Arpaio Visits Houston and the Bigots at Westboro Baptist Church Have a New Target: Jews

HE'S A WINNER!

Allow me to be the first to congratulate Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as the recipient of the 2009 Bull Connor Award, recognizing "outstanding achievement in the promotion of racial discrimination, disregard of human rights, abuse of power, and general hatred of the 'other.'"

Of course, Joe didn't go all the way to Houston this week to pick up this doozy. Heck, I'm not even sure Joe knows who Bull Connor is! But accept the prize he did from human rights activist Liliana Castrillón, who recently sat through a self-aggrandizing, snooze-inducing lecture from Arpaio at a Marriott in Houston, where about 250 varicose-veined, blue-hairs paid $30 a pop to get in.

Castrillón, who is from Colombia originally, told me the plan was for her and some friends to sneak into the event, where Joe was pimping his 2008 book of tall tales, Joe's Law. You know, that's the memoir wherein Joe claims he once pulled over Elvis Presley, that he was responsible for busting the French Connection (though the real NYC cop who really did end the French Connection says that's wrong), that the Mexican mafia, along with Phoenix activist Elias Bermudez and some rogue Minutemen, plotted to off the sheriff (another bogus yarn).

But once Castrillón and her pals got to the door, they were told they'd have to pay $30 each to get in. She and her friends pooled their cash, and she had to go it alone as one of the few people of color in a mostly ofay crowd. After the address, she approached our geezer lawman to hand him the faux honor.

"He looked like a big baby," Castrillón said. "And he said something like, 'I didn't know you would be here.' It didn't make any sense. Of course he wouldn't know I would be there. He's such a coward. He looked afraid."

Castrillón then told the stunned sheriff that he was a racist and yelled the same to the others in the audience before leaving. She claimed she was so disgusted by the event that she vomited as soon as she left the building.

My colleague Liana Lopez at New Times' sister paper the Houston Press covered the event and reported in her blog post that about 100 protesters waved signs outside the Marriott and yelled stuff like, "Racists go home."

Inside, some of the old people followed Lopez around. One wrinkled biddy told Lopez she didn't belong there — apparently because of Lopez's ethnicity. The ancient ones cheered whenever Arpaio talked about lockin' up illegals. And when Arpaio wondered sarcastically why Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia didn't show at the shindig, one denture-wearer shouted, "He's only sheriff because he's Mexican."

The overt prejudice was to be expected, perhaps, because the two groups sponsoring the event, Texans for Immigration Reform and U.S. Border Watch, are listed as "nativist extremist" groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is one more example of Arpaio's interacting with extremists and racists. I detailed Arpaio's links to such groups in my May 14 cover story, "Ja, Joe!" The sheriff's spoken to local nativist extremist groups such as United for a Sovereign America, which has accepted neo-Nazis into its ranks, and is also on the SPLC's list of far-right anti-immigration groups.

Joe's had his pic taken with a local neo-Nazi. And he has contacts inside United for a Sovereign America who work closely with the Sheriff's Office, taking instructions from the MCSO and, apparently, receiving preferential treatment from it.

Also, a recent perusal of the roster provided by the MCSO of sheriff's posse members revealed the name Michelle Dallacroche, the nativist firebrand and founder of Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, known in the past for railing against so-called "anchor babies" — you know, kids born on U.S. soil to illegal immigrant parents (children otherwise known as American citizens).

Though Arpaio appeared at a community meeting in Fountain Hills recently to announce the arrest of vandals involved in racist graffiti there, don't be fooled. As this Houston fundraiser shows, Arpaio continues to court the support of the far right, and they continue to love him back.

Something else interesting about the Houston wingding: Joe was introduced by disgraced former Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos, who, along with fellow ex-agent Jose Compean, was convicted in 2006 of shooting a fleeing, unarmed man in the fanny and of trying to cover it up after the fact. Ramos and Compean became a wing-nut cause celebre because the unarmed man they plugged was an illegal alien, running marijuana.

In one of his last acts as president, George W. Bush commuted the sentences of both men but did not pardon them. On its Web site, the Justice Department notes: The "sentence of imprisonment [was] commuted to expire on March 20, 2009, leaving intact and in effect the three-year term of supervised release with all its conditions and the fine."

That means Arpaio was introduced to a bunch of extremists by a felon and ex-con.

Nice. To cop a line from Will Ferrell's Anchorman character, Ron Burgundy: You stay classy, Joe.

BASHING NEWS

Members of Kansas Pastor Fred Phelps's cult-like, gay-bashin' Westboro Baptist Church regularly roll through the Phoenix area to protest soldiers' funerals (their deaths are the result of God's judgment on America for its gay-friendly ways) or anything else that doesn't conform to their Cyclops-like worldview.