America's
toughest scummiest sheriff Joe Arpaio
(Gage Skidmore/
Flickr)
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the racist tyrant of Marciopa County, Arizona, is a real piece of work—and not just because he recently
endorsed Rick Perry for president. He and his department have
a long history of corruption and questionable priorities. Still, a
new report that he ignored hundreds of sex crimes is pretty shocking:
[M]ore than 400 sex-crimes reported to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office during a three-year period ending in 2007 — including dozens of alleged child molestations — that were inadequately investigated and in some instances were not worked at all, according to current and former police officers familiar with the cases.
In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio's office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 years old — where the sheriff's office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases.
Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants.
So it seems that for Sheriff Joe, investigating child molestation, especially if the victims are the children of illegal immigrants, isn't nearly as important as, say, forming a "posse" to investigate the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate. Turns out America's "toughest sheriff" is tough on brown people for the crime of being brown. Tough on actual crimes? Not so much.
4:19 PM PT: And today, Sheriff Joe offered a pretty weak-tea apology:
"If there were any victims, I apologize to those victims," the sheriff said in his office's most detailed public comments about the cases.