Homeland Security decertifies Arizona sheriff for immigration enforcement

His deputies, particularly his jail guards, seem to have less sense of how far they can go. Thousands of lawsuits and legal claims alleging abuse have been filed against Arpaio’s department by inmated–or, in the case of deaths in detention, but their families. A federal investigation found that deputies had used stun guns on prisoners already strapped into a “restraint chair.” The family of one man who died after being forced into the restraint chair was awarded more than six million dollars as the result of a suit in federal court. The family of another man killed in the restraint chair got $8.25 million in a pre-trial settlement. (This deal was reached after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, choking, and suffocating the prisoner, and after the sheriff’s office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased.) To date, lawsuits bought against Arpaio’s office have cost Maricopa County taxpayers forty-three million dollars, according to some estimates. But the Sheriff has never acknowledged any wrongdoing in his jails, never apologized to the victims or their families. In fact, many of the officers involved have been promoted.

Other jails get sued, of course. The Phoeniz New Times found that, between 2004 and 2008, the county jails of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston, which together house more than six times as many inmates as Maricopa, were sued a total of forty-three times. During the same period, Arpaio’s department was sued over jail conditions almost twenty-two hundred times in federal district court. Last year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care withdrew the health accreditation of Maricopa County’s jails for failing to meet its standards, and a federal judge refused to life a long standing consent decree on the jails, finding that conditions remained unconsitutional for pre-trial detainees. (The consent decree mandates that the jails be monitored. But it hasn’t had much effect.)

Remarkably, Arpaio has paid almost no political price for running jails that are so patently dangerous and inadvertantly expensive. Indeed, until recently there were few local or state politicians willing to criticize him publicly. Those who have, including memebers of the county board of supervisors, which controls his budget, tend to find themselves under investigation by the sheriff’s office. The Phoenix New Times ran an investigation of Arpaio’s real-estate dealings that included Arpaio’s home address, which he argued was possibly a violation of state law. When the paper revealed that it had received an impossibly broad subpoena, demanding, among other things, the Internet records of all visitors to its web site in the previous two and a half years, sheriff’s deputies staged late-night raids on the homes of Michael Lacey and James Larkin, executives of Village Voice Media, which owns the New Times. The deputies arrested both men for, they said, violating grand-jury secrecy. (The county attorney declined to prosecute, and it turned out that the subpoenas were issued unlawfully.)

Outspoken citizens also take their chances. Last December, remarks criticial of Arpaio were offered during the public-comment period at a board of supervisors meeting, and four members of the audience were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct–for clapping. Their cases are pending.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/20/090720fa_fact_finnegan

AJB on October 7, 2009 at 2:55 PM