Coddling Joe: How Do You Collaborate With a Felon?

The Memorandum of Agreement that Sheriff Arpaio signed with ICE is even more specific in spelling out criminal behavior that can trigger an immigration enforcement: "high-risk felons . . . that represent a significant threat to public safety . . . criminal enterprises . . . organized crime . . . gangs . . . narcotics trafficking . . . pervasive criminal activity."

Immigration investigation can only be triggered by felonious activity. And ICE's own guidelines explicitly forbid traffic stops.

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What Sheriff Joe Arpaio craves most: media attention — on his own terms.

Dennis Gilman

An MCSO deputy in a ski mask at an immigration sweep.

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But you can't point out the law to Sheriff Arpaio: "Do you think I'm going to report to the federal government? I don't report to them."

Arpaio's January 4 response to the Justice Department was 29 pages of lawyers' brain vomit, lies, and threats.

On page one, Arpaio's attorneys open with a lie: "The good faith efforts of Sheriff Arpaio, MCSO personnel, and counsel to achieve compliance by voluntary means are undeniable."

Understand that the sheriff refused to cooperate with the Justice Department investigation, and the feds were forced to sue him.

Moreover, the basis of the ACLU lawsuit is racial profiling, the very substance of the Justice Department probe.

The destruction of evidence by the sheriff in the Melendres case, the refusal to turn over documents, the shredding of records, and the deletion of e-mails were so egregious that the court not only issued sanctions but declared that, in trial, the evidence destroyed would be assumed to augment the allegation of racial profiling.

All this destroyed evidence was at the core of the Justice Department investigation.

You cannot collaborate with a thug like Sheriff Arpaio. You can only indict.From day one, Sheriff Arpaio has bullied the defenseless.

In the beginning, his target was his prisoners.

As immigration divided America, he turned on Hispanics.

There is a reason federal-government regulations did not permit local police agencies to use traffic stops as a pretext to immigration enforcement; Sheriff Arpaio is the reason writ large.

His men showed up, 200-plus strong, outfitted in body armor, hidden beneath ski masks, armed with automatic weapons, accompanied by K-9 units and SWAT teams, and detained drivers with cracked windshields.

This is police-state terror. People with dim turn signals are not criminals.

In a shameless effort to appear tough on immigration — 1 million migrants have been deported — President Barack Obama and his Homeland Security director, Napolitano, allowed local police agencies to run roughshod and violate the feds' own guidelines.

Rather than indict the sheriff, they seek to deflect their own responsibility in this horror show by "collaborating" with Arpaio for reform.

According to a recent law school study, 3,600 United States citizens have been arrested by ICE.

In Phoenix, one-third of our citizens— not immigrants — are Hispanic and subject to the sheriff's demand: Are your papers in order?

Federal Judge Snow ordered that immigrants and citizens alike detained by the sheriff can sue for damages. But who will step forward to seek compensation when the federal government coddles Arpaio?

Sheriff Arpaio responded to the Justice Department's call for collaboration by issuing a threat: He demanded the name of every American who complained about his conduct.

If Mexican-Americans were not already sufficiently terrified, the sheriff wanted everyone to know: He was making a list.

Editor's note: The Justice Department's December press conference also explained that Sheriff Joe Arpaio went after his critics.

I'm one of those critics.

A week before the Justice Department announcement, I sat in San Francisco as the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the lawsuit New Times filed after the sheriff arrested and jailed me and my partner, Village Voice Media CEO Jim Larkin.

We'd written a story in 2007 exposing an Arpaio-inspired grand jury that demanded reporters' notes, as well as the identities of those who'd read our newspaper online.

The grand jury subpoenas were fraudulent. The prosecutor issued subpoenas without going to a grand jury.

New Times has contributed to ACLU since then.