Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose office is charged with bungling sex crime investigtions, talked to me via cell phone on the day before the Justice Department handed down its scathing investigation.

I first wrote about the sheriff’s  sex crime investigation scandal on this blog.

Then, I wrote about it in more detail for The Daily Beast.Talked to Sheriff Joe on his cell phone.

He told me the department had “corrected” the sex crime investigation scandal.

Go figure.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-described toughest sheriff in America, is now in the national spotlight because his office allegedly did not investigate sex crimes in 2005. This is old news in Arizona. In 2008, a Mesa newspaper won a Pulitzer for exposing irregularities in the sheriff’s office — and the apparent siphoning of resources into well-publicized immigration raids instead of community policing — including the investigation of sex crimes in El Mirage.

Here’s a quick geography lesson for those of you who don’t live in Arizona. Maricopa County, which elects the sheriff, is the  most populous county in Arizona. The sheriff is allowed to police every community in Maricopa County, including Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler , Tempe, Guadalupe and El Mirage.

The sheriff has long been under fire for failing to police while diverting resources to immigration, as I said before. The sheriff’s department has cost the county millions in lawsuits filed by relatives of dead inmates alleged to have died wrongfully, or judges and other county officials who alleged the sheriff’s baseless but well publicised investigations of them were meant to harass them and ruined their careers. Sheriff Joe’s  office has been under scrutiny for misspending and abuse of power, and the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating alleged civil rights abuses for three years. His chief deputy and several officials were dismissed or resigned amid allegations of abuse of power and yet, the sheriff goes on, bolstered by out-of-state campaign donations that almost guarantee he will be elected in 2012.

But things may change — the same group that managed to recall Russell Pearce, the once powerful senator who sponsored Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, now wants to recall Arpaio. And locals are predictably calling for his ouster in the national media frenzy over the old Arizona news of botched sex crime investigations.

If you want to see a video of me and Sheriff Joe, go to my  main page, and click on “videos and excerpts,” you can see a video of me and the sheriff.

ARIZONA’S TOUGHEST SHERIFF IGNORED SEX ABUSE VICTIMS, REPORT SAYS.

The  little boys and girls told authorities about the adults who molested and raped them, only to be ignored by the office of the Toughest Sheriff in America.

This is surely what happened in at least some of the 400 sex-crime cases that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office  mishandled, according to a well-publicized investigation of the Sheriff’s Office that was reported in the Arizona Republic.

And the sheriff knew about them. In a 2008 letter printed in The Arizona Republic, the police chief of El Mirage, a Phoenix suburb that contracted with Sheriff Joe for police services, wrote that  many of the 43 sex-abuse cases turned over to the sheriff’s office for investigation involved children and teens. The names of alleged abusers were handed over to the sheriff’s office.

But the sheriff’s office failed to follow through. The police chief  wrote in his letter to Sheriff Joe that the cases had grown cold.

Families moved out of town.

Victims and their abusers vanished.

Why did the office of the Toughest Sheriff in America choose to ignore the sex crime cases?

It focused its resources and manpower instead  on:

1. Battling Sheriff Joe’s political foes via well-publicized “public corruption” investigations that cost taxpayers millions and went nowhere and resulted in additional millions of dollars of claims against the county.
2. Rounding up “illegals” in immigration sweeps of Latino neighborhoods, and ensnaring U.S. citizens in the process, spurring  millions of dollars of additional court claims and lawsuits. Again, taxpayers footed the legal bills.

The sheriff himself now faces indictment as the feds close in on him.

He’s the target of two separate Justice Department investigations. The first investigation centers on alleged human rights abuses in the sheriff’s jails and during those immigration sweeps. The second probe centers on Arpaio’s alleged abuses of power.

The buzz in Arizona now centers on why it’s taking the feds so long to act.

I mean, we’ve read exposes about  Sheriff Joe’s mismanagement of his office and of conditions in his jails for years.

And years.

