Sheriff Joe Just Cost Taxpayers Another Million

Let's start with the silly part first. Would you mistake this man for a police officer?

Joe Arpaio's deputy did and now it has cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County (AZ) $125,000.  The man in the picture is comedian Nick Tarr, who was arrested on Halloween 2002 for impersonating a police officer, dressed exactly as seen in this picture from the Phoenix New Times.  At the time, Tarr was portraying a character called "Joe Arizona" in commercials for a gambling proposition that Sheriff Joe opposed. Tarr was arrested while handing out leaflets about the proposition.  Clearly the only "crime" Tarr was guilty of was making fun of Arpaio (note the pink boxers). The charges were dropped and Tarr sued, settling for $125,000.

The serious stuff below the fold...

An additional $800,000 has been awarded the family of a man who died in the Sheriff's custody.

Rico Rossi, 28, was taken to Tent City overnight in April 2007 to serve a DUI sentence. On the morning he was being released, he died from a heart attack.
"Due to the possible exposure, we made a business decision to settle," said Peter Crowley, the county's risk manager. Link

What exposure, you ask?

[Rossi attorny Michael] Manning says Tent City is only the root of the problem, which he contends stretches to the Correctional Health Services system, all of which has produced a systemic disregard for the constitutional rights of inmates.

"For 10 years, Arpaio and his people have been warned, by their own consultants, that they were running jails that were so unconstitutional and so dangerous that if they continued to do so more lawsuits and more verdicts and bigger settlements would ensue," Manning said, referring to a series of studies conducted between 1996 and 2003 that he cites in his letter. Link

Manning has joined Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon in asking the Justice Department to investigate civil rights abuses by the MCSO.

On the heels of that settlement, Phoenix attorney Michael Manning dispatched a six-page letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, asking that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies be investigated for abusing the civil rights of inmates housed in county facilities.
"We felt the collection of circumstances, the destruction of evidence, evidence admitting they knew they were running unconstitutional jails, had to be reported to authorities," Manning said.

His letter cites cases stretching from a January verdict that awarded $2 million to the family of Brian Crenshaw, a disabled man who died after a fight with a detention officer, to the 1996 case of Scott Norberg, whose family settled for $8.25 million after Norberg died in a restraint chair at the jail.

Manning represented both those families and that of Rico Rossi, the heart-attack victim.

Naturally, Sheriff Joe stuck to the same script the we've been hearing here in the Valley of the SDun for years:

Arpaio was defiant in the face of another request for federal authorities to inspect his methods. The letter was the third in three weeks, following missives to the Justice Department from Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and the Anti-Defamation League, and came on the same day the state's Legislative Latino Caucus drafted a letter requesting U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hold hearings to look into potential civil-rights violations.

Manning's letter was just riding the coattails of the others, Arpaio said.

"Mr. Manning is not going to intimidate me because he doesn't like the tents," Arpaio said.

Please help elect Dan Saban We can't afford Joe any longer.