The relentless raptor sinks his beak into the tyranny of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas

Landscapers and lawyers. Cops and candle makers. Reporters and corn vendors. Undocumented immigrants and ordinary schmucks. You.

What does everyone (The Bird included) have to fear in Maricopa County? Trumped-up charges. Getting arrested and having to cool your heels in stir. Bogus allegations costing thousands of dollars in legal bills. Being detained en masse with fellow employees while armed thugs sort through the lot of you and decide whom to collar and whom to release.

Or you could enter Joe Arpaio's roach motel of a jail on some flimsy rap and never come out. Maybe you are diabetic, and you don't get your medicine on time. Or maybe you get beaten to death by the guards, or fellow inmates.

Them's the breaks in Joe's medieval gulags.

What The Bird's saying is that as long as Arpaio's sheriff, and Andrew Thomas remains County Attorney and Arpaio's willing ally in his extra-constitutional shenanigans, no one's safe from the MCSO boot. Rich or poor, white or brown, powerful or meek, it doesn't matter. You might think you're an upstanding citizen, a pillar of your community, following the letter of the law, but the boot will still find your blemish-less neck and grind it mercilessly into the ground.

Take Dan Pochoda, 66, the legal director of the Arizona ACLU. Back on November 3, he stopped by M.D. Pruitt's Home Furnishings to meet activist Salvador Reza, who was then leading a peaceful protest against Pruitt's decision to use off-duty sheriff's deputies as security. As a result, the MCSO was patrolling that area of Thomas Road, busting anyone suspected as an illegal immigrant.

Pochoda parked in Pruitt's parking lot. He passed sheriff's deputies on his way to the sidewalk where Reza was. Their chat took less than 10 minutes, and he walked back to his car.

Sheriff's goons called after him, and jogged to where he was, yelling for him to stop. He complied with their order, and they flanked him on either side. He told them who he was, and that he was about to leave. Though Pochoda was seconds away from hopping in his car and motoring off, the deputies arrested him for trespassing.

"The whole concept of being commanded to stop on your way out so they can tell you that you have to get out is so beyond surreal," Pochoda told The Bird.

Yeah, surreal like a scene out of Franz Kafka's The Trial. A third-degree misdemeanor is usually something for which police just cite and release you. So, of course, the MCSO bulldogs cuffed him and bundled him off to the Fourth Avenue Jail. Days before, Pochoda had been to his orthopedic surgeon for serious back trouble. When they slapped the steel bracelets on him, he was in agony.

"As soon as they handcuffed me behind my back, it was excruciating pain," Pochoda recalled. "I told them that, but the deputy said, 'These are not meant to be comfortable.'"

Pochoda was in jail for 10 hours 'til a pal bailed him out. His car was impounded. Since he was on ACLU business at the time, the civil liberties organization hired two hotshot legal beagles from Osborn Maledon to defend him. That firm donated $10K, and the ACLU picked up the rest. Total bill: Just over $30K.

Candy Thomas sicced his finest Doberman on Pochoda — Deputy County Attorney Lisa Aubuchon, the MCAO's Office Bureau Chief, even though a small-potatoes case like this is usually handled by some fresh-from-law-school punk still moist behind the head-handles.

Four MCSO deputies sat in court for about five hours to testify against Pochoda when they could've been off, like, fighting crime or something. Aubuchon still lost the case, despite all of the wasted resources.

Aubuchon also fumbled the case of Sergeant Thomas Lovejoy, the Chandler cop Arpaio pursued after Lovejoy accidentally let his K9 dog Bandit die in a hot police vehicle. Lovejoy was found not guilty in the doggy's demise. Shortly thereafter, he filed a notice of claim against the county for $350K. Pochoda's filed a notice of claim, too, for $400K. In this falcon's eye, they deserve every penny.

They didn't ask for the boot to fall on them, for these cases to hang over their heads for months, or to be arrested, booked, and jailed. And they're not the only ones who've found themselves in similar straits.

Before Thomas took office, Arpaio already had a exacted a roll call of persecutions, from former Arpaio aide and sheriff hopeful Tom Bearup and Joe critic Jim Cozzolino to current Joe foe Dan Saban. They've all had to face false charges, smears, or harassment. Their stories were documented by this beaker's colleague Sarah Fenske in her story "Enemies List" (November 29, 2007).

Together Thomas and Arpaio have added to the dragnet, pulling in this blackbird's bosses, Village Voice Media Executive Editor Michael Lacey and VVM CEO Jim Larkin, rousting them in the middle of the night on misdemeanor charges that Thomas had to abandon less than 24 hours later.

Still under the steel toe: New Times reporter Ray Stern, cited by members of the same MCSO Selective Enforcement Unit that dragged off Lacey and Larkin last October. His crime? Wanting to photograph public documents in the office of the sheriff's taxpayer-supported private lawyer, Michele Iafrate.