Tony Ortega, my former colleague at Phoenix New Times and the current editor of the Village Voice, began writing about irregularities in the sheriff’s office and jails back in the 1990s.

The newspaper continued exposing horrors in the jails–including unexplained deaths–for years.

And years.

As a result, Sheriff Joe and his supporter, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas (now facing disbarment for alleged abuses of power),  turned their sights on  Phoenix New Times  and even arrested its owners  in 2007 for publicizing a grand jury subpoena they generated. The subpoena required New Times to turn over the IP addresses and browsing habits of their readers.

The newspaper refused to comply with the subpoena.

Charges were dismissed, which frequently happens when the Sheriff’s Office goes after its perceived foes.

A year later, in 2008, the tiny East Valley Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize for a series exposing how Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office focused on costly immigration sweeps and neglected real crime solving, including the solving of sex crimes in El Mirage, that  impoverished Phoenix suburb that contracted with Sheriff Joe for police services.

The Pulitzer series was published at he height of Sheriff Joe’s terrifying immigration raids. I know. I immersed myself in one such raid and wrote about it in my book. It appeared  expensive, to say the least.  Cops in helicopters. Cops in riot gear. Cops in squad cars. Cops in unmarked cars. Cops on horses. Cops on motorcycles. Cops on foot. Cops in cars. Cops in a mobile command  unit. All of this to round up a handful of undocumented Mexicans.

Fast forward to 2011. Two of the sheriff’s trusted aides have been fired, and one is on administrative leave for conducting bogus investigations of Sheriff Joe’s enemies, and for misspending funds, and for running a weird shadow campaign organization that, among other things, wrongly smeared Sheriff Joe’s opponent in the 2008 election. You can read about this in Phoenix New Times. And The Arizona Republic.

If any of these ex-aides are charged with crimes, Sheriff Joe’s foes say,  it is likely they’ll snitch on Sheriff Joe to save their own skins.

All of this raises the unanswered question — how did Sheriff Joe get re-elected and re-elected even in the wake of so much media scrutiny?

I’ve thought about this a lot, and it is my considered opinion that folks like  Arpaio, State Senator Russell Pearce,  and a slew of  minor extremist candidates  get elected for one or all of these reasons:

1. Arizonans consume less news than average Americans, which makes them less engaged, according to the Morrison Institute of Public Policy.
2. Arizonans who do not consume news elect officials who promise to entertain them.
3. Arizonans who do not consume news tend to blow off primary elections, where extremist demagogues get their footing.

Of course these uninformed voters hurt themselves — and the state.

Arizona’s new image as a racist backwater, with its firebrand sheriff and harsh immigration laws, has damaged the very economy Arizona voters depend on for their laid-back lives.

If voters cut back on reality tv and golf and shopping and their own problems just for a few minutes — the span of time it takes to scan the newspaper or online news venues — would  they still elect Sheriff Joe?

Sheriff Joe professes his innocence. He says he knew nothing of the sleaze in his office.  If that’s true, he’s a terrible manager. But if he knew about what was going on,  then he will likely be indicted.

I spent many hours with Sheriff Joe and he takes up a chapter in my book. There’s pathos in his story.

Photo by Kathy McCraine

Honestly, he will go down blaming an imagined leftist conspiracy for bringing him down.

Sheriff Joe will fight.

He’ll get his day in court.

But many of the abused children will never get justice.

ARIZONA JOURNALISTS RAISE EVEN MORE TROUBLING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO AND HIS NEIGHBOR AND ALLY, PINAL COUNTY SHERIFF PAUL BABEU, AND A SUSPICIOUS DEPUTY SHOOTING THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A HOAX

Two close political allies who’ve made names for themselves as lawmen protecting Arizonans from perceived misdeeds of “illegal aliens” are now facing increased scrutiny from reporters and public officials.

