Coyote Blog

This is an issue that has been around for a while, and one of the illiberal legacies of the war on drugs.  Police have broad powers to seize your property with very little due process, and the incentive to do so as they are generally allowed to keep the proceeds of these seizures in their budgets.  John Stossel writes about the problem in his column today.  Unfortunately, I see little bleed-through of this issue our of libertarian blogs into the partisan ones, though I do remember Kevin Drum doing something on it a while back.  Knowing politicians, I hold out little hope that in a time when government budgets are under assault, politicians will voluntarily give up the power to grab operating funds off the street.

Most of the stories in the article were familiar to me, though this expansion of the concept was new:

[Radley] Balko has reported on a case in which police confiscated cash from a man when they found it in his car. "The state's argument was that maybe he didn't get it from selling drugs, but he might use that money to buy drugs at some point in the future. Therefore, we're still allowed to take it from him," Balko said.

Sounds like that Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report," where the police predict future crimes and arrest the "perpetrator."

For "the Wire" fans, here is a real life episode of a recurring theme on that show -- arrest quotas and metrics creating incentives for bad behavior by the police.

The new recordings obtained by the Village Voice reinforce both sets of allegations made last March. The implications are pretty startling: As a matter of policy, NYPD seems to be encouraging its officers to harass innocent people, even to the point of arresting and detaining them for non-crimes (the city had a record 570,000 stop-and-frisk searches last year). At the same time, the department may be pressuring some officers and citizens to downgrade actual crimes"“even serious ones"“or to not report them at all.

In short, officers are rewarded for petty harassment, but punished for documenting felonies. Here is one irritating practice among many:

About those numbers: While only about one tenth of 1 percent of the stops yielded a gun (at present it's nearly impossible to legally carry a gun in New York), the practice has helped drive up the city's marijuana arrests from 4,000 in 1997 to 40,000 in 2007. Marijuana for personal use was actually decriminalized in New York during that period. But you still can't display your pot in public. So the police simply stop people, trick them into emptying their pockets, and then arrest them for displaying marijuana in public.

Read the whole thing in Reason.

I have a new theory -- that the most dangerous circumstances for individual liberty in this country are when Conservatives and Liberals agree.  When there is some issue where the authoritarianism of the right coincides with the authoritarianism of the left, then watch out.  The example I offer today is child molestation prosecutions, where the law and order Right meets the smug for-the-children moralizing of the Left.  Where Janet Reno meets Joe Arpaio.

Congrats to Tonya Craft for her acquittal, and here's hoping (though there is not much chance) that the prosecutors and particularly that jackass of a judge suffer some sort of negative consequences from their outlandish abuse of due process.  My jury experience on a similar case here.

Update:  And speaking of Sheriff Joe...

If you want to be depressed today, read Radley Balko's article in Reason on asset forfeiture.   Despite reforms at the Federal level (which still stop short of justice, in my mind) abusive laws still exist in many states, allowing police departments to seize and keep assets merely on a "probable cause" evidence standard.  The laws are basically a license to steal, as it is almost impossible to reclaim money or property once seized, and police get to keep the money and assets for their own use, so they are going to defend the takings, and the laws that allow the takings, like mother bears.

In a 2001 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, the University of Texas at Dallas criminologist John Worral surveyed 1,400 police departments around the country on their use of forfeiture and the way they incorporated seized assets into their budgets. Worral, who describes himself as agnostic on the issue, concluded that "a substantial proportion of law enforcement agencies are dependent on civil asset forfeiture" and that "forfeiture is coming to be viewed not only as a budgetary supplement, but as a necessary source of income." Almost half of surveyed police departments with more than 100 law enforcement personnel said forfeiture proceeds were "necessary as a budget supplement" for department operations.

Many may remember this case, one of the many Balko reviews:

Tiny Tenaha, Texas, population 1,046, made national news in 2008 after a series of reports alleged that the town's police force was targeting black and Latino motorists along Highway 84, a busy regional artery that connects Houston to Louisiana's casinos, ensuring a reliable harvest of cash-heavy motorists. The Chicago Tribune reported that in just the three years between 2006 and 2008, Tenaha police stopped 140 drivers and asked them to sign waivers agreeing to hand over their cash, cars, jewelry, and other property to avoid arrest and prosecution on drug charges. If the drivers agreed, police took their property and waved them down the highway. If they refused, even innocent motorists faced months of legal hassles and thousands of dollars in attorney fees, usually amounting to far more than the value of the amount seized. One local attorney found court records of 200 cases in which Tenaha police had seized assets from drivers; only 50 were ever criminally charged.

One case seems right out of Minority Report:

On February 4, 2009, Anthony Smelley got his first hearing before an Indiana judge. Smelley's attorney, David Kenninger, filed a motion asking for summary judgment against the county, citing a letter from a Detroit law firm stating that the seized money indeed came from an accident settlement, not a drug transaction. Kenninger also argued that because there were no drugs in Smelley's car, the state had failed to show the required "nexus" between the cash and illegal activity. Putnam County Circuit Court Judge Matthew Headley seemed to agree, hitting Christopher Gambill, who represented Putnam County, with some tough questions. That's when Gambill made an argument that was remarkable even for a forfeiture case.

