Sheriff Joe’s Got Arizona ACORN in his Crosshairs, Plus a Black Cowboy from Tucson’s Got a Rap for Our Loony Lawman

SHERIFF'S NUT

I have to give Sheriff Joe Arpaio's regime props for creative abuse of the federal court system. Who else but a legal lapdog such as Timothy Casey, the guy making bank from county coffers for defending our septuagenarian lawman, would subpoena an organization that has absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit at hand?

The organization is ACORN (which Casey misspelled as "ACCORN" in his subpoena), the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Though ACORN's headquartered in New Orleans, the Casey-Arpaio brain trust served the subpoena in Washington, D.C. Actually, according to ACORN attorney Arthur Schwartz, the process server managed to serve an employee for another organization altogether, the American Institute for Social Justice, with which ACORN apparently shares a suite.

Hey, close enough, right? After all, if Arpaio & Co. were actually interested in folks getting served properly, they'd start by serving some of those 40,000 felony warrants the county has outstanding. But that might subtract precious time from the MCSO's hunting Hispanics and harassing legal observers who keep watch on deputies' doings with their video cameras.

Arpaio's flacks insist that ACORN's local offices were hit with a subpoena, as well. If so, it could be the world's first invisible subpoena, as ACORN's head organizer in Arizona, Monica Sandschafer, says she's gotten nada so far, and no one on her staff seems to have signed for it. She also pointed out that there would be no logical reason why Arizona ACORN would receive one.

Logic, Monica? We are talkin' about Arpayaso, here.

"That's like serving one Carl's Jr. location, instead of serving the corporate headquarters for Carl's Jr.," Sandschafer told me. "Our corporate headquarters are in New Orleans. You can find that out with a Google search."

The MCSO's press releases on the issuance of the ACORN subpoena have Arpaio claiming that he's invest-ah-mi-gatin' a financial link between ACORN and the folks who protest on weekdays outside his tony offices at the Wells Fargo building in downtown Phoenix.

Talk about a red herring the size of Seattle: The organization outside Wells Fargo is Salvador Reza's Puente movement, which, as of the beginning of this month, celebrated its one-year anniversary demonstrating. Reza laughed so hard when I asked him whether Puente had gotten dolo from ACORN that I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance for him. The answer was no, natch. Both organizations are separate entities, and both are as poor as Kenny's family on South Park.

See, Joe, no one has to be paid to loathe you. You achieve that on your own, with your misuse of county funds for profligate anti-immigration dragnets. Not to mention the $42 million-plus in lawsuit settlements you cost the taxpayers by not running your vast prison complex properly, among other malfeasances.

Joe even states in one MCSO press release, "It wouldn't surprise me if [ACORN] paid for [the Reverend Al] Sharpton's visit . . ." That visit to Phoenix being the one Sharpton made in June, after which the rev verbally spanked Arpaio on Lou Dobbs' CNN show.

Um, so what if ACORN did help with Sharpton's trip to Ari-bama? Big whup. There's nothing illegal about that. And while we're asking questions about who's getting flown where, who paid for your trip to Houston recently, Joe, to speak before two extremist nativist organizations?

(Note: I put in a public-records request for info on the Houston excursion and have been informed that the MCSO has no records on it.)

The reality of the ACORN subpoena is that — in contrast to the MCSO's press releases — it's not seeking any financial records. Rather, Arpaio's lawyer subpoenaed (according to the document itself) "e-mails, written correspondence, and/or documents of any type" between ACORN and the Department of Homeland Security, ACORN and ICE, ACORN and the U.S. Department of Justice, ACORN and the ACLU, ACORN and MALDEF, ACORN and Mayor Phil Gordon, and ACORN and Somos America. Casey wants all correspondence going back to January 1, 2008, regarding Maricopa County, the MCSO, Arpaio, Joe's 287(g) authority, and on and on.

Never mind that this little witch hunt on the taxpayers' dime has absolutely zip to do with the lawsuit the subpoena was supposedly issued for: the big Melendres vs. Arpaio racial-profiling lawsuit, pursued by the law firm Steptoe & Johnson, the ACLU, and MALDEF (the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) on behalf of five individuals and the human rights group Somos America.

The lawsuit seeks to show that the MCSO and Arpaio are engaging in a pattern and practice of racial profiling that affects all Latinos in Maricopa County. Though undoubtedly sympathetic to the complaint's aims — as are many groups in Arizona and beyond — ACORN is not a party to the lawsuit.

"It's plainly a frolic and a detour," David Bodney, top plaintiff's counsel on the Melendres case, said of the subpoena. He also characterized it as "a convenient exploitation of a hot political issue," for what he referred to as "precious little evidentiary value."

In a letter to Arpaio's D.C. attorney, Robert Driscoll — who was also involved in this stupid subpoena — ACORN lawyer Schwartz pretty much told Driscoll and Casey where they could stick it.