Republic Columnist
Arizona Republic
october, 1999
Zeus Mars Arpaio?
You are Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and you can do no wrong.
You can give your right hand, a raise if you amounts to a 50 percent pay. you want to and you do.
You all-powerfull.
You can sneer at those who question your scheme to let Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott retire for a day, collect a fat pension, then hire him back, effectively his yearly salary to $178,000. no one can stop you. You are all-knowing.
You have been at your job for almost eight years (though you promised to serve for only four), and after all this time, you are wise to the ways of county taxpayers.
Where you are concerned, they are all
You know they will not revolt against you for lining the pockets of a crony.
They did not do so when you trotted out your posse to shoo away prostitutes, or put inmates in tents and fed them green bologna; or issued pink boxer shorts and striped uniforms or formed female chain gangs, or even when you planned to set up roadblocks at every intersection along the county line and search each car entering your domain for drugs.
Like no others anywhere You are unlike any politician in America, in any country. You can be fooled by a criminal impostor, give him a badge and access to your most sensitive files, even make him your bodyguard, and no one holds it against you.
I You can be investigated by the US. Justice Department for inmate abuse and come out of it unconquered.
You can be sued by former employees who say they were forced out of their jobs because of your paranoia, yet you remain impregnable.
You can dismiss a posse commander with 5,500 volunteer hours because lie refused to kneel before the altar of Arpaio yet you suffer no consequences.
You can set up a tower of trash on the road as a publicity stunt, and put video cameras on police dogs in tent city as a publicity stunt, and give an interview to Penthouse as a publicity stunt.
refused to kneel before the altar of Arpaio, yet you suffer no consequences.
You can set up a tower of trash on the road as a publicity stunt, and put video cameras on police dogs in tent city as a publicity stunt, and give an interview to Penthouse as a publicity stunt.
And all you get is - publicity.
You can claim to be tough on criminals - the toughest - then write a sappy letter to a judge urging him to be lenient on your friend, the former governor, who'd been convicted on multiple counts.
No apologies offered
When asked about this, you do not hesitate, you do not equivocate.
You say, "I don't have to apologize."
And then, for emphasis, you repeat, "I don't have to apologize to anybody."
You can - with no ramifications hand over an undisclosed amount of taxpayer money in an out-of-court settlement to your department's former television coordinator, who said he'd been fired because you believed he might be leaking negative stories to the media.
Negative stories do not leak from your office; they flow.
You don't drown in them, however. You gleefully float on top.
The county paid $800,000 to a paraplegic man who claimed he was abused while confined in your jail.
You were unfazed
The county paid $8.25 million to the family of Scott Norberg, who died in a struggle with detention officers after having been convicted of exactly nothing.
You were not mortified.
You were not saddened.
You were defiant.
You said, "I am relieved that this tentative agreement contains no admissions of fault or liability on behalf of our officers, nor does the agreement require any changes in jail policy."
If losing 8 million taxpayer dollars causes you no harm or even discomfort, why should greasing the wallet of your henchman Hendershott?
You have been accused of having a god complex, of living in a fantasy world where you believe you are untouchable. This angers you only because it's not a fantasy.
You are Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and you can do no wrong.
E.J. Montini can be reached at (602) 444-8978 or at ed.montini@pni.com.
the webmaster is sorry guys. 1) i didnt get the date of this article. it was the day after hendershott got written about in the arizona republic for his huge double dipping.
2) sorry my scanner lost a lot of words. the paper was dirty and i lost it so i cant correct it.