Homeless in Arizona

'Arpaio Watch': New ABC series aims to monitor Sheriff Joe

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'Arpaio Watch': New ABC series aims to monitor Sheriff Joe

Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2012 1:04 pm

By Brittany Noble, ABC15

ABC News is launching a new series , "Arpaio Watch", aimed at monitoring civil liberties in Arizona and the actions of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

ABC News is partnering with Univision to keep an eye on how the policies of "America's Toughest Sheriff" affect the Latino community, according to a report from TV Newser .

Arpaio faced accusations of racial profiling and discrimination against Spanish speakers during a lawsuit filed in May by the Justice Department.

His routine immigration patrols have also drawn criticism from the Hispanic community, who has accused Arpaio's deputies of systematic profiling and bias.

Read the full ABC News article.

Vote por Penzone para Sheriff

Arpaio Watch: Keeping Tabs on Civil Liberties in Maricopa County, Arizona

Arpaio Watch: Keeping Tabs on Civil Liberties in Maricopa County, Arizona

By TED HESSON

Sept. 25, 2012

Today we're launching Arpaio Watch, a new series aimed at monitoring civil liberties in Arizona immigrant communities by tracking the policies and practices of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

In the past two decades, no law enforcement figure in America has generated more animosity and fear within immigrant communities than the 80-year-old sheriff, who is infamous for immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods in the Phoenix area.

And in recent months, the man once glowingly referred to by the mainstream media as "America's Toughest Sheriff" has come under fire from the feds: A lawsuit filed in May by the Justice Department accuses Arpaio of using racial profiling in his police work, discriminating against limited English speakers in jails and abusing his power as sheriff. In addition, a district court judge will rule in the next few weeks on a similar lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, echoing a designation awarded to him by Rolling Stone, which recently dubbed him "America's meanest and most corrupt politician."

If you're not familiar with Arpaio, here's a crash course. This list is by no means complete:

--Systematic profiling of Latinos: A Justice Department report found that Latinos in the Phoenix area are four to nine times more likely than non-Latinos to be pulled over for traffic violations. The report also presented evidence that the sheriff chose locations for raids based on complaints about Spanish speakers and people with "dark skin," and not based on complaints about crime.

Despite the evidence presented against him in court, the sheriff says it does not add up to profiling.

--Degrading prisoners, including immigrant detainees: One of Arpaio's most trumpeted accomplishments is his Tent City jail, a sprawling outdoor complex that houses more than 2,000 prisoners , where temperatures can reach 165 degrees. All Maricopa County jail inmates are dressed in pink underwear and striped uniforms and have the option to earn back lost privileges by being placed into chain gangs that work on the side of the road. Arpaio believes the gangs will help discourage crime.

--Disregard for women's rights: According to the progressive blog ThinkProgress, complaints in the Justice Department lawsuit "included accusations that Arpaio and his staff forced women to sleep in their own menstrual blood, assaulted pregnant women, ignored rape, and criminalized being a Latino."

--Bias against Mexican immigrants: When writing in his 2008 book about his parents, who came to the U.S. from Italy, Arpaio said that he views Mexican immigrants differently from other groups. Lawrence Downes of the New York Times reports on a section of the book:

"'My parents, like all other immigrants exclusive of those from Mexico, held to certain hopes and truths.' It goes on to state that Mexicans refuse to assimilate and are immigration lawbreakers to an 'astonishing' degree."

In court, Arpaio blamed the passage on a ghostwriter.

--Clamping down on critics: During Arpaio's tenure, no media outlet has been a more outspoken opponent of his policies than Phoenix New Times. So when Arpaio's office ordered the arrests of the paper's owners in 2007 for publishing his home address, it appeared to be in retaliation to their negative coverage. The arrests are cited in the Justice Department complaint and the newspaper owners themselves are also suing the sheriff's office.

--He's a birther: While it doesn't rank up there with the other issues on this list, it's worthwhile to note that Arpaio is a committed birther, even while most conservatives have tried to distance themselves from the movement. In a July publicity event received limply by the media, Sheriff Arpaio's posse said that Obama's birth certificate was "probably" fraudulent.

About the project: The goal of Arpaio Watch is to monitor the effects of Arpaio's policies on Arizona immigrant communities, and to report from the ground up about how immigration raids, disproportionate police stops and a disconnect between residents and law enforement can impact a community.

Stay tuned as Arpaio Watch follows the Arizona sheriff over the weeks and months to come.

Maricopa County agrees to settle suit tied to inmate death

Maricopa County agrees to settle suit tied to inmate death

by JJ Hensley and Michelle Ye Hee Lee - Oct. 4, 2012 08:16 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

Maricopa County administrators have agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to settle a 6-year-old lawsuit over a woman's death that occurred after she was booked into a county jail.

The county has already spent about $1.8 million to hire attorneys to defend itself in the lawsuit, said Cari Gerchick, a county spokeswoman.

Any other details on the terms of the settlement will remain under seal until the county Board of Supervisors meets on Oct. 17 to authorize the agreement, she said.

The Sheriff's Office is also not authorized to comment on the agreement until it is approved, a spokesman said.

In addition to Maricopa County and the Sheriff's Office, the lawsuit targeted Correctional Health Services, the taxpayer-funded agency that provides constitutionally mandated health care in the county jails.

The lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the surviving family members of Deborah Braillard, a 46-year-old woman who had been booked in jail several times before her entry into the Fourth Avenue Jail on Jan. 1, 2005, on suspicion of drug possession.

During her prior jail bookings, Braillard's diabetes had been noted during the health-care screening that every county inmate undergoes when admitted into jail.

But employees of Correctional Health Services failed to note Braillard's medical condition in early 2005.

Instead, because Braillard was barely coherent and slurring her words, jail health-care workers thought they were dealing with a woman in the throes of a drug addiction.

Braillard was coming off drugs and showing signs of a blood-sugar crash, according to court documents, her family and testimony from jail employees. She was disoriented, vomiting, soiling herself, sweating profusely and complaining of pain, according to court documents. Employees attributed her symptoms to drug withdrawal.

Four days after she was booked into jail, Braillard was taken to Maricopa Medical Center, where she would remain unconscious until she died 18 days later of complications from diabetes.

The form used to assess the medical condition of an incoming inmate lists 27 questions. A health-care worker completed Braillard's assessment in less than a minute, according to court documents.

No one noticed that Braillard was diabetic. An electronic medical-records system, had it been in place, could have immediately alerted employees about Braillard's condition. She had been administered insulin at the jails many times before, and an electronic system would have included her medical history.

County administrators signed a $4.5 million contract for an electronic medical-record system in March, though the network is still in the design phase, Gerchick said.

Hell freezes over??? Republic doesn't support Sheriff Joe?

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Arpaio's record says: Elect Penzone

Oct. 6, 2012 06:08 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

The early theme of the Joe Arpaio re-election effort is heartwarming.

In the campaign's television ads we see Joe as family man, as a young public servant in uniform. Joe as defender of the kids. And in a particularly whimsical shot, we see the Maricopa County sheriff plinking away at an ancient typewriter.

These images remind us of the public servant we supported in the 1990s and the 2000 election. In those days, he was a creative lawman who brought Maricopa County the nation's first high school for juvenile offenders, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program that by 2000 had graduated 1,000 men and women, a parenting program for fathers and a job placement program.

But that sheriff is as much an artifact as a manual typewriter. Arpaio, who in 1992 vowed to serve a single term, has evolved into a career politician devoted to burnishing his national brand. Arpaio's self-interest always trumps the public interest.

We and Arpaio once valued the same characteristics in a Maricopa County sheriff. Our values have not changed. His have.

Consider the record his ads skip over:

The years-long reign of terror waged by Arpaio against his political enemies.

The vendetta against Maricopa County judges and the Board of Supervisors is top of mind, but Arpaio's record of targeting political enemies goes back more than a decade. The campaign against the judges and supervisors took this abuse of power to its zenith.

Financial mismanagement.

Under Arpaio's leadership, the sheriff's department misappropriated nearly $100 million in salaries over eight years.

A 2010 investigation revealed high-ranking sheriff's deputies charged pricey meals and stays at luxury hotels to county-issued credit cards. The Board of Supervisors cut up the cards.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked to improve jails was instead spent on out-of-state training and hotels in Las Vegas, New Orleans and other resort destinations; eight weeks at a Coronado, Calif., apartment; and rental fees for awards banquets and staff parties. At the same time, boiler improvements at the Lower Buckeye Jail were postponed.

Tens of millions squandered in judgments for mistreatment of prisoners and violations of civil rights.

The failure to investigate hundreds of sexual-abuse cases.

Arpaio's ads boast about going after easy-to-find deadbeat dads. Like Arpaio, the ads ignore hundreds of sexual-abuse victims whose cases were set aside so the sheriff could train Honduran police.

The stigmatizing of an entire community for no greater purpose than furthering Arpaio's national political profile. The sheriff raised millions in campaign cash from across the country, capitalizing on the broken tail lights of American citizens who dared to Drive While Hispanic during one of Arpaio's "crime sweeps."

Former Chief Deputy David Hendershott.

Arpaio handed control of his department to a man who, along with other top aides, engaged in abuse of power, nepotism, intimidation and self-serving violations of policy. When they ultimately lost their jobs, no one was surprised. The signs were there for all to see.

Yet Arpaio claims ignorance. He has consistently testified he had no idea what Hendershott and his other deputies were doing. "America's Toughest Sheriff"? No, its most oblivious. Why re-elect a man who doesn't know what's going on in his own department?

So there's a lot that Arpaio's ads omit. But the campaign's free-spending, media-saturating urgency tells us something: That after all the abuse and excess, Arpaio is vulnerable at the ballot box.

This is so for two reasons.

One: See above.

Two: Paul Penzone.

A 21-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department, Penzone represents the kind of lawman Arpaio once promised to be.

Tired of the constant self-promotion at the expense of fundamental crime-fighting? Penzone is committed to realigning the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to serve its primary purpose: patrolling the streets of communities that rely on the county sheriff for protection.

For the "Toughest Sheriff," that job was too boring. For Penzone, it is Job One.

Penzone recognizes that repairing the damage caused by Arpaio's ham-handed ways will take time. Among Hispanics, obviously. But also among those numerous communities that have been so poorly served in recent years.

The Democratic candidate cites a need to repair the relationship between the Sheriff's Office and the Valley's other police agencies, a vital and often overlooked part of the public-safety mission.

Penzone calls Arpaio's lack of willingness to work with his peers "one of the biggest cancers" afflicting the Sheriff's Office. That would be fixed under the administration of the professional-minded Penzone.

Also in the race is independent Mike Stauffer, a retired lieutenant with the Scottsdale Police Department. Stauffer's presence in the race is a mystery. He offers a confused, often contradictory message. A vote for Stauffer might as well be a vote for Arpaio.

The Arizona Republic strongly recommends Paul Penzone for Maricopa County sheriff.

Penzone is not perfect. He went through an ugly divorce, which the Arpaio campaign is likely to exploit.

On all else Penzone appears to provide what Maricopa County needs in a sheriff right now: a professional, serious-minded cop whose default attitude won't be defiance.

Voters tired of the drama and mismanagement of recent years, who want a sheriff devoted to keeping them safe, as opposed to raising his national profile, will choose Penzone.

Who is lying? Sheriff Joe or Paul Penzone?

Here is a link to the commerical on UTube.

Source

Arpaio ad on Penzone smacks of desperation

By LAURIE ROBERTS

Thu, Oct 11 2012

Fresh on the heels of a poll showing Paul Penzone within four points of catching Joe Arpaio, Team Arpaio released a rather vicious campaign ad today, accusing Penzone of hitting his wife.

“For years, Paul Penzone was the face of Silent Witness," the ad says. “But in 2003, Paul Penzone pushed his then-wife against a door, injuring her in front of their child. He's tried to explain it away, but there's no excuse for hitting a woman. Now, the only silent witness is his ex-wife.“

Nice.

Of course, there are just few things missing from Arpaio’s ad….

…Like the fact that Penzone is the one who called police and Penzone is listed by police as the victim.

