If I really wanted to grow Rogue's readership, this post would be something like "Ten Reasons Do(w)nton Abbey Sucks" (1. All the white guys look alike, can't tell a footman from a nobleman...). But no, we'll stick with the serious stuff in the antique essay form.
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Dennis Wagner wrote a fine piece of public-service journalism last week. It shows what the Arizona Republic would be capable of doing if its corporate masters at Gannett would allow it to commit more journalism and do less fad chasing.
It turns out that the FBI gave federal prosecutors all they needed to bring serious criminal charges against the High Sheriff for Life of Maricopa County, the ambitious right-wing county attorney, Andrew Peyton Thomas, and their top stooges.
The three-year investigation of abuse of power produced "found probable cause to recommend felony counts of obstructing criminal investigations of prosecutions, theft by threats, tampering with witnesses, perjury and theft by extortion."
Instead, the feds shut down the three-year investigation in August 2012.
Let me pause to note that this story didn't come from "crowdsourcing," "citizen journalists" or video and slide shows. It came from good, street-smart, shoe-leather investigative journalism, including the newspaper using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain all records of the investigation.
What the feds coughed up, in this post Dick Cheney era, was 93 pages of heavily redacted records. Even so, "the report makes clear that FBI agents believed evidence was strong enough to prosecute some of those under investigation."
I urge you to read the entire story.
One striking feature is that this investigation concerned only the Peyton and the High Sheriff's vendetta against members of the board of county supervisors. Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley were targeted in probes that fell apart. Stapley, indicted and arrested, won a $3.5 million settlement. As of January, this vendetta has cost taxpayers at least $44.4 million.
It didn't involve racial profiling or alleged abuse of immigrants by the Sheriff's Office. It didn't look at the condition of the jails or the many suspicious deaths in the hands of the High Sheriff's Gaolers. These involve the poor and marginalized, so why should Christian-y Maricopa County care.
Nor does it get at the primary tasks of the High Sheriff: Acting as an officer of the court, serving warrants, operating his jails in a safe, humane and efficient way, criminal investigations (e.g. sex crimes left to languish) or patrol duties (e.g., response times suffering because of "immigrant sweeps" and other police state theater.
But even here, where the High Sheriff and Peyton went after the wrong people — better off and politically connected — no charges.
It's enough to make one think the pair worked on the side for Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase.
I contrast this with the situation in Seattle, where a federal probe looked at allegations of excessive force by the police. Even though the results were inconclusive, the U.S. Attorney pushed on and the city immediately caved to Justice Department oversight. This has roiled city politics ever since, costing one police chief his job and doing in the interim chief.
But the High Sheriff and Peyton got away with it. Why?
Attorney General Eric Holder has not exactly been vigorous in going after evildoers. Perhaps the administration didn't want to do something that would cause Republicans to reopen their attacks on the "Fast and Furious" gunrunning fiasco (such misfires never happen under GOP presidents, after all). Or it labors under the fantasy that Arizona could turn purple if it just played nice. Did the Secretary of Das Homeland Sicherheitsdienst at the time intervene to help her onetime ally, the High Sheriff?
We may never know because no one has been called to account.
Probable cause for criminal charges? If this happened to you or me or, especially, the minority teenager that grabbed some cash from a convenience-store register drawer — we'd be in the hoosegow. But not these people. Not now, apparently not ever. There is no "red line" the High Sheriff cannot cross.
We can't blame the press for this one. In this case, the Republic fulfilled its duty to the public trust. New Times spent years cataloging the malpractice of MCSO. The East Valley Tribune won a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for its examination of the department's slowed response times and excessive overtime costs while Nickel-Bag Joe played la migra.
But the old Anglos, given the option of high-quality alternatives in every election, keep returning the High Sheriff to power.
At least the corruption of Chicago and other places back east often results in great city-building. Here, it is simply a war on the poor and the other. An endless set of real-estate rackets. A laboratory for national right-wing battles. The Kookocracy. And I suspect these fine journalists have only peeled back one layer of this stinking onion.
The cruel irony is that the forebears of the High Sheriff and the deportation-happy former Secretary of Das Homeland Sicherheitsdienst were part of a class of immigrants that was poor, low-skilled, despised and exploited. The largest mass-lynching in American history was committed against 11 Italians in New Orleans in 1891.
I screened Valeria Fernandez and Dan DeVivo's film Two Americans, and am hoping to screen the new Randy Murray film The Joe Show as well. Sometimes a film can tell the story more simply and directly than a multi-part article. In a perfect world both these films would screen locally on KAET.
