Arpaio's misdeeds are not the only ones Nappy overlooked as a prosecutor. Guess whom she let off the hook in 1999 when he was the head of the Motor Vehicle Division and under investigation for tampering with a Tucson woman's driving record? Yep, none other than Russell "White Pride" Pearce.
If you check Pearce's state House bio, it mentions his tenure with the MVD in the same breathless vein that Al Gore used to mention the Internet. You know, almost like he invented the thing. One thing Pearce fails to mention — that he was fired from his job as the MVD's director by his boss, then Arizona Department of Transportation Director Mary Peters, now Transportation Secretary under George W. Bush.
Activists were surreptitiously taped at their meeting with County Supervisor Fulton Brock.
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Peters fired Pearce and two underlings, according to 1999 press accounts, because Pearce did a favor for a state legislator and helped out that legislator's constituent Laurie Groombridge, who'd garnered a couple of DUIs. Seems Groombridge wanted one dropped from her record so she could dodge a yearlong suspension of her driver's license.
The tampering with Groombridge's state driving record triggered an investigation from the state attorney general, who was then none other than (ta-da!) Janet Napolitano. True to form, Nappy punted on charging Pearce, claiming it was a really a personnel issue for ADOT. Unlike Nappy, however, Peters had a pair and kicked Russ' tuchis to the curb, sending his cronies packin', too.
Must've really hurt Russ' macho pride, getting canned by a girl.
At the time, one of Pearce's flunkies tried to suggest to a reporter that Russ had been cleared. But Peters shot that one down, telling the Arizona Republic, "There's a big difference between being cleared and choosing not to file criminal charges."
Nappy avoided going after the bigmouth bass and, instead, decided to pursue a case against a minnow: Pearce's son, Justin Pearce, then age 20. Justin held a low-level job at the MVD and ended up getting busted for giving his friends fake licenses so they could buy beer.
Justin pleaded guilty and received probation for tampering with a public record. But hadn't his dad done the same thing? Why didn't Nappy pursue Big Poppa, rather than just one of his boys?
FULTON'S FOLLY
Like George Washington, confronted with a chopped-down cherry tree, Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock could not tell a lie. At least not when he was caught red-handed taping four community activists during a recent meeting Brock had with the quartet in the county supervisors' Orwellian auditorium.
When Linda Brown of the Arizona Advocacy Network asked the thick-as-a-brick Brock point-blank if they were being taped, Brock acknowledged that they were, saying, "If you're concerned about that, I apologize."
Way to poison the well with your constituents, Brock-head! Thing is, this drawling doofus (who sounds like he just fell off a turnip truck) had an opportunity to reach across the table to the reps of those groups who've been packing Board of Supes meetings for the past few months, demanding that county employee Sheriff Joe be accountable. But Brock blew it.
Plus his Georgie-porgie fit of honesty came only at the meeting's end. During it, he claimed that the county supes had no say over Arpaio because the sheriff's elected. Bzzzt. Wrong answer, Fulton. The supes control the sheriff's purse strings. And like the Randy Newman song goes, "It's money that matters."
Normally, Brock and his fellow supes ape feudal barons, declining such meetings as this one, and refusing to call back journalists, acting as though they're to the manor born, instead of elected. How do these hayseeds get away with treating citizens of the nation's fourth-most-populous county like they're pissants?
Well, normally no one pays any attention to them. They slip under the radar because their meetings are sparsely attended and barely reported on. But that all changed in June when orgs like Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability and ACORN started raising hell, demanding that the supes do their jobs for a change.
The supes have since been crapping in their pleated breeches — and dress skirt (if we include lone female, Dem, and sometime Joe-critic Mary Rose Wilcox). That's likely why Brock got the order to pull a Tricky Dick Nixon and tape the sit-down with Brown, MCSA's Raquel Teran and Randy Parraz, and ACORN's Teresa Castro.
You heard this yardbird right: Brock admitted to Arizona Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett that he was following orders, telling her, "My only instruction was to video(tape) the meeting in case something got out of hand."
Instruction? From whom, Lord Fauntleroy, Sheriff Joe himself? Actually, The Bird's sources have informed him that the video was being broadcast live to the supes' laptops. So the meeting was a set-up from jump.
At one point, when activists tell him that some Hispanics are so afraid of law enforcement that they avoid going to church, Brock wonders aloud how he can go back to his colleagues with such a strange report. The whole thing was an act. Brock knew the taping was ongoing, and that his fellow supes would soon be watching, if they weren't already.
In the DVD of the meet, Brock keeps asking the activists to put their complaints in writing. When they point to numerous news reports concerning the Sheriff's Office's cruelty, corruption, and inefficiency, Fulton replies, "See, newspapers can say anything they want to, from a local newspaper to a New Times story to a blog or whatever."
