Disgraced Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio Still Costing Taxpayers Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars
from the fucking-the-electorate-in-perpetuity dept
The cost of having a bad cop on the force never ends once the officer is no longer employed. The bleeding continues for years, either as tangible costs related to ongoing civil rights lawsuits or, less tangibly, the aftershocks of their negative effect on their coworkers.
Former Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio is still bleeding taxpayers dry, despite being voted out of office in 2016, shortly after he was he was charged with criminal contempt of court for ignoring a court order blocking the racial profiling his sheriff’s office engaged in.
Arpaio was first elected in 1992 and ran the table on elections for the next 20 years. During that time, he turned what were already likely questionable department practices into a full-on racist, unconstitutional farce. He treated jail residents as PR tools and political toys, forcing them to wear pink underwear and publicly humiliating detainees and convicts as often as inhumanly possible. He decided he was entitled to engage in border security by hassling anyone who didn’t look white enough to pass as a US native.
He became a Republican favorite by catering to the worst aspects of the party and its voter base. He opened an investigation into Barack Obama’s birth certificate along with his (lol) “Cold Case Posse,” an ad hoc group of idiots who had no idea how everyday things worked, much less the skills to contribute to any investigation, even one as patently stupid as this one.
Arpaio was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump less than a month after being convicted of contempt charges. The charge remains on his record, thanks to an Arizona court that recognized the pardon but refused to overturn the conviction, pointing out that a pardon doesn’t automatically erase the underlying offense. All a pardon means is the convicted person won’t serve time.
Trump called Arpaio a hero. The sentiment must have been shared by Arizona residents, who awarded him a victory in four straight elections despite ever-increasing reports of misconduct, racial profiling, abuse of inmates, and general, all around shittiness.
Arpaio may have finally been ousted, but his surprisingly expensive legend lives on. As Amy Cutler reports for AZ Family, the ex-sheriff is still costing residents millions. And he’s getting help from the new sheriff in town.
More than $200 million in taxpayer money has been spent on a class action lawsuit involving the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and there’s no end in sight. It’s connected to allegations of racial profiling from former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Current Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone promised transparency and accountability when he came into office, which the Sheriff says he’s delivered. Still, he’s been held in contempt for not coming into compliance with the lawsuit and the price tag continues to rise.
Penzone isn’t making anything easier on Arizona residents, despite running as a reformer. He, too, has been hit with contempt charges and his office is facing $1.15 million in fines for failing to clear a backlog of misconduct investigations.
To be fair to Penzone, he inherited an agency overseen for more than a decade by a cartoonish supervillain who handcrafted the racist, abusive shitshow the new sheriff now needs to sort out. Given the lack of results shown so far, ex-sheriff Arpaio isn’t done costing county residents money. $200 million so far. It will probably be another few dozen million before Arpaio is truly wiped from the books.
And it’s not just local money. The county and its sheriff’s office are still dealing with federal oversight, which means taxpayers all over the country are pitching in to help clean up after Arpaio. Maybe county residents deserve to be soaked for repeatedly re-electing Arpaio, but the rest of the country isn’t responsible for the mess Arizonans voluntarily decided they wanted to pay for.
That’s why oversight matters. Bad cops need to be ejected as soon as humanly possible. Voting is just one form of public oversight. And the residents could have saved themselves a lot of money and embarrassment by choosing literally anyone else during the last three elections. That they chose to keep throwing good money after bad policing is as disappointing as it is expensive. This is a cautionary tale. Let’s hope other voters learn from it.
Filed Under: arizona, civil liberties, joe arpaio, maricopa county, paul penzone, racial profiling, taxpayers