Posted by: Steve Weiss | March 11, 2014 at 11:35 AM
Future generations will look back and wonder how Arpaio managed to stay in office, why nobody DID anything. I hope they make the connection between boosterism and lack of political courage. As for the Republic, until the publishers of New Times were arrested, Arpaio press releases were headline news there. JJ Hensley and others started to due some real reporting then, but you can't have investigative reporting on B1 and a obsequious puff piece on A1. Now with regard to Napolitano, I've always wondered if Arpaio had something on her that bought her silence. On the other hand, however, very few electeds have been willing to criticize the guy -- it's just not done in a state where "happy talk" counts as public affairs.
Posted by: Diane D'Angelo | March 11, 2014 at 01:18 PM
Great post Jon!
However I think that Secretary of Das Homeland Sicherheitsdienst implied Intelligence unit.
I think the Nazi sister agency, the Gestapo is a more appropriate description. (I know its now considered socially inappropriate to use the word Nazi).
Diane I have been posting here for years about the blood connection and dues owed. B,D,A,N.
This has been common knowledge in the "intelligence community" and journalistic community since BNDD became DEA. (1973)
Some Good News (to some:)
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-border-shootings-20140307,0,5608641.story#axzz2vgh6gmWm
Posted by: cal lash | March 11, 2014 at 01:37 PM
Diane I have been posting here for years about the blood connection and dues owed. B,D,A,N.
???
Posted by: Diane D'Angelo | March 11, 2014 at 02:23 PM
OK, I had a roiling laugh over that one. I'm going to use it at the earliest (and oftenest) opportunity(s).
Posted by: Petro | March 11, 2014 at 04:31 PM
Actually it's "Der Homeland Sicherheitsdienst". But then it sounds like an on-set security service for a television show.
Posted by: limerick | March 11, 2014 at 05:17 PM
Besten Dank, limerick.
Posted by: Petro | March 11, 2014 at 06:19 PM
It's a truism that Republicans govern in such a way to prove an ideological point. Namely, that government doesn't work period. Therefore, cut taxes, shred the safety net, give polluters free license, and most importantly, prove to the average citizen that politics itself is just a shuck and only the savviest people really get it. For those of us who persist in thinking the system is our only bulwark against plutocracy and oligarchy, the case gets harder and harder to make. So, the Overton Window keeps getting pushed to the right, and most of us here have thrown up our hands. We gnash our teeth and rend our garments. There's nothing we can do! And somewhere, Karl Rove is smiling.
I don't doubt for a moment that Democrats and liberals have made a difficult situation worse with good intentions that are, in actuality, naiveté. And when these liberals try to show their tough-guy bona fides, it ends up looking both cynical and insincere. Therefore Janet Napolitano oversees DHS like she's nobody's weak sister. Her payback is the sobriquet Big Sis, which puts her image somewhere between Janet Reno and J Edgar Hoover in a dress (not that hard to imagine). Barack Obama amps up deportations of illegals to levels never seen during the Bush years in order to lay the groundwork for comprehensive immigration reform. The net result? Utter ignorance on the part of America's anxious middle class that he's actually done this along with overwhelming contempt for him being a "liberal" anyway.
Joe Arpaio shows that there is no real political program aside from the compulsion to make political theater an end in itself. In the vacuum of our civic culture, he stomps on constitutional rights and exercises a sway over the minds of Little People. Someone is finally paying attention to us! And he's not alone now. Across the nation, political theater is virtually the only point of winning office. Whether it's Rick Perry or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Hillary Clinton, we're a nation now inebriated by symbols of toughness (for the other guy, of course). And woe betide the liberal officials who hold them accountable. Arpaio's immunity is less legal than political. The right would love to see him charged since they're all martyrs in their own minds anyway. Arpaio would be their Captain Dreyfus.
The center no longer holds. Into this bedlam we march and shake our brooms but there's no forward movement. Businessmen are getting worried that the astro-turf movements they funded are actually making things worse for them. Sure, they control the government and pretty much own the economy, but the crazies are getting dangerously out of control. Some pragmatists on the right might actually be second-guessing themselves. Was it really smart to get people permanently jazzed on bullshit issues? But their personal and corporate treasuries tell them otherwise.
