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Immigration Law

: Greg Siskind's Blog

AMERICA'S WORST SHERIFF

By Greg Siskind

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I've written several times about the anti-immigrant crusader Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona. While my posts have taken Sheriff Joe to task for grandstanding to get media coverage (a Fox reality show - really?), it is starting to become clear what may be motivating him. Apparently, he's just a pretty bad sheriff when it comes to the bread and butter things a sheriff is supposed to do.

The conservative Goldwater Institute (started by Barry Goldwater, the iconic Republican presidential candidate of 1964) recently released a blistering report on the Phoenix sheriff and had this fine list of accomplishments:

- violent crimes are up 69% from 2004 to 2007
- homicides are up 166% from 2004 to 2007
- 911 response times have risen significantly
- the arrest rate has declined
- the number of satellite booking stations has declined
- public access to department records has been cut off
- the sheriff's department is in deep financial trouble due to budget overruns, overtime and lawsuit settlements

The report concludes with this blunt statement:

The Maricopa County Sheriff ?s Office falls seriously short in all three of the core components of its mission as MCSO defines it. Over the past several years, MCSO has lost sight of its most essential priorities. Th escalating rates of violent crimes in its jurisdiction coupled with diversion of resources to less important priorities, less-effective law-enforcement tactics, or to jurisdictions that have their own police departments, indicates it is not ?the leader in establishing the standards for providing professional quality law enforcement.? Its failure to assume leadership in reducing the huge backlog of outstanding warrants and its closure of satellite booking centers means that it is not effectively providing essential law-enforcement support services. Its detention of criminal suspects and convicted criminals has been the subject of successful and expensive legal verdicts and settlements, of investigations by the federal government, and of revocation of accreditation. Its records are inadequate and opaque rather than transparent.

Here is the report for your viewing pleasure:
Goldwater report on Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio - Free Legal Forms

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).