...Like the fact that neither Penzone nor his then-wife was prosecuted, as it was a he-said, she-said affair. No independent witnesses (presumably, not even the child whom Arpaio says witnessed the fight.)

According to a Glendale Police Department report of the 2003 incident, the Penzones were getting a divorce and in the midst of a nasty custody battle. He called police, saying his wife had assaulted him.

The report says Penzone had gone to the house to pick up his son’s hockey gear and told police that his wife hit him in the face with a hockey stick. Police said he had a minor bruise on his face.

His wife then told police that she hit him because he pushed her first, causing her to hit her forehead on the door. Police said she had a minor bruise on her forehead.

City prosecutors declined to prosecute.

Penzone then filed for an order of protection against her, and a few days later, she filed one against him, recounting their versions of the story.

There are no records – at least, none that I have found -- to indicate that Penzone had ever previously or ever since been involved in a domestic violence.

Arpaio spokesman Chad Willems defended the ad, saying the records “speak for themselves.”

They certainly do.

If I were I Joe, I'd stick to investigating sex crimes.

Is Penzone being 'Saban-ed' by Arpaio?

Is Penzone being 'Saban-ed' by Arpaio?

By EJ MONTINI

Thu, Oct 11 2012

Before Paul Penzone became the closest thing to a challenger that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has had there was Dan Saban.

Arpaio beat him twice, in 2004 and in 2008.

Saban sued Arpaio, and lost, after a local TV station ran a story in 2004 in which Saban's adoptive mother alleged that he raped her 30 years earlier. Saban said that it was his adoptive mother who’d taken advantage of him and claimed that Arpaio's then-chief deputy, David Hendershott, leaked the story.

The whole sordid episode came up again in 2008, when Saban was running against Arpaio.

This time in a nasty anti-Saban TV ad.

Now Arpaio’s camp has released an anti-Penzone ad dredging up a domestic dispute between Penzone and his former wife that took place nine years ago. Police were called. He said one thing. She said another. He had a little bruise. She had a little bruise.

No one was prosecuted.

Nothing since.

That is, until the sheriff’s race got close. That’s how it goes in politics. It’s sad.

But even sadder, it sometimes works.

Propaganda from Sheriff Joe

Source

Endorsement for sheriff ignores some key facts

by Joe Arpaio - Oct. 12, 2012 06:26 PM

The Arizona Republic editorial board's endorsement of one of my political opponents was no surprise to anyone familiar with this newspaper and its board ("Arpaio's record says: Elect Penzone," Editorial, Sunday). It has long opposed my policies regarding Tent City, as well as how I enforce illegal-immigration laws. This board joins the ultraliberal New Times newspaper as advocates for my ousting. [Hey, Sheriff Joe, the Republic has endorsed you for years. But you have screwed things up so badly they finally have started to call for an end to your reign of terror like us normal folks have been doing for years.]

There were a number of distortions and omissions by this editorial board, a move carefully calculated to unseat a conservative sheriff who upholds laws this newspaper despises.

This editorial board clearly advocates replacing me with Paul Penzone, a man it knows has little management experience and who isn't even endorsed by the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. PLEA supports me for sheriff. Why? It cites Penzone's lack of experience and knowledge as reasons they will not support him.

Instead, the paper's editorial writers recite reasons to vote me out yet conveniently omit facts that debunk their arguments.

They characterized investigations into various politicians as a terror-waged vendetta yet fail to remind readers those investigations resulted in the indictments of some and an admission by the U.S. Justice Department that the evidence was so lacking, they dropped the 3-year-long investigation. [Sheriff Joe, just because they didn't get enough evidence to prove you are a crook, doesn't mean you are not a crook!]

The paper asked readers to believe I misappropriated $100 million when it was an accounting error only. Deputies' salaries were paid out of the wrong fund. It was corrected by a journal entry. Taxpayers were not affected. [I think that is an outright lie. From what I have read the deputies salaries were paid out of a fund that was supposed to be used to purchase a new jail. Not a cent of that money has been paid back. It's lost]

They complain the jails cost taxpayers millions in lawsuits. All large jails do. Inmates sue all the time. Occasionally, someone dies in jail. What predictably follows is a lawsuit by the family. The fact remains, the legal costs associated with the running of my jails are far less than many large jails in the U.S. [Really, it would be nice to supply us with some numbers here.]

The editorial board claims my deputies embarrass Arizona by arresting people who are simply "driving while Hispanic." We do not racially profile, but we do uphold the state laws on illegal immigration. [I think you are lying about that! I have not heard of you having any patrols in Scottsdale to shake down all the White Canadian snow birds that come there for their "papers" like you do to the Latinos in Guadalupe and South Phoenix!]

Five weeks before my election, this paper did a huge series on our sex-crimes unit and problems we endured several years ago. Difficulties in investigating sex crimes are not unique to this agency.

Other agencies here and elsewhere have similar challenges yet The Republic has never offered an in-depth examination about those agencies' difficulties. When I learned about our problem, we reinvestigated the cases, arrested perpetrators, and put new systems in place to avoid a reoccurrence. Today, we have a larger sex-crimes unit with better-trained detectives, an improved case-tracking system and new state-of-the-art advocacy centers.

On Nov. 6, you have important choices to make including the Maricopa County sheriff's race. Despite what this paper tries to persuade you to think, I believe you know I do the job I was elected to do. Because of that, the areas my deputies patrol are the safest in the county.

I have had my share of difficulties, and like any experienced manager, I faced them head on and moved on. Too bad The Arizona Republic doesn't do the same.

Joe Arpaio is Maricopa County sheriff.

Arpaio election finances queried

Arpaio election finances queried

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue

Oct 16, 2012 10:09 PM

A supporter of former Phoenix police Sgt. Paul Penzone filed a complaint against Sheriff Joe Arpaio accusing the sheriff of failing to fully disclose where he spends the millions of dollars he has raised and alleging that Arpaio has violated county rules by appearing in uniform in his campaign commercials.

The complaint is the latest turn in the Maricopa County sheriff’s race that has become increasingly heated in recent weeks, with the Arpaio and Penzone campaigns presenting a flurry of differing poll numbers and attack ads intended to bolster their standing and degrade their opponent.

Former Scottsdale police Lt. Mike Stauffer, running as an independent against the Republican Arpaio and Democrat Penzone, has become marginalized in the race as Penzone supporters attempt to discourage residents from voting for Stauffer in the fear that his mere presence on the ballot could tip the balance in Arpaio’s favor.

Recent polls have indicated Stauffer has the support of between 3 percent and 9 percent of respondents, depending on who commissioned the survey. Arpaio’s camp released results of two different polls on Tuesday, both conducted in the last month from samples of 400 respondents, which indicated at least 45 percent of those surveyed supported the sheriff while at least 30 percent supported Penzone.

Last week, Penzone’s campaign released a survey of 494 residents in which about 47 percent supported Arpaio and about 42 percent favored Penzone.

The varying results, along with last week’s distribution of early ballots and Election Day looming in 20 days, have left the two rivals accusing each other of desperation tactics.

Arpaio last week launched a series of negative ads attacking Penzone.

Penzone’s campaign immediately cast the sheriff as a vindictive bully who was running the attack ads out of desperation.

On Tuesday, it was Arpaio’s turn to call Penzone’s campaign desperate after a Penzone supporter filed a complaint with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and the Maricopa County Superior Court Clerk accusing Arpaio of multiple campaign-finance violations.

The most recent campaign-finance reports indicate Arpaio has raised more than $8 million in this election cycle and had about $3.9 million on hand as of late September.

The complaint, filed by Irene Montoya Hemphill, accuses Arpaio of violating state campaign-finance law by listing his campaign consultant as the recipient of more than $1.5 million in campaign funds, instead of detailing each printer, sign manufacturer and television-production studio he might have worked with.

The County Attorney’s Office told Hemphill she would first have to submit the complaint for a reasonable-cause determination by the County Recorder’s Office, whose Elections Department oversees county campaign-finance issues.

The complaint also accuses Arpaio of misreporting the total amount the sheriff’s campaign spent in the most recent reporting period and violating county merit-commission rules by appearing in his uniform in campaign ads.

But the sheriff, as an elected official and a county administrator, is not subject to the same protections and prohibitions that other county employees enjoy and must adhere to, according to an attorney with the Maricopa County Merit System Commission.

And Arizona statutes governing campaign finance do not require candidates to detail every vendor they use during the course of the race, said Joe Kanefield, a former assistant attorney general who is now with the firm Ballard Spahr.

“As I recall, this issue has come up before. This is what consultants do, that’s why you hire them,” said Kanefield, who before moving into the private sector worked in the Attorney General’s Office enforcing campaign-finance laws and in the Secretary of State’s Office as elections director.

“That’s the reality of modern campaigning: There are individuals and firms that specialize in this type of work, similar to the role of the prime contractor when you’re building a house,” he said.

“I’m not sure what’s to be gained by learning about how all this money is spent. I guess if you want to know which particular printer printed the fliers, you’re not getting that. But they are reporting what they’re spending, and they are describing what they’re getting (in return).”

Hemphill, who filed the complaint, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for Penzone’s campaign said the complaint highlighted problems with budget matters and record-keeping much like those found in the Sheriff’s Office.

“Arpaio’s latest campaign filing is full of baloney and voters deserve more transparency, not only from this campaign-finance report but from the office as a whole,” said Stacy Pearson. “That is in fact why Arpaio is spending millions of dollars to keep his job.”

Arpaio’s campaign manager, Chad Willems, said the motivation behind the complaint was obvious.

“It doesn’t take a real critical eye to see this for what it is, which is a hypercritical ‘complaint’ that is just another desperate tactic from one of our opponents,” Willems said.

The complaint filed Tuesday also accuses Arpaio of under-reporting campaign expenditures in the most recent reporting period.

A report shows more than $770,000 spent between early August and mid-September, but the report includes details on expenditures totaling more than $980,000.

Willems said the campaign would review the information and file an amended report, if necessary.

Were some issues missing from these debates?

Hey, we all know that either Obamney or Rombama is going to win the election, so what hard could there be in letting the Libertarians and Greens into the debate. It would give us some new interesting ideas.

Like legalizing drugs, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and repealing the unconstitutional Patriot Act.

Sheriff Joe's IT guy

And no I don't work for Sheriff Joe and wouldn't work for him if you paid me.

Let's hope Sheriff Joe loses this election and is replaced by Paul Penzone.

Of course Paul Penzone isn't much better then Sheriff Joe, but it certainly would be nice to get rid of Sheriff Joe who has been terrorizing the citizens of Maricopa County for the last 20 years.

National focus on Maricopa County sheriff’s race

National focus on Maricopa County sheriff’s race

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com

Mon Oct 22, 2012 7:34 AM

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is as popular and polarizing as ever, evident in the amount of outside interest and influence focused on his race for a sixth consecutive term.

Arpaio, who became a national icon in the illegal-immigration-enforcement movement during the past decade, has raised as much as 80 percent of his campaign’s $8 million from out-of-state donors. In addition, he has garnered support from political-action committees raising money in his name and occasionally spending it on his behalf.

That is hardly a new development. But in a twist not seen in the sheriff’s prior electoral battles, Arpaio’s main opponent, retired Phoenix police Sgt. Paul Penzone, is also benefiting from factions outside Arizona that are interested in the race, including an independent political-action committee that received $500,000 from labor groups spending money on materials and activities aimed at unseating Arpaio.

Immigration, the sheriff’s signature issue, is responsible for attracting much of the national money pouring in on both sides of the race, said Bruce Merrill, a longtime Arizona political scientist and pollster.

“Joe’s become the focus of the Senate Bill 1070 groups. Since (ousted Arizona Senate President) Russell Pearce is now gone, Joe is really kind of the face of that whole movement,” Merrill said. “This race is just heavily influenced by that, and the money that the sheriff has been able to raise may well keep him in office.”

Translating out-of-state support into votes in Maricopa County is the challenge for Arpaio’s campaign. It spent more than $700,000 from mid-August to mid-September promoting the sheriff’s legacy via television ads, according to the most recent campaign-finance reports. More recently, the campaign has inundated local airwaves with ads attacking Penzone over allegations made by his ex-wife during their 2003 divorce.