This week, the Maricopa County Board of  Supervisors, which oversees funding for the office of Sheriff Joe Arpaio,  learned that an internal audit of the sheriff’s office indicates that the sheriff may have misspent up to $80 million in the past five years. According to The Arizona Republic, the  auditors allege that the sheriff’s administration kept two sets of books, which allowed it to secretly take  money from one untouchable fund and funnel it into those well-publicized immigration enforcement activities. (Read, raids.)  Of course, the board, which has felt the wrath of Sheriff Joe, turned its findings over to the U.S. Department of Justice, which is conducting two ongoing investigations of the sheriff’s administration that may lead to the indictment of Sheriff Joe himself.

Sheriff Joe isn’t the only guy who’s being scrutinized.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, the former boarding school principal turned anti-migrant lawman, first grew famous by walking along the “dang fence” in John McCain’s primary-campaign television ad. Then Babeu (he likes to call himself “Sheriff Paul” just as Arpaio is known as Sheriff Joe guested on a white-supremacy show and a conspiracy theory show. ) Sheriff Paul blamed his appearances on the radio shows on a bumbling aide, and the McCain camp did not pull either the dang fence ad or Sheriff Paul’s endorsement.

For months, Sheriff Paul has stood behind his deputy, who claimed he was shot by AK-47 toting Sinaloan narcos.  Despite a massive search, the narcos were never found. Nor was the massive load of pot they were supposed to be carrying. And the deputy who claimed he was shot by the narcos suffered a grazing wound that experts now say was shot at close range. You can thank Paul Rubin, of the Phoenix New Times, for having the fine good sense to send a picture of the deputy’s wound to forensic experts.

In short, lawmen, forensic experts and newspaper reporters have all questioned whether the deputy’s shooting was a hoax.

Was it intended to further terrify Arizonans already terrified by false reports that an Arizona rancher was definatively shot by an “illegal alien?”

That rancher murder, which spurred the passage of SB 1070, is actually unsolved.

Babeu’s office said the deputy’s shooting was not a hoax. It was the real deal, Babeu said.

Now Sheriff Paul,  incredibly, is investigating the alleged crimes at Sheriff  Joe’s office.

AMERICA’S TOUGHEST SHERIFF HAS MOUNTING LEGAL BATTLES WITH US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, CHIEF DEPUTY HENDERSHOTT INVESTIGATED BY DOJ

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s mounting legal troubles with the feds in a story for  The Daily Beast. In a nutshell, two Department of Justice probes are moving fast — the first involves alleged civil rights abuses stemming from Sheriff Joe’s raids of Latino neighborhoods and workplaces; the second involves alleged retaliation against those who speak out against the sheriff, including journalists, judges and politicians. I quoted reputable attorneys who have battled the sheriff and  maintain the sheriff might get indicted.  To get the other side, I e-mailed the sheriff’s office several times. The sheriff’s official spokesman would not comment, but referred me to an attorney for the sheriff who did not return my call.
Now The Arizona Republic reveals that someone else was allegedly in the sheriff’s cross hairs — a deputy who dared contribute campaign money to a guy who was running against the sheriff. He was reportedly  Tased by another deputy while at a cemetery. No charges were filed in the internal investigation.
The Republic’s report, released today, indicates what many insiders have repeatedly told me. David Hendershott, Arpaio’s chief deputy, is allegedly behind much of the retribution and alleged abuse of power, like dead-end criminal investigations launched after the sheriff is criticized. A highranking member of Arpaio’s staff seeks an investigation of Hendershott for alleged abuse of power.
Here’s a video from the NBC affiliate Channel 12′s Kent Dana, a good reporter, on that allegation.

The sheriff, in the meantime, tooled off to New Hampshire, reportedly to polish his brand and get more campaign funds for his 2012 sheriff’s race. He had to dip into that treasure chest to bankroll TV commercials that blasted his arch-enemy County Attorney Rick Romley, who subsequently lost in the primary elections. And like  Sarah Palin, Arpaio  is a populist who’s more popular outside home state.

