for three days after an inmate's arrest.

Wiki

During his time as Sheriff, Joe has also instituted:

1. Serving outdated food to inmates for a cost of .30 a day, which inmates have to pay.
2. Banned smoking, coffee, salt, pepper, ketchup, porn, weight-lifting.
3. Limited TV to G-rated programs.
4. A high school for inmates in jail, called Hard Knocks High.
5. Mandatory English classes for non-English speaking inmates.
6. Chain gangs, including female chain gangs.
7. Pink underwear and handcuffs. Re-instituted black-and-white uniforms.
8. Tent Cities, built on parking lots by inmates. No air-conditioning in 110+ heat.
9. Housing for stray, abused and abandoned pets in air-conditioned facilities, cared for by inmates. Food for each pet costs 3 times more than inmates' food. Pets don't have to pay for theirs.
10. Restricted mail to metered postcards.
11. Jail Cam, 2001: Three cameras provide raw footage of the holding and searching cells of Phoenix's Maricopa County jail. Viewers can see inmates doubled up in small bunk beds or sleeping on the concrete floor, and occasionally bound in "restraint chairs" for bad behavior. But some of the images are more invasive: strip searches, female prisoners in various stages of undress, and, up until late April, a constant, unobstructed view of the women's toilet and the women using it. Court order blocked the jail cam in 2006.
12. Limited visiting hours for defense attorneys.
13. Conducted crime sweeps throughout the county, resulting in many illegal immigrants leaving Arizona.

And now, Joe Tweets!

Follow Joe on Twitter! http://twitter.com/RealSheriffJoe

Joe "I can arrest everybody" Arpaio

Famous Incidents During Joe's Saga

Wild and Crazy Stuff

1996: Sheriff Joe personally deputizes con man David Pecard. It soon appears that something is amiss when the new deputy promises to shorten a female inmate's sentence, then fondles her in an empty office. Pecard is charged on 12 felony counts and faces a court-martial for deserting the United States army seven times under different identities.

In 1999, Arpaio and his chief deputy, David Hendershott, attempted to frame 18-year-old James Saville in a phony bomb plot supposedly aimed at Arpaio. TV reporters were called ahead of time to chronicle the teenager's arrest outside an Italian restaurant where Arpaio was dining. Saville's lawyer noted the obvious entrapment, and Saville was unanimously acquitted by a jury after the MCSO's unscrupulous antics were aired in court.

Actor Nick Tarr was falsely arrested in 2002 while portraying "Joe Arizona" in a spoof of the sheriff sponsored by backers of a ballot initiative opposed by Arpaio. Tarr walked into a restaurant where Chief Deputy David Hendershott was eating. Hendershott wanted to charge him with impersonating a DPS officer. The DPS wanted no part of it, but Hendershott had his men hold Tarr and cite him. The MCSO dropped the complaint against Tarr, who has since settled for $125,000. Tarr was wearing pink boxers, hiking boots, an "I Love Arizona" tee shirt, a park-ranger hat and, over the tee shirt, an unbuttoned old Department of Public Safety shirt. (Impersonating an officer?)

In November, 2003, Sheriff's deputies arrested over 70 people for prostitution and solicitation. The officers arrested alleged prostitutes and their customers in more than thirty homes and ten massage parlors in the Phoenix area. Records indicated that several of the officers disrobed, fondled the breasts and genitals of the alleged prostitutes, and allowed their penises to be touched during the operation. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office stated that the Sheriff's office had gone too far in allowing this behavior, and sixty of the cases were thrown out. Several of the male customers in the case were prosecuted.

In 2004, In executing a misdemeanor arrest warrant on 26 year old Eric Kush for failure to appear in Tempe Traffic Court, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office SWAT team led a raid on an Ahwatukee home in a gated subdivision, looking for illegal weapons. No illegal weapons were found, but during the raid, the house burned down, killing a dog, and an armored vehicle rolled into a neighbor's parked car.

2004: Launched a campaign against political opponent and former Mesa Police Commander, Dan Saban. Sheriff's department leaked to a TV station by Arpaio's office that Saban sexually assaulted his foster mother, when it was the foster mother, according to Saban, who assaulted him when he was a young teen-ager, 30 years earlier. The reporter was fired, a defamation lawsuit against Arpaio failed, and Saban lost the election. He is running again in 2008, and appealing the verdict.

2005: Army Reserve Sgt. Patrick Haab arrested after gunpoint arrest of undocumented immigrants. County Attorney Andy Thomas dismisses charge. Haab later files a $1 million claim against the county.

2007: Sheriff has custody of quarantined TB patient in jail ward at Maricopa Medical Center. Arpaio announces that Robert Daniels will be treated as an inmate despite no criminal charge or conviction.

10/2007 - Phoenix New Times editors Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were arrested on charges of revealing grand jury secrets after having published Arpaio's home address in the context of a story about his real estate dealings, which the county attorney's office is investigating as a possible crime under Arizona state law. They were subpoenaed to produce all documents related to that article including internet traffic information. The prosecutor wanted all information on all visitors to the site since 2004. The editors then published the contents of that subpoena as an act of civil disobedience. That day, they were arrested. The case was dropped and they were released the next day. A suit has been filed against the sheriff, the county attorney, and the prosecutor.

A report by Amnesty International condemned the jail for human-rights violations. Two independent studies and a Justice Department lawsuit found chronic inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Arpaio fired and demoted countless whistle-blowers - he calls them "dime droppers" - for going public with criticism of the Sheriff's Office. A number of those employees collected money after filing suit.

June 27, 2008: Latest illegal immigrant sweep in Mesa netted a total of 37 arrests. Total number of illegal immigrants: 14. That's one illegal immigrant for every 14 deputies and posse members.

June 2008 - June 2009: Investigations of Arpaio begin or continue by DOJ, FBI, ACLU, The Goldwater Institute, Valley mayors, Jewish Rabbis, Protestant Ministers. Jails condemned by Amnesty International. The County Board of Supervisors investigates Arpaio; Arpaio investigates the County Board of Supervisors.

May 2, 2009: Inmates go on hunger strike. Joe locks down the jails. Lockdown ends May 22.

June 3, 2009: Former Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools Sandra Dowling filed suit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County and the Board of Supervisors because of a 2006 SWAT team invasion of her home and subsequent criminal prosecution that ended in a single misdemeanor conviction.

June 11, 2009: Valley chefs try to spice up Sheriff Joe's 'vile' ham stew. Silvana Salcido Esparza of Barrio Cafe was game for the challenge. She thought about using the beans on some crisps. And that the ham gravy could be the basis for a cream soup. Then she tasted the stuff. And got physically ill. "It was so vile," she said. "There's nothing I can do."The beans had a "tinny, synthetic flavor," she said. "I couldn't make it go away." That was even after she pureed them and tried them with a salsa. "Disgusting," she said. The "green goop" was just bad, she said. "It was downright nasty . . . Chili couldn't hide it. If chili couldn't hide the grotesque flavor, nothing can." (AZ Republic). FAIL

November, 2009: An ongoing battle with County government about, well, everything is, well, ongoing.........

Joe's Team

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Toughest Sheriff in the Universe -- Joe Arpaio!

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

Great Stuff on Amazon

Joe's Background

Nickel Bag Joe

Joe loves publicity!

Does he ever!

Love Him or Hate Him, Joe has Accomplished a Lot

During His One... oops... 5 Terms as Sheriff

And now, Joe Tweets!

Famous Incidents During Joe's Saga

Wild and Crazy Stuff

Books on Joe

By and/or about Joe

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Maricopa County Blog Post

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