Immigration activist Sal Reza was convicted last week of failing to follow police orders during a protest last year over Arizona's controversial immigration law, SB 1070, and according to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, "it's about time" Reza's convicted.
"These activists willfully disregarded the law causing a severe disruption to the sheriff's office," Arpaio says. "This office will not tolerate acts of civil disobedience."
Arpaio considers the demonstration -- during which Reza and several other activists formed a human chain to keep MCSO deputies from entering the Fourth Avenue Jail during protests in July of 2010 -- to be nothing more than a publicity stunt used by the demonstrators to generate national attention.
"The protest was staged to receive national publicity from virtually
every media outlet as well as to cause disorder to Sheriff Arpaio's
crime suppression operations being conducted on that July day," the MCSO
says in a press release.
Speaking of publicity stunts, below you'll find a list of Arpaio's latest acts of media slutiness:
Since early July, Arpaio has invited the media to witness a duet with an Elvis impersonator, introduced a Spanish-language version of his infamous pink undies to prove he's not a racist, spared the city of Phoenix the humiliation of having his female chain-gang smile for the international press at Major League Baseball's All-Star Game, and challenged "any reporter" to a hotdog eating contest.
For the record, America's self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff" wimped out when we accepted his hotdog challenge.
Again, the aforementioned antics all happened in roughly the last month.
Arpaio's been running the show at the MCSO for nearly 20
years -- these are just the most recent stunts in the sheriff's long
career as a
publicity stuntman.
Stay tuned for his most recent publicity stunt -- it involves a dead dog and the exploitation of inmate labor.
