Arpaio looked up at the camera and stopped writing.
"That sound familiar? You remember him?" asked Joe's unseen interlocutor. "He's a guy who died in your jail, remember him? He was killed by one of your officers."
Mike Gorman
If it doesn't haunt Joe, it should: A photo of MCSO victim Scott Norberg. His violent death while in custody cost Maricopa County $8.25 million.
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"Really?" mumbled Joe, as a distinct uneasiness — fear even — flashed across his face.
"Yeah, he had a towel stuffed in his mouth, and he was beaten and Tasered," continued the young man. Joe soon gained composure, and ordered one of his MCSO bodyguards to "get this guy out of here."
Eerily, it was almost 12 years to the day since Scott Norberg lost his life in one of the MCSO's infamous, medieval restraint chairs. Norberg's parents weren't without means, and they retained the services of ball-busting barrister Mike Manning. They sued the sheriff. The MCSO was caught allegedly destroying evidence and ultimately had to settle for $8.25 million.
Reading about how Norberg was murdered by MCSO officers will give you a spine chill that won't easily subside. Watching the short video by pro-immigrant activist Dennis Gilman that was recently posted to the blog of this heron's online bro Feathered Bastard will elicit outrage and sad disgust.
The book-signing incident took place at the Barnes and Noble in Goodyear on a recent Saturday afternoon. Placard-wielding protesters were warned by Goodyear cops to stay out on the street, away from the bookstore's parking lot. But some went into the bookstore solo. One got this video for Gilman to edit. The unsettling mini-soundtrack, that Tibetan chanting you hear, is supposedly of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The Bird arrived shortly after this incident and heard about it afterward. Seated next to Arpaio, as mostly old white people and rednecks approached our county's chief constable to buy his book and shake his hand, this truculent tallywacker asked the top cop if he had trouble sleeping at night because of the trail of blood he's left through his gulags. He shook his head no. Later, he explained with a shrug that people die in the jails and that there's not much he can do about it.
Activists are correct to protest Joe in this fashion. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been proud. What's needed is more civil disobedience! Even if Joe sleeps well at night, the rest of us shouldn't. Not, at least, until he's been voted out of office or, perhaps, occupies one of the very same cells where his victims breathed their last.