The anti-Arpaio groups, by contrast, are focused on getting out the vote.

Campaign for Arizona’s Future, a political-action committee targeting Arpaio, has been funded by $500,000 from the AFL-CIO and Unite Here, a hotel- and hospitality-workers’ union. The labor groups’ donations nearly match what Penzone’s own campaign has raised from contributors so far.

Anti-Arpaio money has largely been spent on salaries for in-state workers, meals and supplies, according to campaign-finance reports.

Campaign for Arizona’s Future also paid for a mailer this month reminding recipients that a vote for the independent candidate in the race, former Scottsdale police Lt. Mike Stauffer, was essentially a vote for Arpaio because it would bleed support from Penzone.

The union-funded group became active in Arizona politics beginning in 2007, said Brendan Walsh, the political-action committee’s chairman, after immigration enforcement began to cause concerns for workers’ rights.

The emphasis on issues affecting local workers is a key difference between the union funding and the out-of-state donors fueling Arpaio’s campaign, he said.

“It’s rooted in our local membership and the needs of our local membership,” Walsh said. “That certainly does distinguish from Arpaio’s national donors, where they don’t have a local interest.”

Arpaio’s campaign manager, Chad Willems, said: “I think the voters of Maricopa County need to ask themselves why a New York-based labor union would pour half a million dollars into a county sheriff’s race. What do they have to gain from Penzone being sheriff?”

Labor groups

Though the labor groups have worked on other local campaigns in the last five years, including Phoenix City Council races, their focus has been on registering more than 34,000 new voters and reminding them to vote on Nov. 6, Walsh said. He expects volunteers and workers to knock on 50,000 doors in the coming weeks.

Those doors likely won’t include homes in Sun Lakes, a retirement community and Arpaio stronghold where Penzone made an appearance last week to speak with a crowd of about 50 residents, most of them supporters. When Arpaio spoke in the same room earlier this year, it was packed, one resident said.

Still, there are signs of support for Penzone — like those that dot some yards in Sun Lakes.

Arpaio’s campaign scoffs at the notion that the race might be close, calling it a fabrication of activists and the media. Poll numbers vary, depending on which candidate paid for the survey. But Arpaio has remained ahead in all of the surveys, with his lead over Penzone ranging from 14 percentage points to about 4 percentage points.

The Penzone campaign, however, paints the monthlong advertising blitz on Phoenix-area television as a sign that Arpaio is sweating.

One ad funded by Arpaio’s campaign accuses Penzone of beating his ex-wife. It is based on a 9-year-old police report. The ad came up several times at Penzone’s Sun Lakes appearance — Penzone himself offered to answer any audience questions on the topic.

The domestic-violence report came after a 2003 argument between Penzone and his former spouse at her Glendale home. Both ended up with minor injuries, and Penzone was listed as the victim in a police report.

The Glendale prosecutor’s office declined to take the case because there was no likelihood of conviction, according to police records.

Penzone is up-front about the incident when speaking publicly, and he told the Sun Lakes crowd he immediately called his Phoenix police supervisor to disclose the incident. He said any allegations that he pushed his ex-wife are “untrue.”

Residents at the meeting said afterward that they would prefer candidates focus on issues related to running the Sheriff’s Office instead of personal matters.

“My assumption was it’s just another political lie because Arpaio is threatened,” said Sun Lakes resident Pat Murrish. “It’s just like most campaigns now.”

Pollster Merrill said about 85 percent of Arizona political ads are negative, but they tend not to have too much impact on the outcome of races. That is particularly true with a candidate like Arpaio, about whom most voters have long-held opinions.

“They can’t change people’s minds,” he said. “They are very effective sometimes in energizing your base, particularly now that we’re in the end-game.”

The race, Merrill said, could come down to which candidate does a better job getting out the vote.

In that regard, the labor groups’ opposition to Arpaio and their commitment to voter turnout could affect the outcome, Merrill said.

“That kind of local effort becomes absolutely crucial and could be a deciding factor in a close race,” he said. “And this could be a close race.”

Family files lawsuit over another murder in Maricopa County Jail

Family files lawsuit over Arizona inmate's death

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:27 PM

The family of a man who died late last year after an altercation with officers in a Maricopa County jail filed suit Tuesday afternoon, accusing the Sheriff’s Office, Phoenix police and health-care workers of mocking Ernest “Marty” Atencio’s mental-health struggles, shocking him and beating him before he died.

Atencio, 44, was jailed on assault allegations in mid-December. He died at a hospital five days later following a scuffle with officers in which Atencio was struck several times and shocked near his heart with a Taser, according to the lawsuit. Atencio’s family has called the incident a “jailers’ riot”.

The family’s lawsuit claims he was exhibiting signs of mental illness. Police reports, which mention that Atencio would become distracted and attempt to chase while talking to officers, support that claim.

But jail health-care workers failed to recognize Atencio’s signs of mental illness, according to the lawsuit, denying him the medical treatment he needed and sending him through the booking process where officers allegedly made fun of Atencio’s mental state before becoming physically engaged with him.

Similar issues have plagued Maricopa County jails for years. The lawsuit, filed for the family by Valley attorney Mike Manning, points out repeated instances in which health-care professionals, judges and court-appointed auditors have cited the system’s failures in tending to mentally ill patients and providing adequate care to inmates.

“Prior to December 15, 2011, both Maricopa County and Sheriff Arpaio were aware of a long history of deliberate indifference to the provision of medical care to those in the county’s jails and ‘long-overdue, constitutionally required corrections that needed to be made as quickly as possible’,” the lawsuit states, citing a 2010 federal court ruling that found standards in the jails continued to fall short of requirements.

The Sheriff’s Office was not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit. The agency in the past has declined to comment on the Atencio case.

Earlier this month, another Manning client settled a 6-year-old lawsuit against the county for $3.25 million. That case alleged circumstances similar to those in the Atencio suit filed Tuesday. Deborah Braillard was taken to jail in January 2005 on suspicion of drug possession and died days later from complications related to her diabetes. Jail workers mistakenly attributed Braillard’s disorientation to drug withdrawal despite information about her diabetic condition being recorded in jail files during Braillard’s previous bookings.

The Atencio lawsuit cites numerous instances in the past 17 years in which courts have pointed out jail deficiencies to county administrators and the Sheriff’s Office, only to see little change in the factors that allegedly contributed to Atencio’s death.

“The Court further found that, ‘the intake screening [at the jails] often does not capture basic and necessary information from detainees, including an adequate history from those suffering from chronic diseases’,” the lawsuit notes, citing a 2008 court ruling.

The Maricopa County Medical Examiner earlier this year issued a report that concluded that Atencio died of cardiac arrest, acute psychosis, medical problems and “law-enforcement subdual,” but the report did not list a manner of death.

A pair of Phoenix police officers contacted Atencio twice on the night he was detained.

During the first contact, outside a convenience store, officers noticed that Atencio was behaving erratically and told him to go home. Moments later, the officers received a call about a man kicking at a woman’s apartment door in the 2800 block of West Laurel Lane. The officers recognized Atencio as the man they had encountered outside the convenience store, and they arrested him after the woman requested prosecution.

When Atencio arrived at the Fourth Avenue Jail’s intake area — where inmates are screened for medical and mental-health concerns, and the most serious are supposed to receive immediate attention — officers recognized his signs of mental illness but failed to respond, according to the claim.

“She (mental-health professional Monica Scarpati) admitted that she did not complete a full assessment of Marty and sent him to an isolation cell,” the family’s notice of claim stated. “Ms. Scarpati and (Correctional Health Services nurse Bill McClean) fell below the applicable standard of care by, in RN McClean’s words, ‘accepting’ Marty into the jail and not doing anything to make sure that Marty got the immediate medical attention that he so obviously needed and deserved.”

According to the claim, as Atencio waited for further processing, other officers noticed his mental state and began mocking him. According to an interview with an inmate who was nearby at the time, one officer thought Atencio’s mug shot could be featured on the Sheriff’s Office website that posts booking photos.

“An MCSO lieutenant stated in an interview that the process of taking Marty’s photo was, ‘Ah, you know, it’s kinda comical,’” according to the claim.

As Atencio prepared to leave the booking area, he became uncooperative with Phoenix officers but was not violent or combative, according to interviews with officers contained in the claim.

Surveillance video shows that when a Phoenix officer placed his arm around Atencio’s neck and took him to the ground, nearby officers joined in the effort to subdue Atencio. This is the beginning of what Atencio’s family referred to as a “jailers’ riot.”

Neither the notice of claim nor the lawsuit request any damages from the Medical Examiner’s Office, but it did allege that the office attempted to shield the county from liability by failing to select a manner of death from one of the four descriptions: suicide, homicide, natural causes or accidental.

Arpaio versus Manning -- again. Will it matter?

Arpaio versus Manning -- again. Will it matter?

By EJ MONTINI

Tue, Oct 23 2012

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s most effective adversary over the years is not a politician. It’s attorney Michael Manning.

Fresh off collecting $3.2 million settlement over the death of Deborah Ann Braillard, an insulin-dependent diabetic who died after her medical condition was treated with indifference in the sheriff’s jail, Manning is filing a lawsuit on behalf of the family of Ernest “Marty” Atencio, a mentally ill man who died at a hospital five days after a scuffle with officers in which Atencio was struck several times and shocked near his heart with a Taser.

Over the years, Manning has done what no political opponent has been able to do: Hold Arpaio to account.

Sort of.

He has won a number of large judgments and settlements on behalf of clients who died in the jail, all before having been convicted of anything.

But his efforts have not led to Arpaio losing an election.

Manning learned early on that you don’t fight Arpaio in the court of public opinion, but in an actual courtroom.

"You can't out-press conference the sheriff," Manning once told me. "He's too good at it. No one who is handed a law degree is going to be as good at public relations as someone like Arpaio. You can't win there. The only place to win is in court. Then, eventually, the public relations will follow."

Now, on the verge of another election, Manning has filed another lawsuit.

It’s hard to say if it will impact the election or not.

After the Braillard case was settled Manning told me, “I’m a product of a Pollyannaish Catholic education and I keep believing that these things are going to make a difference and people will figure it out.”

I’m a product of a Catholic education as well. I have been writing about Arpaio for 20 years.

Each time I do I get an earful from the sheriff’s most ardent supporters.

Not only have they not “figured it out,” they don’t want to.

Joe Arpaio Used Campaign Cash to Pay Himself Rent Money

Joe Arpaio Used Campaign Cash to Pay Himself Rent Money

By Matthew Hendley Wed., Oct. 17 2012 at 6:15 AM

A campaign-finance complaint has been filed against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, mostly related to the oodles of cash he's sent over to his campaign manager Chad Willems' company, Summit Consulting.

While we were adding up how much Arpaio's forked over to Summit (more than $1.5 million since January), we happened to notice that Arpaio effectively cut himself a rent check using campaign contributions.

On January 29, Arpaio's campaign made a $1,200 payment to Ava Investments LLC, which is noted as "monthly rental for campaign office" in Arpaio's campaign-finance forms.

That would be Ava Arpaio, who runs Ava Investments LLC, a company that lists the sheriff as a "manager" in filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Although the location of the campaign office hasn't changed from 10632 North 71st Place -- the location of Ava Arpaio's travel agency, and an address that might sound familiar to longtime New Times readers -- that's the only listed payment to Ava Investments.

That may very well be where the campaign-finance complaint comes into play. The complaint, filed by a woman named Irene Montoya Hemphill, raises a few issues, including that there's no way of telling what Willems -- Arpaio's campaign manager -- and Summit Consulting are doing with all that money

As you can see from an example below, Arpaio's campaign isn't too descriptive about what they're paying Summit Consulting for. "TV advertisement" shows up for three payments, "Fund Raising/Adm" shows up for another, and the fifth one is just left up to your imagination:

One might assume that instead of just listing that Arpaio's cutting himself the rent check, that money is sent to Summit before a check it made out to "Ava Investments LLC" -- since that office was still being used as campaign headquarters, as of September 24.

If not, that could be an issue.