“To survive,” he’s fond of saying, “you’ve got to keep all your ducks in order, because everyone is after me.”

This is now a legitimate question.

Here’s a quick roundup of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio news.

With great fanfare, he opened a new tent for all those “illegals” he hoped were going to be slapped with misdemeanors for being in Arizona illegally, a new state crime under SB 1070, slated to go into effect July 29.

Then a federal judge slapped  slapped injunctions on several key parts of SB 1070 on the day before it was to take effect.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he would conduct a “crime suppression” operation anyway, because there were plenty of state laws that would allow him to conduct these famous raids.

His deputies arrested several people blocking the crime-suppression vehicles.

Next, Sheriff Joe Arpaio heard from the Department of Justice. He’s long been  investigated by Justice Department for alleged racial profiling.  The department says Sheriff Joe needs to cough up documents related to a racial-profiling probe (the raids on heavily Latino neighborhoods and workplaces) or it will sue on August 17.  Here is the Justice Department Letter to Arpaio.

The sheriff is also the subject of a federal grand jury probe in Phoenix for alleged abuses of power and harassment of political enemies. That probe is ongoing.

To top it all off, the sheriff says he’s got a $1 million hit on his head, supposedly by those drug cartels. The alleged hit is the topic of an e-mail from Russell Pearce, the sponsor of SB 1070, to his supporters. Here is the e-mail.

ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAW REVISED BY GOVERNOR, MEANWHILE, MEXICO SAYS YA BASTA, NAZIS SHOW UP FOR SHERIFF JOE, AND A DEPUTY IS SHOT WITH AN AK47.

Friends so much has happened  today, just one week since Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s controversial  immigration law, a lot probably escapes the  national news. For instance, the Nazis are back in Phoenix. I‘ve written about them before.

Today, local neo-Nazis showed up  to support  Bill Montgomery, whom Sheriff Joe Arapio endorsed for the upcoming Republican primary for Maricopa County Attorney. Montgomery was embarrassed, according to this account of the event. I took the photo below when Nazis demonstrated against thousands of human-rights marchers in the spring of 2009.

In the meantime, activists say they’re serious about boycotting Arizona, and officials from our neighboring Mexican state of Sonora declined to attend a scheduled meeting for the  Arizona-Mexico Commission.  A few days ago, I asked Margie Emmerman, who heads the pro-trade, pro-business commission, how she felt about the new immigration law, which Gov. Jan Brewer signed less than a week ago.

Emmerman declined  comment.

This is a copy of the letter about the Sonoran refusal to attend the meeting.

End of letter.

I just read that at a Pinal County sheriff deputy (Pinal County is right next door to us, some folks live there and commute to Phoenix) says he was shot with an AK-47 by suspected pot traffickers. (The United States is the largest consumer of Mexican Pot in the world. This stuff likely came from Sinaloa.)

Vice President Biden is coming to town this weekend, just as Sheriff Joe continues his fifteenth raid of the Phoenix area in search of undocumented immigrants.

And Governor Jan Brewer, who was secretary of state of Arizona and replaced  Janet Napolitano when she was named secretary of the department of Homeland Security, signed a revision of  Arizona’s immigration law. Some say it makes it more difficult for cops to racially profile, others say it makes it easier to have cause to arrest undocumented immigrants for minor city and county ordinance violations.

Since 2008, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has ordered thirteen raids (aka crime suppression operations) of heavily Latino Phoenix-area neighborhoods and workplaces in search of  ”illegals.”

But if he and his advisors gambled that rounding up hotel maids and landscapers would gain him more voter approval, they gambled wrong.

In part due to his “hard-nosed and sometimes perceived heavy handed tactics against illegal aliens” as well as an ongoing federal grand jury inquiry over alleged abuses of power, Sheriff Joe’s  support is tanking in the Phoenix metro area, according to a recent poll of Maricopa County voters.

