Two major stories broke today in Arizona concerning Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Step by step the various local, state, and federal investigations are closing in on the blowhard himself, and one can only hope the results of the DOJ investigation into Arpaio's abuse of powers, racial profiling, and other crimes will follow soon.
This morning we learned that the Sheriff's Office misspent nearly $100 million since 2003:
Maricopa County Sheriff's officials misspent $99.5 million in restricted jail funds over the last eight years, according to a Wednesday morning briefing by county budget officials who spent the past six months researching the issue.
Budget officials said $84.7 million was misspent from the detention fund, while another $14.8 million in inmate-services funds were misspent. Arizona Republic
Most of this was restricted County funds earmarked for jail maintenance and other inmate services. Joe apparently thinks his Tent City is just hunky dory and needs no upgrades, because he used the money to pay for extra deputies who worked in his anti-immigration unit. He took nearly a half-million bucks to buy himself a fancy bus that's been sitting in a parking lot for two years. Who knows how much he paid for the tank he and Steven Seagal used to break up a cockfighting operation. He even used the funds to pay for retaliatory investigations and lawsuits against County Supervisors and judges who stood in the way of Arpaio's attempt to build his police state.
And that was only this morning's story.
This afternoon Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu announced that he has completed his seven-month investigation into three of Arpaio's staff: Chief Deputy David Hendershott, Deputy Chief Larry Black, and Captain Joel Fox. While Babeu insists he cannot comment on the investigation's findings until Arpaio has read the 1,022-page report, sources are saying the three deputies will likely be canned:
Three of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's top deputies could lose their jobs, based on an investigation completed by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, sources have told CBS 5 News. Link
Hendershott, Black, and Fox created and administered the Sheriff's Command Association (SCA), a slush fund that raised money for Arpaio's 2008 race against Dan Saban (backstory here). The money was raised illegally from County employees and fat-cats who donated as much as $30,000. Then the $100,000+ total was passed on to the GOP, which concocted a phony organization called Arizonans for Public Safety. They in turn created and aired the infamous masturbating video smear of Saban. It was so smarmy even Republicans complained and it ran only one day.
But that's just the surface of what SCA and Arpaio's goons were up to. Shortly afterward, Deputy Frank Munnell released a 63-page bombshell (PDF) that alleged all kinds of nasty shit: forcing employees to contribute to SCA, obstruction of justice when investigators began looking into the slush fund, and an overall culture of corruption and cronyism at every level of the Sheriff's Office.
Munnell's memo alleged years of behavior by the three that ranged from inappropriate to criminal. He described Hendershott as a bully who retaliated against subordinates who questioned him, and who browbeat others into refusing to cooperate with investigations into the Sheriff's Office. Arizona Republic
There are dozens of other side stories in this circus: embarrassing love letters between Fox and Black, developer kickbacks to Hendershott, a County Attorney facing disbarment, a secretly taped meeting during which the Sheriff and his staff call politicians and colleagues "dickhead" and "idiot," and lawsuits that the deputies have filed against the County and AG for ruining their reputations. Talk about large cajones.
Joe Arpaio, who for years has directed every single step of his office's operations, maintains he had no idea what his Chief Deputy and other senior staff were up to. Maybe the Feds will tell their version soon.