Kristi Passarelli, a campaign-finance manager with the county elections department, explained to us that a candidate has to pay rent if they're using a corporate-owned location.

Therefore, since Arpaio just had to pick a spot owned by his wife and himself, he'd have to pay rent to his wife and himself.

Using property that's owned by a corporation without paying that corporation would be perceived as a corporate donation, which is prohibited by law.

So, long story short, Arpaio effectively paid himself, and should still be paying "Ava Investments LLC" for his own good -- and at the expense of the dopes who give him money.

Meanwhile, the citizen complaint -- sent to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and Maricopa County Clerk Michael Jeanes -- says "it appears [Arpaio] is funneling nearly everything through the 'Summit Consulting Group,'" which is a claim that would be hard to deny.

"It is acting as a conduit for many of those services and actually contracting out with other campaign operatives to do this work," the complaint says.

State law requires these forms to include "a clear description of the items or services purchased," but it's impossible to tell what the threshold is for specificity is on campaign-finance forms.

The complaint also points to the fact that some of the math is wrong in there, but all the Sheriff's campaign would have to do is yell "oops" to get out of that one. It also accuses Arpaio of campaigning in his MCSO uniform, which won't actually get him in trouble, since that kind of thing is kosher for county sheriffs.

Still, it would be nice to know how that money's being used, for instance, how much of it shows up at the bottom of Willems' ATM receipts.

Arizona Lawman Joe Arpaio's Re-election Bid Divides County

Source

Arizona Lawman Joe Arpaio's Re-election Bid Divides County

By REUTERS

Published: November 1, 2012 at 6:36 PM ET

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's hardline stance on illegal immigrants has given him a national profile. But a backlash from angry Latinos is turning his bid for re-election into the toughest of his long career.

Republican Arpaio, who turned 80 this year, is seeking a sixth term in the state's most populous county, where a bitter national fight over illegal immigration has helped drive what has become the most costly sheriff's race in U.S. history.

To his supporters, he is a hard-as-nails lawman who locks up county inmates in an austere "Tent City" jail, and does not hesitate to arrest illegal immigrants nor flinch from probing Democratic President Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate.

But for opponents, the man who styles himself "America's Toughest Sheriff," relentlessly profiles brown-skinned Hispanics across the sprawling Phoenix metro area and neglects police work in his tireless pursuit of media glory.

"When you try to do your job, and you are a little controversial, some people don't like it. That's the way it is," Arpaio told Reuters on the sidelines of a rally in suburban Phoenix, where he was feted by a crowd of supporters.

The Maricopa County sheriff, who his campaign says raised an $8.5 million war chest, is a favorite with Phoenix-area Tea Party conservatives who love him for his fights with the Obama administration and support for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's clampdown on illegal immigration.

On the Democrat ticket, heavily outspent challenger Paul Penzone, who has raised $527,000, is riding a wave of community activism, pushing riled Latinos to vote to end the sheriff's 20-year-stint in office.

While Arpaio draws support from hundreds of enthusiastic supporters at rallies across the sun-baked Phoenix metro region, opponents see much with which to find fault.

He is the target of an ongoing Justice Department lawsuit alleging civil rights abuses by his office, including accusations of widespread racial profiling of Latinos in dozens of immigration "sweeps." Arpaio denies racial profiling.

Critics also cite what they see as the neglect of more than 400 sex-crime cases in a Phoenix suburb, some involving children, while they say deputies focused on rounding up landscapers in traffic stops.

Earlier this year, Arpaio dispatched volunteer posse members to Hawaii to investigate the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate at the request of local Tea Party grassroots activists - a key Arpaio constituency.

He declared the document a forgery even after most Republican critics of Obama had given up pursuing discredited claims that the president was not born in the United States.

"It was a completely absurd waste of time and resources," said Raquel Teran, an activist with the "Joe's Got To Go" campaign. "His priorities have not been to keep Maricopa safe, but to ... campaign while he's in office."

"UNFINISHED BUSINESS"

Stepping into the breach is Penzone, a retired 21-year Phoenix police veteran known as the face of the "Silent Witness Program," a tip line that helped snare two serial killers in 2006.

Penzone says he wants to focus on policing he believes was neglected by Arpaio's headline-grabbing policies in a deeply divided community where Latinos make up nearly a third of the 3.9 million population.

"He has turned that office into a machine for his public image and (it) should be a machine for public safety," Penzone told Reuters. "I didn't want to stand by any more on the sidelines."

Penzone, outspent by Arpaio by about 16 to 1, has been aided by a Democratic drive to register Latinos riled by a state immigration crackdown that requires police to check the papers of anyone they stop and suspect is in the country illegally.

The state Democratic Party has said activists registered about 15,000 voters - some new, others re-registered - in recent months, but were not able to say how many were Hispanic.

Penzone is also aided by groups like Citizens for a Better Arizona, which last year helped oust former Republican state senator Russell Pearce, the author of Arizona's immigration clampdown, in a recall election.

But beating the sheriff remains a long shot. Polls vary depending on which candidate paid for them, but all show Arpaio ahead by 4 to 14 percentage points.

One factor is the sheriff's war chest - greater than what many U.S. congressional candidates spend - which has financed an advertising blitz highlighting Arpaio's 50-year law enforcement career that included stints with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Turkey and Mexico, and as its Arizona chief.

Analysts say the blitz was helping consolidate his advantage with a core base of older, white retirees in Phoenix suburbs such as Sun City and Surprise who vote in high numbers and on whom the criticism of Arpaio has little impact.

"To the average older guy, the issue is ‘All he's doing is trying to protect us from the people who are coming across the border,'" said Bruce Merrill, an emeritus political science professor at Arizona State University.

Among that core group is retiree Jim Heath, who admires Arpaio for arresting illegal immigrants and not "coddling" inmates in county jail.

"He's probably not perfect, but I feel the major points ... how he treats the prisoners and tries to enforce the law, that's the decision-maker for me."

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

Adiós Arpaio

It's time to boot Sheriff Joe Arpaio out of office. Sheriff Joe is not only the worst Sheriff in Maricopa County, Sheriff Joe is the worst sheriff in the world!

---

Policía retirado aspira a derrotar al controvertido Arpaio con el voto latino

Policía retirado aspira a derrotar al controvertido Arpaio con el voto latino

Oct. 30, 2012 03:36 PM

Agencia EFE

Phoenix (Arizona), 30 oct (EFE).- El policía retirado Paul Penzone aspira a lograr el próximo 6 de noviembre lo que nadie ha conseguido antes: derrotar en las urnas al controvertido alguacil del condado Maricopa, Joe Arpaio, y para ello busca el voto latino.

"Es el momento de un cambio. Considero que las fuerzas del orden representan algo extraordinario en nuestra sociedad, la comunidad debe de tener confianza en nuestros policías y creo que eso hace falta dentro de la Oficina del Alguacil del Condado Maricopa", dijo a Efe, Penzone, candidato demócrata a ser el alguacil del condado.

Penzone, que estuvo al servicio del Departamento de Policía de la ciudad de Phoenix durante 21 años, criticó el trabajo realizado por el alguacil Arpaio, republicano conocido por su mano dura en contra de inmigración indocumentada.

En Arizona, la Oficina del Alguacil del Condado Maricopa es la única agencia del orden en llevar a cabo continuas redadas en negocios de la región en busca de trabajadores indocumentados, operativos que calificó de "ridículos".

"Creo que el único propósito de estos operativos es tener la atención de los medios de comunicación. De ninguna manera está combatiendo el crimen, creo que los esfuerzos se deben de enfocar en combatir a las organizaciones dedicadas al tráfico humano", aseguró el candidato demócrata al cargo en las elecciones del próximo 6 de noviembre.

De acuerdo a diferentes encuestas realizadas en las últimas semanas, Arpaio tiene una ventaja de entre 4 y 14 puntos frente a Penzone en intención de voto.

A pesar de estos sondeos, el candidato demócrata aseguró que no es "imposible" derrotar a Arpaio en las urnas, y está convencido de que, con el apoyo de los votantes latinos, es algo que puede lograrse.

Varios grupos y organizaciones en el condado han concentrado sus esfuerzos para registrar a nuevos votantes hispanos, los cuales están dando su apoyo a Penzone.

"Estoy muy agradecido por su apoyo. Creo que es una relación que ha crecido con el tiempo", dijo.

Penzone consideró "lamentable" que haya niños en el condado que digan que tienen "miedo" al ver a un policía de la Oficina del Alguacil por temor a que sus padres o algún familiar sean deportados.

Indicó que un policía debe de ser visto con orgullo dentro de su comunidad, como una persona en la que se puede confiar y llamar cuando hay una emergencia.

"El alguacil ha explotado el tema de la inmigración indocumentada y ha utilizado recursos que debieron haber sido usados para la seguridad pública", enfatizó el candidato.

En su opinión, es intolerable que un alguacil en Arizona enfrente demandas y acusaciones de prácticas de perfil racial, ya que, aseguró, un representante del orden nunca debe de basar sus conjeturas solamente en la raza o en el acento de persona.

Arpaio actualmente enfrenta una demanda por parte del Departamento de Justicia federal por acusaciones de prácticas de perfil racial en contra de conductores latinos y por violaciones a derechos civiles en sus cárceles.

También se encuentra a la espera del resultado de un juicio en su contra por las mismas acusaciones en una demanda entablada por una coalición de organizaciones civiles.

En el caso de ser electo, Penzone dijo que se concentrará en tres áreas para mejorar el servicio público y recuperar la confianza de todos los ciudadanos del condado.

La primera medirá será cambiar la "cultura" dentro de la Oficina del Alguacil del Condado Maricopa, la segunda será modificar el sistema de operaciones para concentrarse en los crímenes que afectan a las comunidades y, por último, dar un buen servicio a todos los residentes.

4 more years of tyranny from Sheriff Joe!!!

Source

Arpaio wins sixth term

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Nov 7, 2012 2:17 AM

Joe Arpaio survived what appeared to be the closest challenge he has faced since taking office in 1993, securing an unprecedented sixth term as Maricopa County sheriff.

Arpaio maintained a comfortable lead over challenger Paul Penzone from the time early balloting results began rolling in shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday until Penzone conceded the election a few hours later before a room full of supporters. Some of Penzone’s faithful feared that former Scottsdale police Lt. Mike Stauffer, running as an independent, would siphon votes away from Penzone, a Democrat, and ruin his chances of upsetting Arpaio. But Stauffer hardly made a difference in the race.

The results served as vindication for Arpaio and his supporters, who view the sheriff as a national figure in the immigration-enforcement movement who has stuck to his principles in the face of attacks from attorneys, activists and President Barack Obama’s administration.

The U.S. Justice Department filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office in the spring, accusing the agency of widespread discrimination against Latino residents in the sheriff’s patrol operations and in Maricopa County jails.

The lawsuit came after years of accusations that sheriff’s deputies targeted Latino residents during immigration-enforcement operations, and a nearly constant stream of protests and demonstrations designed to call attention to the allegations against Arpaio’s office.

Those allegations generated unforeseen support from outside Arizona for both sides of the race.

Arpaio raised more than $8.2 million for his campaign, of which about 80 percent came from donors who live outside Arizona.

Penzone raised more than $520,000 from supporters who mainly came from within Arizona, which is more than $400,000 greater than Arpaio’s 2008 opponent, Dan Saban, was able to generate.

A group of labor unions contributed $500,000 to an independent committee that concentrated efforts on registering voters and getting them to the polls in an effort to unseat Arpaio.

But despite all the forces aligned against him, Arpaio’s reliance on his law-and-order reputation, bolstered by a string of TV advertisements reminding voters of his commitment to fighting animal cruelty, dead-beat dads and immigration enforcement, was enough to earn sheriff a sixth term in office.

Arpaio, speaking to a supportive Republican crowd gathered in downtown Phoenix to watch results, said none of his policies will change — particularly his immigration-enforcement efforts.

Those efforts have generated national controversy. But they also have produced for the sheriff financial support largely unheard of for a county candidate.

He also promised to run again in 2016, when he will be 84 years old.

“This is my message to the media: You’re going to have to put up with me for another eight years,” Arpaio said.

