You already know what happened after that.
But you may not know that three months before Norberg was killed, the U.S. Department of Justice sent the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors a formal letter alerting the county that the abusive conditions and excessive force used inside the jails run by Joe Arpaio violated the Constitution.
You may not know that around the same time, Madison Street jailers gave similar treatment to a paraplegic named Richard Post, who had overflowed a toilet. They strapped Post into a restraint chair (which jailers used 600 times in a six-month period, including Norberg's death) and broke Post's neck, costing him the use of his right arm. Post's lawsuit is still pending. (See story on page 22.)
Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley fired up a criminal obstruction of justice investigation into the sheriff's office's handling of evidence in the Norberg case, but Romley passed the baton to the FBI because he said Arpaio was having him spied upon. The FBI is also conducting a criminal investigation into Norberg's killing.
To Joe Arpaio and the jailers who killed Norberg, I offer a lyric from Rage Against the Machine's track "Wake Up":
"How long? Not long. Because what you reap is what you sow."
Contact David Holthouse at his online address: [email protected]
