Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's gettin' some heat lately after county auditors determined that his office may have misspent more than $50 million over the past five years. Today we're getting an idea of where some of that cash may have been going.
TLC recently featured a show you may have heard of called Police Women of Maricopa County.
The show featured four MCSO lady cops as they cruised around the Valley "kicking ass."
One of the officers featured on the show -- the bitchiest one of the whole bunch, in fact -- was Kelly Bocardo.
We watched as, episode after episode, Bocardo dazzled us with her charm by saying things like, "I have the attitude that I will definitely give you an ass-beating if you need one" and "if I have to give you an ass-beating, so be it."
It turns out that all that "ass-beating" was likely funded by the Jail Detention Fund -- one of the funds that county administrators suspect Arpaio was misusing.
In memos uncovered by Arizona Capitol Times Yellow Sheet, Bocardo is listed as one of 280 members of the jail-transportation unit, funded by the Jail Detention Fund, and basically only responsible for moving inmates from jail to court and back.
As the Yellow Sheet points out, while there are 280 officers paid out of the fund, the Sheriff's Office said last year that it only had 80 officers to transport inmates after failing to get some prisoners to court on time for their hearings.
On the show, none of Bocardo's "ass-beatings" took place anywhere near a jail, and she was presented as a patrol officer -- complete with her own cruiser.
The news that Bocardo's supposed to be a low-level inmate-transport officer and not the ass-kicking authoritarian seen on the show -- combined with the fact that we're told Lindsey Smith, another officer featured on the show, is back on desk duty as Arpaio's spokewoman -- supports our initial theory:
TLC went to the Sheriff's Office and asked for four female officers -- regardless of their actual, low-level jobs in the department -- who are tolerable to look at so they could package them as real cops for a few episodes.
Spokeswomen of Maricopa County just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