Here are the results for the election

Will Humble's report on medical marijuana

Appeals court screws police beating victim out of $205,000

Ariz. appeals court rules in Peoria man's jail beating lawsuit

Associated Press Fri Nov 9, 2012 11:05 AM

PHOENIX— The Arizona Court of Appeals has upheld most of the civil damages awarded to a Peoria man in his lawsuit against two Maricopa County jail officers.

A county civil jury in July 2010 found two sheriff’s detention officers liable for malicious prosecution, abuse of process and civil rights violations and awarded $855,000 to Delano Yanes.

In a 17-page ruling Thursday, the state appeals court affirmed the award of $650,000 to Yanes for malicious prosecution. But the court reversed the award of $205,000 for punitive damages and attorney fees.

Yanes was accused of killing his 11-month-old son in September 2003. He claimed he was beaten by the two detention officers when booked into the downtown Phoenix jail.

Yanes was acquitted in 2006 and filed suit against the detention officers in 2007.

Sheriff Joe loves Mexicans???

Source

Arpaio tries mending rift with Latinos

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Nov 9, 2012 11:34 PM

As it became apparent Tuesday that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was going to secure a sixth term in office, he was his usual brash self, taunting the media and promising to run again in four years.

Then, surprisingly, he did something he doesn’t often do. He made a peace offering to his most ardent critics. He said he hoped to repair relations with a Latino community angered by his hard-line policy of arresting undocumented immigrants, his frequent criticisms of Hispanic advocacy groups and allegations by the U.S. Justice Department that his agency engaged in racial profiling.

Can his attempt at diplomacy work?

Carlos Sierra, a Republican who helped organize a coalition that sought to register Hispanic voters and oust Arpaio, said the olive branch offered on Election Night was broken from the start.

“You remember exactly what he said: ‘As long as they don’t yell at me.’ If he’s trying to reach out, he already kind of insulted us by saying we only shout at him,” Sierra said. “I think the damage is done. I’m sure there are some people in the Hispanic community who might meet with him. He’s not bringing anything to the table for us. He’s already said he’s not going to change.”

Arpaio said the problem comes down to communication — and his inability to accurately get his message out. He believes local media are biased against him and are twisting his words.

In a wide-ranging post-election interview, Arpaio said the past two years have presented challenges that made his sixth general-election victory his most satisfying. And though the sheriff admitted making mistakes in recent years, mainly in his management choices, he does not think his approach to immigration enforcement is one of them.

Arpaio still believes that mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would work if the country’s leaders put their minds to it and that his rigid enforcement of state laws targeting identity theft and human smuggling is a reasonable solution.

If given the chance, Arpaio said, he also could explain past statements that seem to portray undocumented immigrants as dirty and disease-prone drains on society — words that could thwart his chances for reconciliation with the Hispanic community.

“That’s exactly why I want to talk to them,” he said. “I can explain the swine-flu furor that occurred in the media. That’s why I want to communicate, to let them know why we are doing things — not through the media and demonstrations.

“They may come up with an idea and say, ‘Wait a minute, maybe we can do this … maybe we can deal with the Mexican ambassador, Sheriff, if we have this medical problem. Maybe we can work through customs and everything else.’ Great. OK. Let’s do it.”

But he said their willingness to meet him “is not there.”

“The hatred with certain groups, it’s hard to negotiate,” Arpaio said.

There is a healthy amount of distrust on both sides.

The Rev. Warren Stewart co-founded the Black/Brown Coalition of Arizona with Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox earlier this year. Stewart was also among a group of Black leaders who wrote a letter to Arpaio in December asking the sheriff to resign after a jail death dovetailed with the release of a Justice Department report saying the Sheriff’s Office was involved in some of the most egregious examples of racial profiling investigators had encountered.

Arpaio mocked and ignored the group’s request.

Stewart said that if Arpaio is serious about rebuilding relationships with his critics in minority communities, he could start by writing a letter to the Black/Brown Coalition with an offer to meet.

“His desire to reach out could be an answer to a prayer for reconciliation and for cooperation in Maricopa County as it relates to the immigration issue and to people of color,” Stewart said. “One of my Christian duties is to reach out to those who are opponents, those who could be labeled as enemies, to bring peace. Our goal is peace. It’s never been anti-Arpaio. It’s been anti-Arpaio because he’s disturbing the peace.”

The Rev. Oscar Tillman, president of the Maricopa County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, joined Stewart last December on the steps of the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix, where they called for Arpaio’s resignation.

Tillman, who for years has had a professional relationship with Arpaio and other sheriff’s administrators, said his decision to join was driven in part by Arpaio going out of town instead of tending to more pressing matters at home when an inmate died after a scuffle with officers in the Fourth Avenue Jail.

On Wednesday, Tillman called to congratulate Arpaio on winning re-election and to deliver a message: “You’ve got to deal with me for another four years,” Tillman said.

“There are people today congratulating (President Barack) Obama who hated him. When you deal with reality, you don’t have time to deal with secondary issues.

“If you want to make changes and create some type of cooperation, you cannot say that too much bad blood has been there. Let’s face it, if we said that to Japan or Germany, where would we be?”

Peace and reconciliation are words that politicians often use after elections. But beyond the ethical or moral desire to foster a more tranquil environment, there is some question as to whether Arpaio could secure a seventh term without votes from the Hispanic community.

With several hundred thousand votes remaining to be counted late this week, Arpaio maintained a lead of more than 80,000 votes over his Democratic challenger, Paul Penzone. While comfortable, that margin is a far cry from Arpaio’s 2008 defeat of Dan Saban, whom he bested by 172,000 votes.

When his declining margins come up, Arpaio is quick to produce typewritten notes on results of all six of his campaigns.

“I always hover around 52, 56 (percent),” Arpaio said. “What’s changed? This is a landslide.”

According to exit polls, the percentage of Hispanic voters in Arizona crept higher this year compared with the previous presidential election, rising to 18 percent from 16 percent, Tucson-based pollster Margaret Kenski said.

“Eighteen percent isn’t too staggering compared to the huge base of conservatives he has. Rather than the percent of Hispanics, I would look at the changing attitudes on immigration that have been found in the polls lately,” Kenski said. “To me, that’s more important than the percentage of Hispanics.

“That means it isn’t a fight between the Hispanics and the authorities. There are allies out there in the White community who think a hard line against all illegal aliens is not going to be a productive route to go.”

With that in mind, Kenski said, Hispanic leaders should look carefully at Arpaio’s offer to improve relations. If those leaders refuse to meet, it can make them appear intractable and alienate some in the community who might otherwise support them, she said.

“No matter how obnoxious he may have been, I think it’s a mistake for Latino leaders to say, ‘We’re not coming to the table,’” Kenski said. “It’s always better to talk. What’s their alternative? Wait for him to die?”

Sierra offered another option that might disappoint those hoping Arpaio’s victory and discussions of comprehensive federal immigration reform would bring a detente after years of political warfare.

“We’re not giving up,” Sierra said. “We’re still marching. No one wants to give up. I think if there is a possibility to recall him, I would be very surprised if we didn’t start working on that.”

Sierra noted that the campaign for sheriff had cost Arpaio most of the $8million he raised to run. “At the very least, we left him broke,” he said.

Sheriff Joe's "drug war" goons will soon have machine guns?

Source

Suspected illegal immigrants arrested in pot bust

The Republic | azcentral Sat Nov 10, 2012 4:43 PM

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office reported Saturday the arrest of three undocumented immigrants, who authorities allege were transporting 3,500 pounds of marijuana in a vehicle.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the increasing number of drug smugglers and the danger they pose to his deputies has prompted him “to issue automatic weapons in the near future to all my deputies, including those detectives who work in the higher drug traffic areas like the desert in the near future.”

Deputies estimated the latest seizure of marijuana to be worth $2 million.

The sheriff’s office did not say in its press release when or where the traffic stop and arrests were made.

Deputies arrested Melchicedec Nini-Cabrera, 41, Eucario Salano-Nino, 49, and Jesus Ismael-Birgen, 30, all from Mexico.

All three were booked into Fourth Avenue Jail, facing felony charges of possession and transportation of marijuana, officials said.

The arrests resulted after a week of investigating by the Sheriff’s Office Drug Suppression Task Force.

E-mail: Horne allies weighed tracking rival donors

And remember Tom Horne is the jerk who asked Jan Brewer to flush Prop 203 down the toilet so he could continue sending pot smokers to prison.

Source

E-mail: Horne allies weighed tracking rival donors

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:43 PM

Shortly after Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne was elected to office, campaign volunteers who later became his employees discussed tracking state employees who contributed to his Democratic opponent, new records say.

On Nov. 22, 2010, Charles “Chuck” Johnson, now an assistant attorney general, e-mailed Horne confidante Carmen Chenal and three other women about creating a spreadsheet of employees who donated to Felecia Rotellini’s campaign.

The document was contained in a new batch of investigative records the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office released Wednesday to The Arizona Republic.

The records stem from the agency’s joint investigation with the FBI into allegations that Horne illegally coordinated with an independent expenditure committee run by his political ally and current employee Kathleen Winn during the 2010 election.

Each has denied wrongdoing.

Separately, Horne has disputed statements his former human-resources adviser Susan Schmaltz made to the FBI that Horne was preoccupied with the political loyalties of his employees.

Schmaltz told investigators that Horne kept lists of employees’ political affiliations and campaign contributions to Rotellini and that he directed staff to hire some supporters.

But Johnson’s e-mail suggests some of those closest to Horne were intent on tracking employees’ political affiliations. Horne was not copied on the e-mail.

The e-mail reads:

“Can you do a spread sheet of each State employee who contributed to Felecia’s campaign? I can do it manually (either cut & paste or original typing), but just wondered if you could do it electronically, faster, more detailed, & more reliable. By date, amount (in kind or dollars), name & position would be helpful.

“This is very confidential stuff. We don’t want anyone to get the misimpression that such contributions will get a person fired, but it is just one management tool to be utilized in determining who may have divided loyalties in light of Felecia’s announcement that she’ll be running against Tom in 2014 & actively campaigning for something/someone in 2012.”

It is unclear whether the spreadsheet was ever created and, if it was, by whom. In a statement, Horne said he never “possessed any list of employee party affiliation.” He stated that employees did not face retaliation because of their contributions to Rotellini and that “many” employees who supported her have been promoted, adding that names of campaign contributors are public record.

Johnson worked for former Attorney General Terry Goddard but was fired for reasons not disclosed to the public. Johnson helped Horne in his effort to become attorney general, and Horne hired him. Copied on the e-mail were Chenal; Linnea Heap, the attorney-general employee whose car Horne was driving during a March 27 fender bender; Special Agent Lauren Buhrow; and project specialist Mila Makal.

The other records released Wednesday largely focused on personal e-mails to and from campaign workers regarding the 2010 election, as well as opposition research against Rotellini.

That research could again come into play.

Both Rotellini and Horne last week told The Republic that they are considering running for attorney general in 2014.

But they may have competition from Goddard, who confirmed to The Republic on Wednesday that he, too, is considering a potential return to the state prosecutor’s office.

Border Patrol under scrutiny for deadly force

Source

Border Patrol under scrutiny for deadly force

Associated Press Wed Nov 14, 2012 7:39 PM

NOGALES, Ariz. — A pair of Mexican drug smugglers in camouflage pants, bundles of marijuana strapped to their backs, scaled a 25 foot-high fence in the middle of the night, slipped quietly into the United States and dashed into the darkness.

U.S. Border Patrol agents and local police gave chase on foot — from bushes to behind homes, then back to the fence.

The conflict escalated. Authorities say they were being pelted with rocks. An agent responded by aiming a gun into Mexico and firing multiple shots at the assailant, killing a 16-year-old boy whose family says was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Oct. 10 shooting has prompted renewed outcry over the Border Patrol’s use-of-force policies and angered human rights activists and Mexican officials who believe the incident has become part of a disturbing trend along the border — gunning down rock-throwers rather than using non-lethal weapons.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has launched a probe of the agency’s policies, the first such broad look at the tactics of an organization with 18,500 agents deployed to the Southwest region alone. The Mexican government has pleaded with the U.S. to change its ways. And the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has questioned the excessive use of force by Border Patrol.

