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To a guy from somewhere else, a guy who hasn't had to deal with Arpaio and Thomas, it makes no sense.
"Just think of how much money that was, when they're so short in their budget," Jones says. "I can't imagine how much it cost. And what good did it do for Maricopa County?"Just two weeks before the November 2006 election, a graphic designer named Christy Fritz found herself dragged into Arpaio's orbit. That's when a sheriff's deputy showed up at Fritz's home, armed with a search warrant that let him confiscate her computers. Her utility bills. Her e-mails. Even her financial records.
You might assume that Christy Fritz was a drug dealer or an identify thief. But the truth is that, even by the sheriff's account, Fritz did only one thing wrong.
She worked for a Democrat.
Last fall, Democrats were surging in races across the country, and Arizona's Speaker of the House, Representative Jim Weiers, a Phoenix Republican, was feeling the heat. Political insiders were buzzing about a poll that showed Weiers' challenger, Jackie Thrasher, pulling ahead. Could the Speaker's seat be in play?
In late October, a new Thrasher campaign mailer hit the streets.
The mailer showed a corrections officer talking to the Democratic candidate. No big deal — except that Thrasher was pictured in front of a car sporting a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office decal. Though the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs had endorsed Thrasher, Sheriff Joe had not.
Campaigns often employ questionable tactics. But only in Maricopa County could a campaign photo like that be considered criminal.
Records show what happened after Weiers complained to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. A top prosecutor was put on the case. Arpaio then launched an investigation that began with hours of interviews and ended with raids on three homes: those of the corrections officer pictured in Thrasher's mailer, the corrections officer's mother, and the mailer's graphic designer, Christy Fritz. One of County Attorney Andrew Thomas' top aides signed off on the warrants.
Records show that the sheriff believed the decal must have been stolen. By posing next to it, Arpaio's investigating deputy suggested, the corrections officer was "impersonating a law enforcement officer."
It's petty stuff. But what clearly was beyond the pale was the sheriff's use of the missing decal as a pretext to seize Christy Fritz's computers.
In a normal investigation, Fritz would have been peripheral — simply, a person who designed an ad. Democratic Party officials interviewed by the Sheriff's Office acknowledged that the corrections officer had brought the decal with him to the photo shoot. No one ever suggested that Fritz did anything other than design an ad with a photo provided by party officials.
But the sheriff's folks must have been salivating. Here was someone who worked for numerous Democratic candidates. Who knew what information her hard drive might hold? So, after their interview, the sheriff's deputy returned with a search warrant and took four of Fritz's computers.
No one has been charged in the case. Some political insiders suggest that the decals were widely available, and that the whole thing was a terrible mix-up. And, ultimately, Thrasher managed to win a seat even as Weiers kept his. (Statehouse candidates run in pairs, so Thrasher essentially beat Weiers' GOP running mate.)
But the case is unsettling because of the fear it provoked in local Democrats. If one of Arpaio and Thomas' goals was to silence and intimidate, they certainly succeeded.
New Times tried to talk to Thrasher, her campaign chairman -- state Representative Chad Campbell (D-Phoenix) -- Christy Fritz, and three other Democrats who were peripherally involved in the investigation. Not a single person would talk.
State Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a Phoenix Democrat, said she represents several of the Democrats involved in the investigation. No one, she said, will have a word to say about the matter until Arpaio officially closes the case, or until the statute of limitations on "impersonating an officer" has passed.
That won't be for another nine years.