Joe Arpaio

Joseph M. "Joe" Arpaio,  born June 14, 1932 is the elected Sheriff of Maricopa County in the U.S. state of Arizona. First voted into office in 1992, Arpaio is responsible for law enforcement in Maricopa County. This includes management of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, county jail, courtroom security, prisoner transport, service of warrants, and service of process. Arpaio styles himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff. He is well known for his outspoken stance against illegal immigration. Arpaio has become a flashpoint for controversy surrounding Arizona's SB1070 anti-illegal immigration act.
Arpaio was once widely popular among voters in Arizona. However, his popularity has waned since 2007, but remains positive among registered Republicans.


Arpaio was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Italian parents both from Avellino, Italy. Arpaio's mother died while giving birth to him, and Arpaio was raised by his father, a grocery store owner. Arpaio completed high school and worked in his father's business until age 18 when he enlisted in the United States Army. Arpaio served in the Army from 1950 to 1954 in the Medical Detachment Division and was stationed in France for part of the time as a military policeman.
Following his discharge in 1954, Arpaio moved to Washington, D.C. and became a police officer, moving in 1957 to Las Vegas, Nevada. He served as a police officer in Las Vegas for six months before being appointed as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which later became part of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).[11] During his 25-year tenure with the DEA, he was stationed in Argentina, Turkey and Mexico, and advanced through the ranks to the position of head of the DEA's Arizona branch.


In late 2008 and early 2009 Arpaio appeared in Smile...You're Under Arrest!, a three-episode Fox Reality Channel series in which persons with outstanding warrants were tricked into presenting themselves for arrest.
On June 9, 2011 Sheriff Arpaio was interviewed on Fox News on KSAZ-TV about a song on iTunes titled, "F#@K Sheriff Joe" by Contraband, describing him on his deathbed battling his own mortality.


Arpaio's practices include serving inmates surplus food[18] and limiting meals to twice daily.[19] He has also banned inmates from possessing "sexually explicit material" including Playboy magazine after female officers complained that inmates openly masturbated while viewing them or harassed the officers by comparing their anatomy to that of the nude models in the publications. The ban was challenged on First Amendment grounds but upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In February 2007, Arpaio instituted an in-house radio station he calls KJOE.Arpaio's radio station broadcasts classical music, opera, Frank Sinatra hits, patriotic music and educational programming. It operates from the basement of the county jail for five days a week, four hours each day.


In February 2010 Judge John Leonardo of Pima County Superior Court found that Arpaio "misused the power of his office to target members of the (Board of Supervisors) for criminal investigation.
In 2008 a federal grand jury began an inquiry of Arpaio for abuse of power, in connection with an FBI investigation. Arpaio is being investigated for politically motivated and "bogus" prosecutions, which a former US Attorney called "utterly unacceptable". Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has called Arpaio's "long list" of questionable prosecutions "a reign of terror".
The targets of Arpaio's alleged abuse of power have included or currently include: Phil Gordon, Phoenix Mayor; Dan Saban, Arpaio's 2004 and 2008 opponent for the office of Sheriff of Maricopa County; Terry Goddard, Arizona Attorney General; David Smith, Maricopa County Manager; The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors; Barbara Mundell, Maricopa Superior Court Presiding Judge; Anna Baca, former Maricopa Superior Court Presiding Judge. Gary Donahoe, Maricopa Superior Court Criminal Presiding Judge Daniel Pochoda, ACLU attorney;[60] Sandra Dowling, former Maricopa County School Superintendent;[61] Mike Lacy, Editor, Phoenix New Times.
To date (July 10, 2010) of the above only Sandra Dowling has been successfully prosecuted.[61] Indicted on 25 felony counts, Dowling eventually pled guilty to patronage for giving a summer job to her daughter, a single class 2 misdemeanor which was not among the original counts, although as part of the plea bargain she also agreed to recuse herself from the Maricopa County Regional School District. Dowling has since filed suit, alleging negligence, malicious prosecution, abuse of process and several constitutional violations.