At least 16 people have been killed by agents along the Mexico border since 2010, eight in cases where federal authorities said they were being attacked with rocks, said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces, N.M.

The Border Patrol says sometimes lethal force is necessary: Its agents were assaulted with rocks 249 times in the 2012 fiscal year, causing injuries ranging from minor abrasions to major head contusions.

It is a common occurrence along the border for rocks to be thrown from Mexico at agents in the U.S. by people trying to distract them from making arrests or merely to harass them — particularly in areas that are heavily trafficked by drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

Still, Gaubeca balks at what she and others deem the unequal “use of force to use a bullet against a rock.”

“There has not been a single death of a Border Patrol agent caused by a rock,” she said. “Why aren’t they doing something to protect their agents, like giving them helmets and shields?”

The Border Patrol has declined to discuss its use of lethal force policy, but notes agents may protect themselves and their colleagues when their lives are threatened, and rocks are considered deadly weapons.

Kent Lundgren, chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, recalled a time in the 1970s when he was hit in the head while patrolling the border near El Paso, Texas.

“It put me on my knees,” Lundgren said. “Had that rock caught me in the temple, it would have been lethal, I have no doubt.”

It is extremely rare for U.S. border authorities to face criminal charges for deaths or injuries to migrants. In April, federal prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to pursue charges against a Border Patrol agent in the 2010 shooting death of a 15-year-old Mexican in Texas.

In 2008, a case was dismissed against a Border Patrol agent facing a murder charge after two mistrials. Witnesses testified the agent shot a man without provocation but defense attorneys contended the Mexican migrant tried to hit the agent with a rock.

Mexican families have filed multiple wrongful death lawsuits, and the U.S. government, while admitting no wrongdoing, has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars. Last year, the family of the illegal immigrant killed by the agent whose murder case was dismissed reached an $850,000 settlement. The agent remains employed by Border Patrol.

Even the Mexican government has asked for a change in policy, to no avail, though Border Patrol points out that Mexico has put up no barriers in its country and does little to stop the rock throwers.

“We have insisted to the United States government by multiple channels and at all levels that it is indispensable they revise and adjust Border Patrol’s standard operating procedures,” Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

Elsewhere around the world, lethal force is often a last resort in such cases. Israeli police, for instance, typically use rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas to disperse rock-throwers.

“There is no such crowd incident that will occur where the Israeli police will use live fire unless it’s a critical situation where warning shots have to be fired in the air,” said Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Border Patrol agents since 2002 have been provided weapons that can launch pepper-spray projectiles up to 250 feet away. The agency did not provide statistics on how many times they have been used, but officials are quick to note agents along the U.S.-Mexico border operate in vastly different scenarios than authorities in other countries.

They often patrol wide swaths of desert alone — unlike protest situations elsewhere where authorities gather en masse clad in riot gear.

Experts say there’s little that can be done to stop the violence, given the delicacies of the diplomacy and the fact that no international law specifically covers such instances.

“Ultimately, the politics of the wider U.S.-Mexico relationship are going to play a much bigger role than the law,” said Kal Raustiala, professor of law and director of the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA. “The interests are just too high on both sides to let outrage from Mexico, which is totally understandable, determine the outcome here.”

Officials at the Border Patrol’s training academy in Artesia, N.M., refused comment on all questions about rock-throwing and use of force.

At the sprawling 220-acre desert compound, prospective agents spend at least 59 days at the academy, learning everything from immigration law to off-road driving, defense tactics and marksmanship.

“We’re going to teach them … the mechanics of the weapon that they’re going to use, the weapons systems, make them good marksmen, put them in scenarios where they have to make that judgment, shoot or not shoot,” said the training academy’s Assistant Chief Patrol Agent James Cox.

In the latest scenario, the two smugglers were attempting to climb the fence back into Mexico, while Border Patrol agents and Nogales Police Department officers ordered them down.

“Don’t worry, they can’t hurt us up here!” one suspect yelled to the other. Then came the rocks.

The police officers took cover, but a Border Patrol agent opened fire through the fence on Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot at least seven times, according to Mexican authorities. A Mexican official with direct knowledge of the investigation said the teenager was shot in the back. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the case.

The Border Patrol has revealed little information as probes unfold on both sides of the fence that separates Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Sonora. The FBI is investigating, as is standard with all Border Patrol shootings, and the agency won’t comment “out of respect for the investigative process,” said U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel.

Marco Gonzalez lives in Nogales, Ariz., just across the road from the border fence. He called police to report seeing suspicious men in dark clothes running through his neighborhood.

He didn’t see the shooting, but he heard the gunshots. His kids thought they were fireworks.

“It affects me a lot,” Gonzalez said in Spanish. “Nothing like this has happened since I’ve lived here. It causes a lot of fear.”

The teen’s mother claims her son was just walking past the area a few blocks from home and got caught in the crossfire. None of the training, political maneuvering or diplomatic tip-toeing matters to her. She just wants her boy back. She just wants answers.

“Put yourself in my place,” Araceli Rodriguez told the Nogales International. “A child is what you most love in life. It’s what you get up in the morning for, what you work for. They took away a piece of my heart.”

———

Associated Press writer Brady McCombs contributed to this report from Phoenix. Josef Federman contributed from Israel.

Groups: Pinal jail bad for immigrants

Just so that alleged Libertarian Mike Renzulli won't accusing me of being a pig lover, I think Paul Babeu is just as much of a jerk as Sheriff Joe.

Source

Groups: Pinal jail bad for immigrants

By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Nov 15, 2012 10:12 PM

A national coalition of advocacy groups has named the Pinal County Jail one of the country’s 10 worst immigration-detention facilities and is asking the Obama administration to direct Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to stop contracting with the jail.

The Detention Watch Network wants ICE to end contracts with 10 facilities around the country, all run by private-prison operators or county jails, “where conditions are so appalling they’ve reached a tipping point,” said Andrea Black, executive director of the network.

In a report issued Thursday, the network echoed criticisms leveled earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union, which in June threatened to sue ICE and the Department of Homeland Security over conditions at the Pinal County Jail. More generally, both groups seek broader reform of detention practices.

“The federal government said three years ago that the use of jail-like facilities is punitive and not appropriate for people who are just being held for civil rather than criminal proceedings,” said Victoria Lopez, director of ACLU of Arizona, adding that reforms of the immigration-detention system promised by the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 have not materialized.

ICE contracts for 625 of the 1,540 beds at the Pinal County Jail. Among the specific issues raised by the ACLU and Detention Watch:

Jails are meant for short-term detention, but some immigrants have been held at the Pinal County Jail for as long as three years.

Detainees don’t have meaningful access to the outdoors, as required by law, but are limited to exercising in rooms with four high walls and a single mesh window.

Detainees complain of poor sanitation and hygiene, including receiving food on dirty trays, finding worms in food, finding bugs and worms in faucets, receiving dirty laundry and being overcrowded with as many as 10 other men in one cell and only one toilet.

Immigrants at the jail complain that medical-care requests are often denied or delayed arbitrarily, and that mentally-ill detainees routinely are placed in segregation, leading to deterioration of their mental states.

Contact visits aren’t allowed at the jail. Visiting family members sit in front of a video screen in a central area, while the detainee sits in a separate video booth outside the cell block. Detainees also complain of exorbitant charges for phone calls, saying they may pay $10 for a three-minute call.

Detainees also complain of punitive and abusive treatment. Detention Watch cited “punitive tactics like placing them on lockdown, searching cells and issuing disciplinary write-ups for minor issues such as not making a bed, not moving quickly enough, or saving a piece of fruit from their meal … at times result in placement in segregation and/or the loss of the few privileges given, such as access to purchase items at the commissary.”

ICE responded to questions from The Arizona Republic with a written statement that it is reviewing the Detention Watch reports and has offered to meet with the authors. ICE said that “it is disappointing that the reports appear to be built primarily on anonymous allegations that cannot be investigated or substantiated, and many second-hand sources and anecdotes that pre-date the agency’s initiation of detention reform.” The statement also said that ICE is working to improve conditions and oversight, and to make it easier for detainees to report problems.

In an Oct.12 letter from ICE to the ACLU, the agency said it was considering transfers for 21 detainees who had been at the jail for more than six months, that it would grant some contact visits on a case-by-case visit at another nearby facility and that ICE had negotiated a new contract in which detainees would pay $7.50 for a 20-minute out-of-state call.

But Gary Mead, ICE executive associate director, said the agency was unaware of many of the detainee complaints raised by the ACLU.

Azadeh Shahshahani, director of the ACLU’s National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project, said that detainees fear retaliation if they complain about jail conditions. Detention Watch cited allegations that Pinal County Jail guards threatened to issue disciplinary write-ups and report those to the immigration courts if detainees filed complaints.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office didn’t respond directly to questions about the ACLU and Detention Watch’s allegations, or whether it had taken steps to address them. In a written response, spokesman Tim Gaffney said that media are allowed to visit the facility, that staff are well-trained and that “we provide a very clean and safe environment for all who are detained in our facility.”

Gaffney pointed out that the jail received accreditation in the National Sheriffs’ Association’s Jail Accreditation Pilot Program in 2011. The program evaluates jails’ compliance to 594 legal-based guidelines. The association serves sheriffs’ offices through education, training and law-enforcement resources.

Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., one of 30 members of Congress who has requested a General Accounting Office investigation of conditions at immigration detention centers, said, “We do need to address the immigration detention system within the context of immigration reform, but we shouldn’t wait to remedy problems that we know are occurring in these centers. At a time of enormous budget deficits, it doesn’t make sense for taxpayers to be on hook for $120 a night to put people up in these detention facilities.”

The other nine jails and prisons targeted by Detention Watch Network are: Etowah County Detention Center, Ala.; Houston Processing Center, Texas; Polk County Detention Facility, Texas; Stewart Detention Center, Ga.; Irwin County Jail, Ga; Hudson County Jail, N.J.; Theo Lacy Detention Center, Calif.; Tri-County Detention Center, Ill., and Baker County Jail, Fla.

FBI investigation reveals bureau’s comprehensive access to electronic communications

The police that are spying on you probably read this email before you did!!!!

Remember if you are doing something illegal you certainly should not be talking about it in an email or posting it on the internet where federal, state, county, and local city cops watch our every move.

You can encrypt your emails with something like PGP, but I suspect if you piss the Feds off enough they are willing to spend big bucks to get the folks at the NSA to decrypt your messages.

And last but not least your telephone isn't that safe either. The police routinely illegally listen to our phone calls without the required "search warrants".

Remember any time you use a cell phone you are also using a radio transmitter and EVERYTHING you say is broadcast onto the airwaves for anybody to listen to.

Source

FBI investigation of Broadwell reveals bureau’s comprehensive access to electronic communications

By Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, Published: November 17

The FBI started its case in June with a collection of five e-mails, a few hundred kilobytes of data at most.

By the time the probe exploded into public view earlier this month, the FBI was sitting on a mountain of data containing the private communications — and intimate secrets — of a CIA director and a U.S. war commander. What the bureau didn’t have — and apparently still doesn’t — is evidence of a crime.

How that happened and what it means for privacy and national security are questions that have induced shudders in Washington and a queasy new understanding of the FBI’s comprehensive access to the digital trails left by even top officials.

FBI and Justice Department officials have vigorously defended their handling of the case. “What we did was conduct the investigation the way we normally conduct a criminal investigation,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday. “We follow the facts.”

But in this case, the trail cut across a seemingly vast territory with no clear indication of the boundaries, if any, that the FBI imposed on itself. The thrust of the investigation changed direction repeatedly and expanded dramatically in scope.

A criminal inquiry into e-mail harassment morphed into a national security probe of whether CIA Director David H. Petraeus and the secrets he guarded were at risk. After uncovering an extramarital affair, investigators shifted to the question of whether Petraeus was guilty of a security breach.

When none of those paths bore results, investigators settled on the single target they are scrutinizing now: Paula Broadwell, the retired general’s biographer and mistress, and what she was doing with a cache of classified but apparently inconsequential files.

