Lemons' Straight Talk on Arpaio

Posted by Bob Lord

In 168 words, Steve Lemons, the best political reporter and best investigative journalist in Arizona, tells you why you must help the Recall Arpaio campaign in these last few days:

Arpaio's 20-plus years in office are a result of being democratically elected six times by the voters of Maricopa County.

In other words, every act of discrimination and injustice, every child torn from his or her parents, not to mention every wrongful death in Arpaio's jails, is on the heads of those who voted for this ogre, empowered him, and gave him a mandate to run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution and the human rights of all.

Collective guilt for Arpaio's misdeeds blankets all of Maricopa County. Only those who have acted in opposition to Arpaio escape it.

Nevertheless, we are all tainted by the shame of having this racist Frankenstein monster as our sheriff.

Here, then, is a way for the denizens of this county to begin to redeem themselves in the eyes of the civilized world.

That is, pull off the impossible, and once and for all remove Arpaio from power, and send him off to Fountain Hills to live out his remaining days in disgrace.

The emphasis is mine. I just think those three paragraphs are awesome. I wish politicians spoke like Lemons writes. 

Let's all make this happen. 

Comments

[Thucydides]

Lets look at the numbers. Murders are diwn in Arizona from a peak of 460 to 340. All of that imorivement, all of it, came frim Maricopa county. Automobile thefts are down 50 percent. DUI fatalities are diwn almist 50per cent. Child fatalities from DUI are down over 60 deaths per year. Thats almost 3 sandy hook nassacres per year. The overwhelming beneficiary of this safety are low income hispanics. All if this imprivement has happened since 1070 and sunce Arpaois juse of 1070.

Sources: DHS Child Fatality report, DPS annual crimereport, FBI Uniform Crime Report

[Bob Lord]

Misleading info, to say the least. As this report shows, it's the other police departments in Maricopa County that are responsible for the drop --
http://amvoice.3cdn.net/65e853e50925790423_qnm6br8rn.JPG

Arpaio's areas of Maricopa are not doing so well.

In any case, why don't you go to El Mirage and make your case to them? Or to the family of Scott Norberg? Or to the victims of 40,000 crimes for which Arpaio has failed to serve arrest warrants. Or to the taxpayers of Maricopa County for the tens of millions he's flushed down the toilet getting sued for his corruption and malfeasance.

Or to the victims of his racial profiling?

[Thucydides]

Who is misleading?, i am not evaluating his police function, i am evaluating his policies that affected the entire county. These are massive county level effects, not police department level effects. And, why havent we heard about them?

[Thucydides]

Also, illegal immigrants have a crime signature. Car theft, driving drunk and murder. You have to separate your crimes by type and county to calculate the Arpaoi effect, not by city jurisdiction.

[Bob Lord]

So, you're saying that Arpaio's county wide policies work well in those jurisdictions (Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, for example) where he is not also handling the police function, but not too well where he is handling the police function. Interesting argument, but I don't think it passes the intellectual honesty test. Sorry.

[Serious Shade]

So, T, I don’t know whether you are lying with statistics or not, but you are pulling a fast one. Your argument is beside the point. Law enforcement agencies must follow the Constitution (i.e, the law), pure and simple. Most do. Arpaio has flagrantly deprived people of their rights under the Constitution for years. What part of Constitutional don’t you get?

[Thucydides]

The evidence never made it to trial. Results go to motivation and constitutionality. Saving over 100 lives a year, the lives of 70 kids, saving the economic lifes of over 20,000 families by keeping the famiky car from being stolen, has a presumption of constitutionality, asking people for their papers has no presumption.

Arpaio obviously targeted crime correctly given his results, not hispanics. Thats why low income hispanics support his work, they are the victims of brown on brown violence and they were the huge beneficiaries. Half the childrens lives saved were hispanic.