Over the two years prior to September, 2010, feuding between Arpaio and former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas on one side, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on the other side cost at least $5.6 million, most of which was paid to private attorneys. Arpaio and Thomas filed several lawsuits against the Board of Supervisors, including a federal civil-racketeering suit against the supervisors, four judges and attorneys who work with the county. Arpaio and Thomas lost every case, either by ruling of the courts, or by dropping the case.
In early 2010, Arpaio and Thomas sought to have a grand jury indict a number of Maricopa County Judges, Maricopa County Supervisors, and employees of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. The grand jury, in an unusual rebuke, ordered the investigation ended. This action has been described as meaning that "...the case is so bad, there's no further evidence that could be brought to substantiate it". Legal experts agree this is a rare move. Thomas and a subordinate attorney on his County Attorney staff face a hearing later in 2011 before the Ethics Committee of the Arizona Bar, the result of which could be a number of sanctions up to permanent loss of their law licenses.
In November and December, 2010, lawsuits naming Arpaio were filed by Judge Gary Donahoe, retired Maricopa County Superior Court judges Barbara Mundell, Anna Baca, and Kenneth Fields, County Supervisor Don Stapley, Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson, and Susan Schuerman, executive assistant to Supervisor Don Stapley.


During the month of July 2010, a committee established by Arpaio, the Campaign to Re-Elect Joe Arpaio 2012, funded advertisements critical of Rick Romley, a candidate in the Republican Primary for Maricopa County Attorney and Arizona Attorney General candidate Tom Horne, despite the fact that Arpaio is not currently running for re-election (his term does not expire until the end of 2012).
An order issued on the behalf of the Maricopa Elections Department on August 24, 2010, found that one of the advertisements, a direct mailer, advocated the defeat of Romley, and was an in-kind contribution to Bill Montgomery (Romley's primary election opponent), in violation of Arizona election law. The order stated that the Campaign to Re-Elect Joe Arpaio 2012 will be fined three times the amount of money that was spent on the mailer. In September, 2010, Arpaio's campaign was fined $153,978 in this matter. Montgomery ultimately defeated Romley in the primary election, with Romley stating Arpaio's ads "hurt" his results.


An analysis by the Maricopa County Office of Management and Budget, completed in September, 2010, found Arpaio has misspent almost $100 million in taxpayer dollars over the previous 5 years.
The analysis showed that money from a restricted detention fund which could only legally be used to pay for jail items, such as food, detention officers' salaries and equipment, was used to pay employees to patrol Maricopa County. The analysis also showed that many Sheriff's Office employees, whose salaries were paid from the restricted detention fund, were working job assignments different from those recorded in their personnel records. Arpaio's office kept a separate set of personnel books detailing actual work assignments, different from information kept on the county's official human-resources records.
Arpaio used the detention fund to pay for investigations of political rivals, and activities involving his human-smuggling unit.
The analysis also showed a number of inappropriate spending items, including a trip to Alaska where deputies stayed at a fishing resort, and trips to Disneyland.
Separate investigations by The Arizona Republic uncovered widespread abuse of public funds and county policies by Arpaio's office, including high-ranking employees routinely charging expensive meals and stays at luxury hotels on their county credit cards.


In September, 2010, a 63 page internal memo, written by Maricopa Deputy Chief Frank Munnell, was made public. The memo alleged years of misconduct and mismanagement by Arpaio's second in command and other top MCSO officers, including the use of a public-corruption task force to conduct politically motivated probes into political opponents. The memo alleged that top officials in the MCSO "willfully and intentionally committed criminal acts by attempting to obstruct justice, tamper with witnesses, and destroy evidence." Arpaio forwarded the memo to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, requesting they conduct an administrative investigation. Former top MCSO staffers have claimed that Arpaio knew of the acts alleged in the Munnell memo, but took no action to stop them.