On Capitol Hill, the case has drawn references to the era of J. Edgar Hoover, the founding director of the FBI, who was notorious for digging up dirt on Washington’s elite long before the invention of e-mail and the Internet.

“The expansive data that is available electronically now means that when you’re looking for one thing, the chances of finding a whole host of other things is exponentially greater,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-­Calif.), a member of the House intelligence committee and a former federal prosecutor.

In this case, Schiff said, the probe may have caused more harm than it uncovered. “It’s very possible that the most significant damage done to national security was the loss of General Petraeus himself,” Schiff said.

Not the usual boundaries

The investigation’s profile has called attention to what legal and privacy experts say are the difficulties of applying constraints meant for gathering physical evidence to online detective work.

Law enforcement officers conducting a legal search have always been able to pursue evidence of other crimes sitting in “plain view.” Investigators with a warrant to search a house for drugs can seize evidence of another crime, such as bombmaking. But the warrant does not allow them to barge into the house next door.

But what are the comparable boundaries online? Does a warrant to search an e-mail account expose the communications of anyone who exchanged messages with the target? [Warrants, who needs stinking warrants. We will just do an illegal search and laugh when the illegal search causes you to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers to get it throw out. Remember the police are criminals who routinely break the law in an effort to put other criminals in jail. If cops didn't routinely commit perjury they wouldn't have a slang word for it which is testilying!!!]

Similarly, FBI agents monitoring wiretaps have always been obligated to put down their headphones when the conversation is clearly not about a criminal enterprise. [Do you really think an FBI agent is going to put down the headphones and miss out on all that potentially incriminating dirt???] It’s known as minimization, a process followed by intelligence and law enforcement agencies to protect the privacy of innocent people.

“It’s harder to do with e-mails, because unlike a phone, you can’t just turn it off once you figure out the conversation didn’t relate to what you’re investigating,” said Michael DuBose, a former chief of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section who now handles cyber-investigations for Kroll Advisory Solutions.

Some federal prosecutors have sought to establish a “wall” whereby one set of agents conducts a first review of material, disclosing to the investigating agents only what is relevant. But Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who consults on electronic surveillance issues, said he thinks “that’s the exception rather than the rule.” [I suspect this is more about convincing juries that the FBI didn't do something illegal, and I doubt if it stops the cops from doing anything illegal.]

It’s unclear whether the FBI made any attempt to minimize its intrusion into the e-mails exchanged by Broadwell and Petraeus, both of whom are married, that provided a gaping view into their adulterous relationship.

Many details surrounding the case remain unclear. The FBI declined to respond to a list of questions submitted by The Washington Post on its handling of personal information in the course of the Petraeus investigation. The bureau also declined to discuss even the broad guidelines for safeguarding the privacy of ordinary citizens whose e-mails might surface in similarly inadvertent fashion.

The scope of the issue is considerable, because the exploding use of e-mail has created a new and potent investigative resource for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement demands for e-mail and other electronic communications from providers such as Google, Comcast and Yahoo are so routine that the companies employ teams of analysts to sort through thousands of requests a month. Very few are turned down. [Remember what I said about NEVER using email to talk about anything you do that illegal. The article just said the FBI routinely gets Google and Yahoo to help them spy on you!!!!]

Wide access to accounts

Although the Petraeus-Broadwell investigation ensnared high-ranking officials and had potential national security implications, the way the FBI assembled evidence in the case was not extraordinary, according to several experts.

The probe was triggered when a Florida socialite with ties to Petraeus and Gen. John R. Allen, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, went to the FBI in June with menacing e-mails from an anonymous sender. [Even if you use an anonymous email the cops will almost certainly get the IP address that the email was sent from which probably will point to you!!!!]

Schiff and others have questioned why the FBI even initiated the case. Law enforcement officials have explained that they were concerned because the earliest e-mails indicated that the sender had access to details of the personal schedules of Petraeus and Allen.

The FBI’s first pile of data came from Jill Kelley, who got to know Petraeus and Allen when she worked as an unofficial social liaison at the military base in Tampa where both men were assigned.

In early summer, Kelley received several anonymous e-mails warning her to stay away from Allen and Petraeus. Kelley was alarmed and turned over her computer to the FBI; she may also have allowed access to her e-mail accounts.

The e-mails were eventually traced to Broadwell, who thought that Kelley was a threat to her relationship with Petraeus, law enforcement officials said. But the trail to Broadwell was convoluted.

Broadwell reportedly tried to cover her tracks by using as many as four anonymous e-mail accounts and sending the messages from computers in business centers at hotels where she was staying while on a nationwide tour promoting her biography of Petraeus. According to some accounts, the FBI traced the e-mails to those hotels, then examined registries for names of guests who were checked in at the time. [See they can hunt down anonymous emails based on the IP address that sent them]

The recent sex scandal that's rocked the armed forces and the CIA has highlighted an often-unseen problem in military families: Marital infidelity. Anthony Mason and Rebecca Jarvis speak with two Army wives to understand if infidelity is the military's dirty little secret.

Once Broadwell was identified, FBI agents would have gone to Internet service providers with warrants for access to her accounts. Experts said companies typically comply by sending discs that contain a sender’s entire collection of accounts, enabling the FBI to search the inbox, draft messages and even deleted correspondence not yet fully erased.

“You’re asking them for e-mails relevant to the investigation, but as a practical matter, they let you look at everything,” said a former federal prosecutor who, like many interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition on anonymity because the FBI inquiry is continuing.

FBI agents can then roam through every corner of the account as if it were their own. [Which is why you should NEVER post illegal stuff on the internet!!!!!!]

The capability to scour e-mail accounts has expanded the bureau’s investigative power dramatically, even in crimes previously seen as difficult to prosecute. For example, officials said, the ability to reconstruct communications between reporters and their sources helps explain why the Obama administration has been able to bring more leak prosecutions than all of its predecessors combined.

E-mail searches vary in scope and technique, from scanning contents for key words “to literally going through and opening every file and looking at what it says,” a former Justice Department official said.

Law enforcement officials said the FBI never sought access to Allen’s computer or accounts. It’s unclear whether it did so with Petraeus. But through Kelley and Broadwell, the bureau had amassed an enormous amount of data on the two men — including sexually explicit e-mails between Petraeus and Broadwell and questionable communications between Allen and Kelley.

Petraeus and Broadwell had tried to conceal their communications by typing drafts of messages, hitting “save” but not “send,” and then sharing passwords that provided access to the drafts. But experts said that ruse would have posed no obstacle for the FBI, because agents had full access to the e-mail accounts.

As they pore over data, FBI agents are not supposed to search for key words unrelated to the warrant under which the data were obtained. But if they are simply reading through document after document, they can pursue new leads that surface.

“Most times, if you found evidence of a second crime, you would stop and go back and get a second warrant” to avoid a courtroom fight over admissibility of evidence, a former prosecutor said. But in practical terms, there is no limit on the number of investigations that access to an e-mail account may spawn.

‘Because of who it was’

There is nothing illegal about the Petraeus-Broadwell affair under federal law. Were it not for Petraeus’s prominent position, the probe might have ended with no consequence. But because of his job — and the concern that intelligence officers caught in compromising positions could be susceptible to blackmail — the probe wasn’t shut down.

“If this had all started involving someone who was not the director of the CIA . . . they would have ignored it,” said David Sobel, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group. “A bell went off because of who it was.”

That consideration triggered a cascade of additional quandaries for the Justice Department, including whether and when to notify Congress and the White House. The FBI finally did so on election night, Nov. 6, when Deputy Director Sean Joyce called Petraeus’s boss, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.

After being confronted by Clapper, Petraeus agreed to resign.

President Obama said last week that there was “no evidence at this point, from what I’ve seen, that classified information was disclosed that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security.”

But the data assembled on Allen and Petraeus continue to reverberate. The FBI turned over its stockpile of material on Allen — said to contain as many as 30,000 pages of e-mail transcripts — to the Defense Department, prompting the Pentagon inspector general to start an investigation.

The CIA has also launched an inspector general investigation into Petraeus and his 14-month tenure at the agency, seeking to determine, among other things, whether he used the perks of the position to enable his affair with Broadwell.

If it follows its own protocols, the FBI will hold on to the data for decades. Former officials said the bureau retains records for 20 years for closed criminal investigations, and 30 years for closed national security probes.

Sari Horwitz and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Data Doctors: Are my emails private from government agencies?

The answer is - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Data Doctors: Are my emails private from government agencies?

Posted: Monday, November 19, 2012 8:00 am

By Ken Colburn, Data Doctors

Q: What is Metadata? And after the scandal of General Petraeus, are our emails private from government agencies? - Jeremy

A: E-mail has always been one of the least secure methods of transmitting data electronically and this recent scandal shows that even being tech-savvy isn’t much help.

When an e-mail message is created and sent, the message passes through a number of mail servers (think of them as post offices for snail mail) and a record of where the message came from and where it went (via IP addresses) is also created by virtually every device that handles the message.

Since most messages are sent in plain text, it’s technically possible for anyone or any system to read your message anywhere along the way (which is why e-mail encryption is important for sensitive messages). The reality is that most companies have very strict systems in place to keep just anyone from accessing those messages, but the opportunity still exists. [That is BS - Any person with computer administrative powers can read your emails. This is typically a "root" user in the UNIX or Linux worlds. But email administrators without "root" powers can also read your emails]

The information about the message, a.k.a. the ‘metadata’ is how the scandal was exposed. If we continue the snail mail analogy, the post office stamps mail to help route it and DNA or fingerprints on the outside of an envelope can be used to help track down the sender of the mail without ever opening the mail. [Again he is oversimplifying things. This so called 'metadata' is part of the email. It's at the very beginning of each email, and if you can read it, you can also read the email.]

Petraeus, the Director of the CIA, knew that sending and receiving e-mail from an anonymous account wouldn’t be safe, so he used a method commonly used by terrorists and teenagers: create draft messages, but never send them.

If two people have the username and password for the same account, they can create messages for each other that don’t leave the usual trails described above. They save them as draft copies so the other can log in and read the draft, then respond in-kind without ever sending a traceable message. [Well that is almost right. When the message is created, edited or read it does travel over the internet and someone that is monitoring your internet traffic could read it]

Had this been the only communication from the involved parties, they would likely never have been discovered but as usual, human error exposed the affair.

The jealous mistress sent harassing e-mails from an anonymous account to another woman she thought was being flirtatious, which is a criminal violation and began the unravelling of the affair.

The government can’t read your private messages without some level of due process, except in rare situations, but the process is what so many privacy advocates are concerned about. [That is in theory. In reality the FBI and Homeland security police are just as crooked as the criminals they hunt and they routinely illegally read people email, and after they discover a crime they will commit perjury and make up a lame excuse to get the search warrant they were supposed to have before they read your emails]

The current laws were created when electronic storage was expensive and we all tended to use one device and delete things to save space. Today, storage is cheap and we use a plethora of devices that in turn create more records that we tend to keep for much longer periods.

Under current laws, any e-mail that is 6 months old or older can be requested if a criminal prosecutor signs the request. If the message is less than 6 months old, a court order from a judge is required. [But that won't stop a crooked cop from illegally reading your data]

In either case, something that the courts recognize as probable cause has to trigger the request when it comes to the averages citizen. If someone suspected that Petraeus was having an affair, that wouldn’t have been enough to allow the FBI to start requesting access to his personal e-mail accounts.

His mistress’ harassing emails which violated part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is what opened to door and eventually lead to the exposure of the affair to the world.

The lessons to be learned from this scandal are that e-mail has never been or will never be a secure way to communicate with others, if you want to make it more difficult for the government to access your messages, make sure you delete them before they are 6 months old and no matter how secure you think you are, all it takes is one simple human error (or jealous mistress) to render your ‘security system’ useless. [While that might be "technically" right, it is wrong in reality. Just because YOU logically delete one of your emails doesn't mean it is physically deleted from the server that keeps your message. And even if you logically delete a message, but it still physically exists on a server the police can read it. The same is true with files on your personal computer. While you may logically delete a file, it frequently continues to exist on your computer and if it does exist the police can still read it.]

