The Bird wonders just what Joe Arpaio's top dog is doing down in Honduras

JABBA IN PARADISE

This incredulous avian kept rubbing its peepers in disbelief. Was that really Sheriff Joe Arpaio's chief deputy, David Hendershott, looking like a cross between Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau and mad scientist Dr. Mephisto from South Park?

Them eagle eyes weren't lyin'. The pic, which appears on a couple of Honduran Web sites, shows a visit Hendershott made in early 2007, along with men identified as MCSO Captain Jim Miller, retired MCSO deputy Roger Marshall, and Honduran cop Julio Benitez, to the Roatan Bruce Radio Show. Roatan? That's the largest of the Bay Islands. Collectively, the Bay Islands are one of the Central American state's 18 "departments," a Caribbean paradise 35 to 40 miles off the northern Honduran coast.

According to an article written by radio host Bruce Starr, a.k.a. "Roatan Bruce," for Honduras This Week Online, which summarized FM interviews Starr did with MCSOers, the Sheriff's Office is in Latin America as part of a program "to help us educate, train, and equip [Bay Islands] police." Starr further states that MCSO pooh-bahs "have committed to coming down to The Bay Islands on a regular basis to accomplish this goal."

Miller tells Starr that the MCSO team has taken investigative equipment to the Honduran National Police, and "it is just the beginning of more resources" the MCSO will supply. In April, another columnist for HTWO praised the MCSO for sending "fingerprinting apparatus, a camera," and "crime scene paraphernalia" to local coppers.

No word on whether the MCSO's sending down some of those old restraint chairs they're no longer allowed to use in Joe's gulags. From one banana republic to another, with love.

In October 2007, Roatan Bruce again wrote up an interview with some MCSO mugs. This time, it was Captain Brian Beamish from Special Operations and Lieutenant Kevin Riddle from the Central Investigations Division, who "were part of a second wave of police that spent a month in Honduras training policemen in Tegucigalpa before coming here."

A month? So whose dime was that on, this dodo wonders? Maybe there's some grant involved or some federal moolah or something, but any way you cut it, Beamish and Riddle could have been back here in Sand Land, helping the MCSO fight crime, assuming the MCSO gave a hoot about that. Instead, they're training 160 student police officers in the ways of one of the worst metro police agencies in this nation.

Beamish tells the Roatan man that the new Honduran gendarmes "will now be taking a strong stand towards community and customer service. This is a fabulous approach towards law enforcement. We know that from where we come from. Sheriff Arpaio has been especially successful in the Arizona area with that kind of process."

Are you kiddin'? "Community and customer service"? Is that MCSO code for arrest journalists, round up the Mexicans, and ignore average citizens when they kvetch about crime? (Think Aguila, folks, where people have had to arm themselves against a crime wave ignored by the Sheriff's Office until recently.)

Beamish then makes an even more outlandish promise.

"There is more training scheduled for the beginning of the year (2008) and it is going to continue for the next several years," Beamish assures Starr. "The next group to come down will be on anti-corruption."

Now this nightingale has heard everything!

The MCSO advising Latin American cops on anti-corruption? That's like Jamie Lynn Spears teaching abstinence classes. Ironically, in the photo that accompanies this October article, Beamish and his MCSO buds look like they haven't bathed in days and are in dire need of some hair o' the dog, if you catch this cockatoo's drift.

And what's with Beamish's vow to be in Honduras indefinitely? Sounds like we're gonna have MCSO down there for as long as we have troops in Iraq.

The Bird's still looking into all this, having requested public docs from Sheriff's Office flack Paul Chagolla. But even if there's some legitimate source for the funding of this Honduran excursion — like a grant of some kind from the feds, or some international agency, it's an odd project for heavyweight Hendershott and his underlings to be involved in.

Especially at a time when the MCSO's budget is gushing red faster than a hemophiliac with a needle fetish.

The Bird did find an executive order from Governor Janet Napolitano declaring June 5, 2007, to be "Bay Island Sister Agency Project for Justice and Service Day," one of numerous such proclamations regularly issued by AZ's chief exec.

But this proclamation doesn't explain why the MCSO can't afford OT, and has been employing such cost-cutting measures as closing satellite jail facilities and slashing visitation hours for inmates, but can still afford to send Jabba the Hendershott and his minions to Honduras for a working vacay.

Could it be that Hendy, et al., are developing a Plan B, just in case Arpaio doesn't win re-election this year? You know, setting up a lil' deal in sunny Honduras where they could retire in case their services are no longer needed?

JOE SHOW BLOWS

The main reason this feathered fiend winged his way down to 32nd Street and Thomas Road recently for an episode of the Joe Show was to ask Arpaio about these junkets to Honduras that Hendershott and his MCSO henchmen have taken to train the po-po down there.