Our social capital is depleted. We don't want grand projects for renewal so much as someone to blame. The right understands this better than the left, and exercises Total Political War on the terrain of everyday life. A teacher molests a student. Al Gore darts around the world in a jet and gets fat. Black kids beat up a homeless white veteran. Mexicans spray-paint graffiti on walls while stealing our Social Security. The list is endless. And our conversation is now worse than mindless. It's the decay of society and our polity. We've reached the end of a tether that connected past and present, present and future. We're floating out there in space, hopeless and bitter.
Posted by: soleri | March 11, 2014 at 06:30 PM
Im back to my mountain from the Cochise Stronghold.
A place that holds hope and beauty and quiet.
Adobe Abode was warm inside and the composting out house was cool. Lots of birds at The White Water Draw bird preserve.
Donna next club coffee meet U can come and get the answers to most all questions in life considering the number of years of information that will be present.
Posted by: cal lash | March 11, 2014 at 08:04 PM
Would the President have been accused by the right-wing noise machine of seeking petty revenge for Arpaio's birther "investigation" if Holder had pursued the case further? I mean, the probability must have occurred to them. Should the U.S. Attorney General have to worry about blowback from a County Sheriff? No, but this is the world we live in.
Posted by: Pat | March 12, 2014 at 04:49 AM
"but this is the world we live in."
Once again the world is in a contracting from rich, middle class to poor to Very rich, poor and very poor. Prosecution has become persecution of the poor and freedom from prosecution for the rich and powerful. And currently few seem to have the courage or the willingness to attempt to change this. Our comfort level is still to high and we can't seem to take the head phones of zone out out of our ears.
So we will keep filling those private prisons with mojados and not Pols.
Les Miserables
Posted by: cal lash | March 12, 2014 at 08:37 AM
Speaking of prosecution. The CIA has been an outlaw rouge state of its own within the US and around the world since the 40's. Congress is inept and not willing to try and correct this matter. Consequently the world is ruled today by the Financial Barons, the military and spy organizations such as the CIA and Mossad.
Any attempts to protest are met with prisons sentences for the likes of the Nuns that wandered around inside a US nuclear facility and the Pussy Riot members that challenged their government and Organized Religion.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/03/11/the-cia-forces-a-constitutional-crisis/
Posted by: cal lash | March 12, 2014 at 08:55 AM
The American Hero:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/opinion/is-the-wolf-a-real-american-hero.html?ref=opinion&_r=2
Posted by: cal lash | March 12, 2014 at 10:31 AM
Side-note: a reply to soleri's latest lecture can be found at the end of the comments section here:
http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2014/03/ukraine-and-us.html
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | March 12, 2014 at 05:38 PM
And I left a reply, too.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | March 12, 2014 at 06:09 PM
me too
Posted by: AzReb, Troll, Ruben | March 12, 2014 at 06:38 PM
Oh, soleri, sweet anger.
Posted by: Petro | March 12, 2014 at 07:35 PM
ANGER? Too much sugar not enough Mary Jane?
Time to take a walk in the wilderness and smell the flowers folks. Turn your smart phone off and listen to the wind.
Cal searching for the ghost of Edward Abbey.
Posted by: cal lash | March 12, 2014 at 08:52 PM
HOMELESS, we must be receiving different info on the CIA. It has seldom been OK. Mostly not OK.
Posted by: cal Lash | March 13, 2014 at 03:12 PM
Arpaio groupie to run for Jan Brewers spot as governor.
But will Joe support someone whose name does not end in a vowel.
Can she beat the republican LDS pick (probably Bennett).
But the big question, can the democrats field a LBJ or a Putin with a FDR thought process.
http://www.christinejones.com/
Posted by: cal Lash | March 14, 2014 at 09:33 AM
Make that a Putin with no shirt on, a cowboy hat and a rifle slung across the saddle of the big paint horse he is astride.
Posted by: cal Lash | March 14, 2014 at 09:35 AM
Michigan ahead of Arizona in insanity.
Raped pregnant women in Michigan denied medical help.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/13/1284480/-Michigan-s-New-Rape-Insurance-Law?detail=email
Posted by: cal Lash | March 14, 2014 at 10:23 AM
"The three-year investigation of abuse of power produced 'found probable cause to recommend felony counts of obstructing criminal investigations of prosecutions, theft by threats, tampering with witnesses, perjury and theft by extortion.'"
In the tragic no-man's land between reason and unreason, surely the great crime is being born?
Posted by: So Larry | March 14, 2014 at 01:06 PM
Side-note: a couple of new comments in the preceding thread.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | March 14, 2014 at 01:08 PM