The details: Well-respected local pollster Earl de Berge, who has taken the pulse of Phoenix for many years,  found that only 39 percent of registered voters now  approve of Sheriff Joe. That’s down from an astonishing 64 percent approval rating in 2007.  According to the poll, Sheriff Joe’s still got most of the county’s GOP voters in his camp, but he’s lost the support of those free-thinking Independents. And in a state where one-third of the voters are Republicans, one-third of the voters are Democrats (they never cottoned to Joe) and one-third of the voters are Independents, Joe might well lose his next election.

Which might explain why Sheriff Joe sent out a  fund-raising letter to voters who live outside of Maricopa County. A friend of mine who lives in heavily conservative Yavapai County forwarded me  a copy of Sheriff Joe’s fundraising letter. It references a January 16 human rights march in Phoenix that I happened to cover for my book, which comes out in August and is called ILLEGAL: Life and Death in the Undocumented Underground.

Before I get into the letter, here’s a picture of the march  by  photographer Kathy McCraine. (I’m the female journalist in jeans covering the march.) Do you see nasty signs? Do you see masked marchers? Do you see hooligans?

Photo by Kathy McCraine

See, the reason I ask all these questions is because Sheriff Joe, in a fundraising letter that he sent to  those conservative prospective donors in Yavapai County, writes this about the march documented in the picture above:

“On January 16, 2010, more than 10,000 protestors marched on my jails to oppose my enforcement of state and federal immigration laws.

Protestors brawled with and assaulted police. Demonstrators dressed in all black and wearing hoods to conceal their identity threw bottles filled with rocks and attacked officers including a mounted officer and her horse. The mob then surrounded her and hit the horse with sticks.

The masked protestors screamed profanities and called for my assassination carrying signs that read “Assassinate Arpaio” and other violent messages some so profane, I won’t bother repeating them here.”

Sheriff Joe says in the letter to send money fast, so he can continue to enforce the law even in the face of mounting attacks from the Leftist media, the Leftist presidency, the Leftist U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now, from this most recent demonstration he infers  a mob of 10,000 masked izquierdistas  threw bottles and beat horses with sticks.

Here’s the truth: Of 10,000 marchers, 9,997 were peaceful.

That’s according to public documents.

Only three marchers were singled out by county prosecutors for causing trouble at the January 16 march. That’s right. Three people. The first, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah Matthew Henry, allegedly used a wooden stick to whack a mounted Phoenix police officer  who was “working crowd control.” Twenty-seven-year-old Issa Emadi is accused of throwing one water bottle at the cops.  And twenty-four-year-old Sarah Grace Daniels is accused of striking a cop with the handle of a banner she had been carrying in the march.

I’m not saying Henry, Emadi and  Daniels were in the right if they did what they are accused of doing. They face serious criminal charges for their actions, and if they’re guilty, they’ll pay.

But isn’t it also a sin to scare donors into sending you money by  painting  an entire group of peaceful marchers (mostly Latino families) as radicals?

I have covered several of these marches against the Sheriff’s alleged violations of human rights, and I can tell you I have never seen any violence. I didn’t see violence on January 16.

However, a mom, dad and their two children  saw part of the melee that allegedly involved Henry, Daniels and Emadi. The parents told me they saw a female mounted cop ride into the crowd and squirt  people with pepper spray. Of course, the cop was probably trying to subdue the three protestors.

Unfortunately, the Phoenix mountie also sprayed this immigrant couple’s  five-year-old son.

The child was treated at a hospital emergency room for breathing difficulties.

I took this picture of him a week later. I slanted  my iPhone camera in order to take advantage of the natural light. 

You can see the child is  physically okay now, and he doesn’t like to talk about the pepper spray. Scroll back up and take a look at his eyes. You’ve  got to wonder what goes on inside his five-year-old heart whenever he sees a uniformed cop or a horse.

Ask yourself: Who is the true victim?

The boy?

Or the sheriff?