Why is the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Honduras training the national police there on the county taxpayer's dime, with expenses reimbursed by RICO funds? To hear Sheriff Joe Arpaio tell it, the program — authored, planned and approved by his Chief Deputy David Hendershott — was a gesture of goodwill to the Honduran government, so that they would pony up millions of photos for the MCSO's facial-recognition data banks. At last count, the program's cost the county more than $157,000 in man-hours and RICO reimbursements. But there's more: Hendershott approved hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchases of facial-recognition technology from a county vendor with which he has unexplained ties. Hendershott even pitched the technology to a representative of the European Union, and has been caught traveling to China and staying in the same hotel as the CEO of this same county vendor while there.

Hendershott has denied over and over that he has any investments in Honduras or in the vendor's business. But that photo of Hendershott in Honduras, wearing a Panama hat and a Hawaiian shirt, as if he were in a remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau, tells a different story. That photo is emblematic of just how wacked the MCSO has become. Hendershott is at the epicenter of this corruption, a venal, power-mad Jabba the Hutt beholden to no one. Not even Joe Arpaio, whom he manipulates like a moth-eaten marionette. Hendershott is the real power behind Joe's throne. But if Joe loses in November, Hendershott'll have to account to another boss for all he's wrought. Wonder if they make striped pajamas in Hendy's size?