President Donald Trump just now pardoned Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona. That is where I live. Three days ago, when President Trump held a rally here in Phoenix and gave a lengthy speech, he indicated he was going to pardon Arpaio. Sheriff Joe was recently convicted by a federal court of disobeying a federal judge, and the penalty imposed upon him is that he is supposed to be imprisoned for several months. President Trump said in that speech, “Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe?” Of course, that stirred up Trump’s base supporters who were present. Trump added, “the sheriff is going to be just fine, okay?”
Maricopa County is large. It encompasses not only Phoenix, the sixth largest city in population in the U.S., but also the several cities surrounding Phoenix. Joe Arpaio has been the sheriff of Maricopa County for 25 years. He finally lost an election months ago, so that he is presently retired. Sheriff Joe is 85 years old.
As the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio has been an extremely polarizing figure. He has been very vocal in claiming to be America’s most law-and-order sheriff, calling himself America’s Toughest Sheriff. Here in Arizona, our state is one of four states on the U.S.-Mexico border. Sheriff Joe has gained a national reputation in his efforts to arrest illegals who enter the U.S. across this border. Most of the time in the past several years, the Arizona-Mexico border has been the most porous because more illegals have crossed it than any of those borders of the other three states that border Mexico.
Sheriff Arpaio also gained national recognition for certain treatment of victims in Maricopa jails. Due to lack of space, Arpaio established outdoor prison facilities, called Tent City, in this hot desert environment. We often have temperatures that exceed 110 degrees. Last July, we had high temperatures of 117-119 three days in a row. Sheriff Joe also had his inmates dressed in pink underwear which got both serious criticism and many laughs.
In 2011, a federal judge ruled that Maricopa County law enforcement was illegally profiling especially Latinos in its effort to prevent illegal immigration. So, this was the first time a federal court warned Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop profiling people, and thus stopping them and questioning them, based on race. But Sheriff Joe and his officers disobeyed the judge, and thus the rule of law, and continued as usual. Sheriff Joe’s conduct represented a contempt for a federal judge and therefore the law. He was accused of various misconduct that included racial profiling, abuse of inmates, misuse of funds, and election law violations. Thus, the sheriff, who was sworn into office to uphold the law, was now being accused as a lawbreaker.
In the following years, there was a continuing federal court process that dealt with this problem with Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It was constantly in the newspaper, The Arizona Republic, which I read everyday. When Sheriff Joe did begin to follow the dictates of the court, such as further training of officers in making stops of suspected lawbreakers, the sheriff’s department was slow to acquiesce.
All this time, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was piling up legal expenses to defend itself in court. And who was paying for these legal expenses? It sure wasn’t Sheriff Joe, who could have just obeyed the court and thus not piled up such expenses. It was us Maricopa County taxpayers. The total of these legal expenses have now exceeded $75 million. Tax experts claim this expense will continue to mount for years to come as Sheriff Joe’s defense continues, yet with him as a retired citizen of Maricopa County.
Did President Trump pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio because Trump had such a conviction about being a law-and-order president. No way! Donald Trump is mostly about Donald Trump. Sheriff Joe Arpaio was perhaps the most prominent Arizona citizen who supported Donald Trump during the seven times he campaigned in this state for the Republican nomination for president and as the Republican nominee. Joe Arpaio appeared on the platform multiple times when Trump spoke. Sometimes, the sheriff spoke as well.
I think pardoning Sheriff Joe was mostly a political decision and thus not really a law-and-order decision. Yes, President Trump is within the law to pardon Joe Arpaio. However, the normal process in doing so is for the victim to have served some time in prison before being pardoned. Arpaio is not incarcerated; rather, he is now undergoing the appeals process. So, it appears that President Trump has pardoned Joe Arpaio just as much due the sheriff’s support of Donald Trump for president as for the sheriff’s activities in arresting illegals. Obviously, it’s both. But Trump doing this appears as a disrespect for law and may serve as an ominous sign of the future. That is, if people in Trump’s campaign for president, or even afterwards in serving in his presidential administration, are convicted of any crimes due to the special counsel Mueller’s investigation, President Trump could afterwards pardon them as well.
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