[The bottom line is if you have something that you want to remain private DON'T put it on the internet where 2 billion people might be able to read it.]

Sheriff Joe Arpaio wins by a lousy .7 percent

Source

Arpaio wins by .7 percent

By LAURIE ROBERTS

Wed, Nov 21 2012 11:08 AM

Final election results are – at along last – in for Maricopa County.

So, the sheriff, once the most popular politician in the state, eked out a win. Half the county’s voters (actually half plus .7 percent) supported the sheriff.

That means that half (actually half minus. 7 percent) didn’t support the sheriff.

And it took him $8 million to get the .7 percent.

That’s not a mandate, it’s a warning. The question is, did the sheriff, who has already announced his intent to run for re-election in 2016, get the message?

Arizona Organix First Authorized Medical Marijuana Dispensary in Arizona

Arizona Organix Steps Out as the State's First Authorized Medical-Marijuana Dispensary

By Ray Stern Thursday, Nov 22 2012

A business in Glendale has become Arizona's first licensed medical-marijuana dispensary under a voter-approved 2010 law.

It's called Arizona Organix — but it would have been more fitting had the owners dubbed the place Target and adopted the mega-chain's red concentric logo.

This is hostile territory — the land of Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who claims that anyone selling marijuana can be prosecuted regardless of the state law, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who'll do anything for a headline.

Montgomery, who also strongly opposes abortion and pornography, is trying his best to become a hero to social conservatives. In August, he partnered with Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne to file a motion in Superior Court that seeks to reverse the will of voters — allowing dispensaries and marijuana cultivation — by having a judge declare that the state law is preempted by the federal prohibition against pot.

A ruling on the motion by Judge Michael Gordon is expected any day now. But Montgomery and Arpaio could use another test case.

So far, Arizona Organix owners Ben Myer, Bill Myer (Ben's father), and Ryan Wells have stuck out their heads only halfway.

Their store was authorized on November 15 to sell marijuana by the Arizona Department of Health Services, but it isn't open yet. A sign on the door at Arizona Organix (5301 West Glendale Avenue), which is in a high-profile location between a pet-food store and an antique shop, says, "We hope to be operating within a few weeks" and asks interested customers to sign up on an e-mail list.

The situation frustrates some in the medical-marijuana community, because the DHS said it would begin notifying newly qualified patients who are within a 25-mile radius of the store that they are forbidden from growing marijuana. Arizona law allows patients to grow up to 12 plants each, but not if an operating dispensary is open within a 25-mile zone.

However, on Monday afternoon, DHS director Will Humble announced that it had allowed the dispensary to delay the effective day of operation until the retail store opens, meaning the 25-mile exclusion won't be triggered just yet.

Other dispensaries could open before Arizona Organix. DHS inspectors were scheduled to visit a Tucson dispensary on November 20. But the legal battlefield remains hazy for any marijuana-related business in Arizona.

Wells tells New Times that he and the Myers still are trying to figure out when to open, even though they've been working on the dispensary project for two years.

"This has been such a long road for us; a lot of my feelings are pretty well dulled by this point. The next hurdle is to open and see what happens," Wells says.

They're wondering what Arpaio might do: "He's always in our minds for the worst."

But that's not the only hurdle. Arizona Organix hasn't yet found a cultivation site in which to grow the marijuana that will be sold to qualified patients.

The city of Glendale, which approved the dispensary earlier this year, doesn't allow medical-marijuana retail stores to grow pot on-site. The company's looking for a roomy warehouse to turn into an indoor greenhouse. Landlords, fearing reprisals from the feds, have been more than hesitant.

"Nine out of 10 say no," Wells says. He adds that obtaining a site still appears possible, as they're in negotiations with several property owners.

In theory, the medical-pot shop could open with donated marijuana on the shelves. Patients and caregivers can only possess up to 2.5 ounces at any given time under state law, but growing 12 plants generates more than 2.5 ounces. Arizona law allows patients and registered caregivers, who can cultivate for up to five patients each, to give their excess marijuana away to authorized dispensaries.

Wells says Arizona Organix possibly could find people who want to donate their marijuana, but he says it's not good business to open with a limited supply only to run out before replacement pot from a cultivation site is ready for sale. Being the only operating, official medical-pot store in the Valley would make it popular, for sure. And the location already has been operating as a compassion club, which distributed marijuana to dues-paying members, ostensibly without requiring anything of value in return.

Until last week, the Alternative Health Clinic used what is now Arizona Organix's address and phone number. "Very easy process to get high-quality medicine," says a February 14 comment on the clinic's Yelp.com listing.

Similar businesses have sprung up all over the state since the passage of the Medical Marijuana Act. They're a result, in part, of the vacuum created when Governor Jan Brewer canceled the dispensary portion of the law by executive order in May 2011. After two failures in court to block the law, the Republican governor was ordered by a state judge in January to carry out the wishes of voters. Ninety-seven applicants for dispensaries were selected at random by the state.

Meanwhile, Valley police agencies have raided several compassion clubs, claiming they were operating outside of the medical-marijuana law. New clubs have opened to replace some of those that closed. The raids typically are preceded by an undercover "buy" at the club by an officer with a medical-marijuana card. It's unknown whether Alternative Health Clinic was under investigation by any law enforcement agency when Arizona Organix took over at the location.

I tried to get the 2nd page of this article, but the folks at the New Times screwed up and put a garbage link to the 2nd page.

If you want to read the full article go to the URL and try again to find page two of the article.

Bill Richardson is a big fan of police terrorist Sheriff Joe???

Source

Richardson: Love him or hate him, Arpaio is going to be here a while longer

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2012 6:21 am

Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio won again.

The 80-year-old Arpaio won a sixth term, setting a record as the county’s longest sitting sheriff. And if Arpaio has his way, and he usually does, he’ll be elected to a seventh term.

No doubt the Democrats will give it their best shot to depose Arpaio, but if history repeats itself, the Democrats will once again bring a knife to a gunfight and Arpaio will be re-elected and talking about an eighth term.

While the anti-Arpaio crowd are touting the sheriff’s winning by only 7 percent of the vote, he won fair and square and now has four more years to campaign and raise money for 2016. He’s already been working at reinventing himself as a kinder and gentler Joe who has said he wants to reach out to the Hispanic community, a community that has had a less than harmonious relationship with the man who invaded neighborhoods looking for undocumented workers.

His olive branch effort might not play well in the barrio, but it’ll play just fine with supporters who will tout his outreach efforts and his toughness on crime. It’s a win-win for the county’s puppet master.

In this last election almost 680,000 of Maricopa County’s approximately one million eligible voters saw fit to return Arpaio to office. Even though the sheriff only provides policing services to around 7 percent of the county’s nearly four million residents, Arpaio’s fans see him as saving them from crime and evil even though the vast majority of residents get their police services from city departments. If you don’t end up in jail most county residents will never encounter the sheriff and his deputies.

Arpaio has been more of a circus ringmaster than lawman the past two decades. He has a list of professional and organizational failures that would probably fill dozens of filing cabinets. He spends our tax money like a drunken sailor, according to a May 2012 study conducted by the Pinal County Office of Management and Budget, yet Old Joe has the lowest law enforcement costs per capita of all the county sheriffs in Arizona. MCSO comes in at $18 while Paul Babeu, his Pinal County protégé, comes in at $80.

Sure the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has gotten plenty of bad press and no doubt has caused a considerable amount of pain and suffering. But the MCSO doesn’t have an exclusive on questionable and failed policing practices.

While it’s been heavily reported MCSO botched over 400 sex crimes cases, according to a June 28, 2011 report by ABC15, the Phoenix police department may have mishandled hundreds of sex crimes investigations. And what about the recent ABC15 report -- http://evtnow.com/4rz -- that Phoenix is sitting on over 1,500 untested sexual assault kits while Tempe police are sitting on almost 400 untested kits? How many rapists and child molesters may have gone free because of Phoenix and Tempe’s failure to properly follow up on a sex crime? By comparison, MCSO now tests all of their sexual assault evidence kits and has no untested kits sitting on a shelf.

And when it comes to crime statistics, Maricopa County’s crime rate is 40 felony crimes per 1,000 according to a study by the Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com/news/cityguides/. Phoenix’s serious crime rate is 50 per 1,000 and Tempe’s is almost 60 per 1,000.

But you don’t see the protesters who have targeted Arpaio raising cane at Phoenix and Tempe city council meetings demanding action over the failures of their police chiefs.

Arpaio is the sheriff who is either, loved, hated or tolerated by the voters of Maricopa County, just like most other politicians. And until the voters of Maricopa County decide to dump him or he retires, Arpaio’s the sheriff and he still runs the county.

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Alvarez to '60 Minutes': False confessions story was 'offensive'

"The 9 Step Reid Method" is the technique that most police agencies in the world use to get confessions.

Go ahead right now and Google

9 Step Reid Method

• Reid technique - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• The Reid Technique of Interrogation
• What are the nine steps of the Reid interrogation technique ...
• Reid 9 Steps of Interrogation - YouTube
• Modern Police Interrogation Techniques Use Subtle Psychological ...
• [PDF] Arguments Against Use of the Reid Technique for Juvenile ...
• Method to the Madness – Officer Reid's Torture Technique | The ...
• John Reid and the Reid Technique of Interviewing & Interrogation ...
• W-R-R The Reid Method
• Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogations and ...

Back in the old days cops used to get confessions by beating people with rubber hoses. The great thing about rubber hoses is they don't leave marks like beating a person with a club would and the cops can say the person confessed willingly without being beaten.

The "9 Step Reid Method" is just a modern method of beating the sh*t out of suspected criminals with psychological rubber hose. It's a very effective method in getting people to confess. In fact it's so effective that it routinely gets innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit.

And the good thing about "The 9 Step Reid Method" is that the psychological rubber hoses used to beat a suspected criminal into confession leave even less marks then real rubber hoses.

The bad thing about "The 9 Step Reid Method" is that the confessions cops get when they use it are about as reliable as those they got when they beat the sh*t out of a person with a rubber hose to get the confession.

As of today, DNA tests have cause 301 people who were framed by the police to be released from death row. Many of those people confess to the crimes the crimes the police framed them for. And of course most of those police confessions were obtained using the "The 9 Step Reid Method".

Source

Alvarez to '60 Minutes': False confessions story was 'offensive'

By Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune reporter

8:05 a.m. CST, December 14, 2012

After days of scathing reviews of her "60 Minutes" interview on false confessions, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez fired off a letter to the venerable news program calling its Sunday report "one-sided and extremely misleading" and vowing to set the record straight.

The segment titled "Chicago: The False Confession Capital" featured two infamous Chicago-area cases in which teenage boys allegedly confessed to brutal murders but were later exonerated when DNA excluded them as the killers.

In her letter, addressed to CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, Alvarez called the story "an offensive display" and accused reporter Byron Pitts of using only snippets of a 6-month-old interview to distort her record and make it appear she was still trying to prosecute the cases.

"Had I known that this story would completely distort my position and intentionally omit critical facts, I would never have agreed to your interview," Alvarez wrote.

One particularly damaging portion of the interview involved the Dixmoor Five case in which five men were convicted as teens of the 1991 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl whose body was found on a path. DNA linked a serial rapist to the crime and undermined confessions from the teens. They were cleared in 2011 after spending years in prison.

Alvarez explained in the interview that one possible explanation for the DNA was necrophilia — that the rapist had sex with the girl after she'd already been killed.

That answer — which was roundly mocked in blogs and news critiques — was misconstrued, Alvarez said in the letter. She wrote that the necrophilia theory was used at trial years before she had any involvement in the case.

"I have never advanced that theory or argument, but simply responded, when asked by Mr. Pitts, that we can't say with certainty what had occurred," Alvarez wrote. "This story was not designed to inform, it was designed to undermine me and mislead the public."

Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Alvarez, said the reaction to the piece has been vitriolic. "She's gotten hate mail, things you couldn't even publish," Daly said.

CBS News representatives did not return phone calls seeking comment.

jmeisner@tribune.com

Previous Articles about Sheriff Joe

And here are even some more articles on Sheriff Joe and this thugs in Phoenix, Arizona and Maricopa County, Arizona.