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Sheriff Joe’s goons bring new heights of absurdity to Phoenix City Hall

By Sarah Fenske 

I still don't know what the stupidest part was.

Was it the Maricopa County sheriff's officer waving a public record at a reporter, daring him to touch it — making it clear that he'd have the reporter arrested if he did?

Was it the sheriff's deputies using a portable scanner to photocopy records they'd requested from Phoenix city officials — even though they refuse to let people use scanners on their own records?

Or, was it the five goons from the Sheriff's Office — seriously, five extra guys, all on government time — who showed up to form a protective circle around two deputies while they did the scanning, just in case reporters should again come knocking?

Seriously, it was like an episode of Punk'd at Phoenix City Hall last week. Only there was no Ashton Kutcher jumping out to scream that the whole thing was staged for our laughter, no moment when the sheriff's officers admitted they were joking.

The lunacy was all too real.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's officers really are that paranoid, that bullying, that hypocritical. And, worst of all: They really are that willing to waste our tax dollars on a political vendetta.

And that's not funny. In fact, it's appalling.

It was April when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon first denounced Sheriff Arpaio. The occasion was a César Chávez Day luncheon; the mayor's words were a harsh rebuke of Arpaio's "crime sweeps," which feature deputies swarming Latino neighborhoods, pulling over brown-skinned drivers, and sending Mexican nationals off to be deported. Gordon called it racial profiling.

Which, of course, it is.

These days, now that a brave coalition of politicians and activists are standing shoulder-to-shoulder against Arpaio, it's easy to forget just how courageous Gordon's words were. Don't be mistaken: This was a big deal. People e-mailed Gordon after the luncheon to say they had tears in their eyes. A transcript of his speech was e-mailed from inbox to inbox.

Mainstream Democrats like Governor Janet Napolitano had always given Arpaio wide berth. It was considered political suicide to challenge the sheriff, no matter how senile you might privately consider him to be.

Gordon's brave stance changed that. Even Napolitano, the savviest of politicians, has decided to pick a fight with Arpaio, reneging on a grant she promised for his immigration sweeps. Arpaio was forced to admit he'd had to learn about the governor's decision by reading New Times — that's how irrelevant he suddenly appeared.

And Arpaio has never been one to suffer an insult without retaliation.

Four weeks after the Chávez Day speech, an officer in Arpaio's Internal Affairs unit put in a public-records request at Phoenix City Hall, demanding to see six months of Gordon's e-mail (See "Fishing Expedition," May 15). The sheriff also ordered Phoenix to release e-mails from City Manager Frank Fairbanks, Police Chief Jack Harris, and a half-dozen top staffers. Arpaio also wanted the mayor's cell phone records, but because the mayor doesn't have a city-issued cell phone, the sheriff was out of luck.

Supposedly, the sheriff needed the information to investigate his own employees for racial profiling — an excuse so laughable, it's hardly worth repeating.

He just wanted dirt. And the chance to intimidate a political enemy.

The great irony is that Arpaio was using Arizona's public-records law — a law that the courts have held that his own office has repeatedly flouted — to do it.

But that was only the beginning.

City spokeswoman Toni Maccarone tells me that it took city workers more than 221 hours to gather the sheriff's request. When completed, the records totaled a staggering 9,343 pages.

Since the city charges 19 cents per page, that would have meant a $1,775.17 bill.

The sheriff could hardly justify spending that much on a vendetta-driven fishing expedition at a time when his office is slashing expenses left and right. So Arpaio's guys did something that their own office bars reporters from doing: They brought a scanner to duplicate the records without cost.

Last October, New Times reporter Ray Stern attempted to use his digital camera to copy some records that he'd ordered from the Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's lawyer ordered Stern to put his camera away — scanners and photographs are verboten when the sheriff is running the show.

And when Stern argued with the lawyer enforcing the rule, the sheriff's brass saw that he was cited for "disorderly conduct." That's a first-degree misdemeanor.

The city of Phoenix has no policy against scanners or digital cameras; it's not like they were giving Arpaio's guy a deal. But still, the sheriff's hypocrisy in employing a method he stops others from using is too rich.

And it gets worse.

Remember my buddy Ray Stern? Well, he showed up at the Clerk's Office while the sheriff's deputies were scanning away — and, again, nearly was arrested for his trouble.

It turns out the sheriff doesn't think that public records should be . . . public. When Stern asked the officers if he could take a look at records they weren't scanning, they told him to back off. Never mind that they were supposedly on a "break" and that their request totaled five boxes of photocopies — surely, enough to go around.

Stern says the guys were openly confrontational. As he wrote on New Times' Valley Fever blog last week, Sheriff's Captain Jim Miller "proved himself to be a real bully, practically begging me to make a move that would allow him to arrest me . . . He picked up a couple of random folders sitting on the records counter and waved them in my face. 'Take these papers from my hand!' he snarled. 'Take these papers from my hand!'"

Real mature, dudes.

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