Several people have written to ask about the outcome of Pinal County sheriff deputy Louie Puroll's bid to get his job back from a county Merit Commission.
Readers of this paper will remember Louie, a talkative longtime deputy in his mid 50s who claimed to have been shot by a gaggle of Latino drug smugglers out in the remote Vekol Valley on April 30, 2010, a week after Governor Jan Brewer signed the volatile anti-immigration bill, SB 1070. Here is the first of two major pieces we wrote about Puroll and his desert escapade, followed by this one--which speaks for itself, literally.
Anyway, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu fired Puroll after the deputy lied to internal affairs investigators about a number of things, including what he told us during a truck-stop interview months after the shooting.
You can read all about that in the most previous attached link in this post.
Puroll is seeking reinstatement and back pay.
The deputy, who claims he has been wronged by Sheriff Babeu and the agency's internal affairs folks (and, of course, by us), exercised his right to close his Merit Commission hearing to the public, including the media.
That renders us pretty much incapable of reporting on how things have fared down in the Florence hearing room where Puroll is pleading his case.
But knowing what we know about this board and how it has reinstated and/or reversed the punishments of other deputies sanctioned by Sheriff Babeu, it wouldn't surprise us if (sometimes) likeable Louie wins the day.
What we did hear today was that the board won't reconvene to hear the rest of the case until Monday, July 9.
So there you are--everything's on hold in Louie Land.
