"During my party years," he writes in the memoir, "I believed drugs were glamorous. But the constant exposure in the jail to round-the-clock drug users crushed that viewpoint out of me. I swore never to do drugs again and still haven't to this day."
The grotesque food — Ladmo bags filled with moldy bread and viridescent bologna, and an evening meal of mystery meat called "the Red Death," which occasionally contained rats that had fallen into the mix — turned the former stockbroker and drug dealer into a veg-head.
courtesy of Shaun Attwood
Shaun Attwood, a.k.a. "English Shaun," in a publicity still for his new book on Arpaio's jails.
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He took up yoga, began reading widely, and — most significantly — began blogging by smuggling out posts with the help of an aunt who visited him frequently.
The result was "Jon's Jail Journal," a blog he wrote under a pseudonym to expose the conditions he was witnessing. So far, the blog has received around a million page views. Portions of it were run in the UK paper The Guardian.
The blog became the basis for the book, which will be published in the United States this spring by Skyhorse Publishing. Attwood said most of the reaction to the book and blog has been utter shock.
"They're just astounded that this environment exists in Phoenix, Arizona," Attwood told me. "They expect this from perhaps South American countries, not in America."
As I alluded above, the book is not without a dark sense of humor. Attwood draws on a number picaresque vignettes from his county detention that would make perfect fodder for an HBO series — like Oz crossed with some Alex Cox flick.
Some of the most memorable entries involve a Mexican American kid named Busta Beatz, who keeps a cricket as a pet and tortures mosquitoes.
Then there's a passage involving a guy called Joey Crack who gives his manhood a "Prince Albert" piercing, then gets other prisoners to slam a door on it to bend the metal properly.
And in a scene that could've been right out of Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, Attwood's co-defendant and onetime enforcer in his drug empire, Peter "Wild Man" Mahoney, lobs a communion wafer, Frisbee-style, at a priest holding mass for the inmates.
At the end of the book, Attwood thanks Sheriff Joe for "creating such an interesting place to write about." Attwood even sent Arpaio an autographed copy of his memoir. Arpaio recently tweeted that he'd received the book and is reading it.
Attwood admitted to me that he was essentially "scared straight" by the experience but noted that he's the exception to the rule.
"I just saw the youngsters come in," he said. "They get recruited by the gangs, they earn these tattoos — swastikas, lightening bolts, war eagles, stuff like that [for beating people up] — and they would get out and they would just be enemies of society."
What would he say to the Joe supporters who would assert that he earned all the cruelty he could soak up?
"America was good to me," he replied. "I knowingly broke numerous drug laws. And I put myself in Arpaio's jail. I take full responsibility."
But that doesn't let Arpaio off, he insisted.
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a legal responsibility to provide minimum conditions under the guidelines set in the federal court system," he said. "He's flagrantly violated those laws for years. I broke the law and he's breaking the law too. He should be held accountable."
SPENCER AND FORDE
Another racist rally in Arizona? I know what you're about to say: "Big whup."
However, the latest in a long line of bigot-filled Tea Parties was notable, but not for the rabble it attracted or for the usual lineup of Mexican-bashing politicos: J.D. Hayworth, Sheriff Joe, and neo-Nazi cuddling state Senator Russell Pearce, among others.
Rather, it was where this nativist swill chose to have its August 15 wingding: on minute-man Glenn Spencer's Cochise County ranch, located on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Not only has old man Spencer been rightfully slammed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL for remorselessly rubbing shoulders with white supremacists, he's also played host to a murder suspect.
Her name is Shawna Forde, and she's currently in stir in Pima County for what the authorities say was her part in a 2009 home-invasion robbery in Arivaca that left 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul, dead.
Now, where, oh where, do you reckon Forde was arrested? Not far from Spencer's property, shortly after she had spent about 20 minutes in his living room using her laptop to send e-mails.
This is all by Spencer's own admission, mind you. He swears he had no involvement with her or her wack-job organization Minuteman American Defense. After all, Spencer's got his own wack-job group, American Border Patrol.
And yet, Spencer let Forde stay on his land in 2008, in an ABP RV, with her daughter. But, of course, he had no involvement with her.
Why did the local media completely ignore this Spencer-Forde connection in its coverage of the rally? By contrast, they never fail to let Pearce and his reptilian ilk use slain Arizona rancher Rob Krentz's name as their mantra.
I'll tell you why: Because the deaths of two brown people don't equal that of one white man here in Sand Land. And, sadly, my colleagues in the press have acknowledged this by omission.
