Enemies List

It's not just about running smart campaigns and working hard. That would be understandable, even admirable.

Instead, it's about intimidation and retribution. It's about coming after deputies who question the sheriff's carefully polished image. It's about seeking revenge on former allies who dare to support someone else. It's about silencing political opposition.

In his 14 years as sheriff, Arpaio has turned Maricopa County jails into dangerous hellholes. People have died in restraint chairs and they've died in inmate brawls. Miserable conditions even prompted an unprecedented investigation by Amnesty International, which, in its first-ever probe into a county jail, concluded that Arpaio's operation violated basic human rights.

But the most dangerous place in the county, after the jails, is on Sheriff Joe's bad side. Oppose him, and he'll follow you around, rifle through your trash, hold a press conference about how bad you are, even arrest you.

And these days, the sheriff's power to intimidate his political enemies is greater than ever.

That's because under Rick Romley, the County Attorney's Office served as a voice of reason to, and occasional brake on, Arpaio. Under Romley's successor, Andrew Thomas, the office has become a willing partner in political shenanigans.

No potential rival is immune from the pair's "investigations." No conflict of interest is ever acknowledged.

And no case is too petty to pursue, so long as the TV cameras are rolling.

Longtime readers of this newspaper are familiar with Joe Arpaio's history. Court records, signed affidavits, interviews, and archive searches reveal a long list of vengeful actions Arpaio has taken against political opponents:

• Sheriff's Office employees who've spoken out have endured slanted investigations from the sheriff's internal affairs unit, been transferred or fired, and sometimes been harassed at their new jobs.

• At least two men, Tom Bearup and Ernest Hancock, were tailed after they announced their interest in Arpaio's job. Arpaio's second-in-command, David Hendershott, targeted Bearup as a threat to the sheriff. Hendershott even ordered an underling to write a memo that painted Bearup, the sheriff's former top deputy, as a security risk.

• Deputies tapped the phone of Bearup's campaign aide, Jim Cozzolino. Deputies also rifled through his trash. Cozzolino was later arrested under dubious circumstances and served four months in jail. Cozzolino sued, claiming that Arpaio violated his constitutional rights. The sheriff was forced to settle.

• Republican activists say they've been penalized for backing candidates other than Arpaio. After Lee Watkins backed another candidate, deputies raided his business and home and launched a public investigation. Three years later, no charges have been filed.

• Arpaio's most recent foe, Dan Saban, was painted as a sexual deviant when Arpaio's people slipped a damaging report from a questionable source to a TV reporter. After Saban sued, the sheriff's lawyer wrote letters attempting to get Saban fired from his current job.

• Dan Pochoda, the Arizona ACLU's legal director, publicly fought with Arpaio about immigration and Arpaio's treatment of a jailed tuberculosis patient. At an immigration rally, sheriff's deputies hauled Pochoda to jail rather than issue him a citation. They claimed that Pochoda refused to leave the rally, held on private property.

Justice in Maricopa County has gotten only more warped since Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas formed an alliance.

They even formed a task force created to fight corruption, called Operation MACE. The task force has had questionable results:

• Its first indictment was of Russ Jones, a state legislator from Yuma. The charges were petty, at best, and were quickly dismissed by a judge.

• Seven months ago, the pair made much ado about their investigation of Attorney General Terry Goddard — one of Thomas' top political rivals. Thomas and Arpaio have issued numerous press releases, but the investigation has yet to yield a single indictment.

• A top Thomas aide worked closely with sheriff's deputies to investigate a campaign mailer from Democrat Jackie Thrasher, who was running for the Arizona House. Despite three search warrants, and the seizure of four computers belonging to a Democratic operative just weeks before the 2006 election, the case boiled down to a questionable decal shown in a photo on a campaign brochure. No charges have been filed. Thrasher's opponent, Jim Weiers, is the father of a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy.

The most recent example of Arpaio and Thomas' shoddy teamwork has been their most public screw-up. It's the story of what they tried to do to this newspaper.

Arpaio was angry that New Times printed his home address in a 2004 story that examined the sheriff's hidden commercial real estate investments. True to form, Arpaio sought revenge.

(Arpaio's office declined all comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation with this newspaper.)

In the New Times case, Arpaio wanted Thomas to prosecute under a never-tested Arizona law that made it a crime to publish a law enforcement officer's home address online.

Initially claiming a conflict of interest, Thomas referred the case to the Pinal County Attorney's Office. But, apparently at Arpaio's urging, Thomas asked for the case back and appointed his former boss, Dennis Wilenchik, as special prosecutor — an appointment rife with conflicts. At the time, Wilenchik was representing Arpaio in several civil lawsuits. The Arizona Supreme Court bars lawyers from prosecuting a matter if they've represented one of the parties civilly and conflicts exist.

Beyond legal ethics, Wilenchik's appointment backfired badly. The special prosecutor issued subpoenas that sought extensive personal information about each of the paper's online readers. When New Times decided to go public with the invasive demands, and the challenge to its readers' constitutional rights, Wilenchik not only asked the judge to fine the newspaper $90 million, he also demanded that the executives who published the story be arrested.

Arpaio's men, naturally, were there to do the job.

Public outcry was so great that Thomas was forced to fire Wilenchik as special prosecutor less than 24 hours after the executives' arrests. But Thomas and Arpaio weren't headed for divorce. At the news conference where Thomas announced Wilenchik's termination, he suggested that New Times apologize to the sheriff.

Legend has it that Joe Arpaio first ran for sheriff because he wanted to get even.

Arpaio had been a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, famously saddled with the moniker "Nickel Bag Joe" because of his enthusiasm for arresting even the pettiest violators. After retiring from the DEA, Arpaio and his wife opened a travel agency and won a contract with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

But when the contract was up for renewal, the Arpaios lost.

One reason, according to an affidavit from a deputy on the selection panel, is that Joe Arpaio made a bizarre pitch to the panel, altering the terms of his company's written proposal. Some thought the offer amounted to an illegal kickback to the Sheriff's Office.

Arpaio was livid over the loss. The contract was worth about $200,000.

According to an affidavit filed by a former deputy, Arpaio called then-Sheriff Tom Agnos and begged him to reconsider. When the sheriff refused, then-deputy Kelley Waldrip claims, "Arpaio threatened to run against Agnos in the next election."

Agnos was already badly scarred by the fallout from the Temple murder investigation, which his staff had botched. (Nine Buddhists were shot and killed execution-style, but Agnos initially arrested the wrong guys: five minority kids from Tucson.) Arpaio seized on Agnos' failure, and in 1992, four years after he lost the travel contract, Arpaio passed a crowded field to become sheriff.

Aides later reported that Arpaio carried around a list of names of people who'd worked for his opponent, people who'd contributed to his opponent, and people who'd denied his company the travel contract.

"Arpaio would take the list out when he encountered a person who was on the list," wrote attorney Joel Robbins in a recent court pleading, "and would make a comment to let the person know that he knew that they had worked against him."

Any deputy whose star came close to eclipsing Arpaio's learned to watch his back. Former deputies say Arpaio demanded that photographs in the Sheriff's Office depicting his top aide, Russell Pearce, be replaced. Pearce's photo had to be smaller than Arpaio's. (Pearce was no dummy; he left the office soon after.)

And when Arpaio's second-in-command, Tom Bearup, said that he'd be willing to run for sheriff if Arpaio ran for governor, Bearup was exiled to an office at the Madison Street Jail.