"You have not alleged that this person was dealing in drugs, right?" Judge Headley said.

"No," Gambill responded. "We alleged this money was being transported for the purpose of being used to be involved in a drug transaction."

Incredibly, Gambill was arguing that the county could seize Smelley's money for a crime that hadn't yet been committed. Asked in a phone interview to clarify, Gambill stands by the general principle. "I can't respond specifically to that case," he says, "but yes, under the state forfeiture statute, we can seize money if we can show that it was intended for use in a drug transaction at a later date."

Radley Balko has a great article on Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, the wingman for Sheriff Joe Arpaio in any number of abuses of power.  I have tried to write about Thomas before, but some of his exploits are so bizarre and complex that they make simple description difficult, but Balko is clearly a better journalist than I and does a good job summarizing some of his most egregious actions.

The common denominator for both Thomas and Arpaio tends to be their near vendetta responses to anyone who either criticizes them or tries to limit their power (ie by denying a search warrant or dismissing one of their cases).

The most recent mess in Maricopa pits Thomas and Apraio against...well, just about everyone else. The two have been squabbling with members of the county board of supervisors for years over the construction of a $341 million county courthouse tower, which both feel is a waste of money. They might have a point. But Arpaio and Thomas are using criminal law as a cudgel in the dispute.

Last month, Thomas indicted two county supervisors on some petty financial disclosure violations. When Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe issued a ruling pertaining to the court tower investigation that Arpaio and Thomas didn't like, Thomas then indicted Donahoe for bribery, on the absurd premise that as a judge who works in the courthouse, Donahoe (who is retiring soon) would have benefited from the new tower. That indictment came shortly after Donahoe held one of Arpaio's deputies in contempt after a highly-publicized incident in which the deputy was caught on video stealing documents from the file of a defense attorney in open court.

Using criminal charges"”or the threat of them"”to silence political opponents has become something of a habit for Thomas. He has indicted more than a dozen public officials who have criticized him or Arpaio. He has launched or threatened criminal investigations into dozens of others, including politicians, columnists, and other media figures who have dared to criticize him or the sheriff. When Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon asked for a federal investigation of Arpaio's immigration enforcement tactics, Arpaio and Thomas investigated him too, attempting to snoop on Gordon's email, appointment book, and phone records. Thomas even recently threatened to criminally investigate a defense attorney for issuing public statements in support of his client.

These guys are from the bad, statist end of the Republican pond.  Interestingly, Thomas and Arpaio have alienated most of the Republican leadership in Arizona, and rely on their continued popularity with national conservative media and the local populace.   The latter is hard to describe to outsiders.  Its often hard for me to understand.  My best guess is that people ignore Thomas and Arpaio's worst behavior as aimed at people who somehow "don't count," particularly immigrants from Mexico.   Balko quotes Clint Bollack of the Goldwater Institute:

Bolick says their perseverance is also due to the polarizing effects of the immigration debate. Immigration "is extremely divisive," he says. "In the eyes of a lot of people, because they're cracking down on illegal immigrants, Thomas and Arpaio can do no wrong. So there's justification for whatever they do, and any criticism of them on any issue is a betrayal of the cause. It's really unfortunate that it's causing a lot of good people to turn a blind eye to ineffective law enforcement and abuses of power."

I don't want to violate Godwin's law here, but this quote springs to mind about the reactions to Thomas and Arpaio (from a member of the German protestant clergy in the 1930s)

First, the Nazis went after the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't react. Then they went after the Catholics, but I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't object. Then they went after the worker, but I wasn't a worker, so I didn't stand up. Then they went after the Protestant clergy and by then it was too late for anybody to stand up.

OK, I am a pathetic loser and was tuned in to sports talk radio all day in my office.  That being said, I have heard nothing about this incident on the radio and a quick Google search shows that only sites on the case are all internet sites.  Hopefully this will get more attention tomorrow in larger outlets, as it is always scary to see what appears to be a pretty substantial abuse of power.  In the video, a Jets fan gets hauled out of the Charger stadium, apparently for too much boisterousness in favor of the visiting team.  Watch in particular the Charger fans sticking up for the guy, which is about as good of evidence as I can think of to say there wasn't any legitimate reason for the arrest.

I guess its lucky they didn't send the SWAT team in for her, as she might be dead now:

[Victoria] Aguayo has filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court, after she was arrested, indicted, and nearly prosecuted for her "role" in the infamous "Desert Divas" prostitution ring.

One problem: Aguayo was not a "desert diva" and the evidence suggesting she was is laughable at best.

On one of the "Desert Divas'" many Web sites, the agency advertised an "escort" named "Tia." "Tia" is described on the site as being "thin, white, and blonde" and has a tattoo on her stomach that is clearly visible in the topless photo of the "diva" Aguayo's lawyer was kind enough to send New Times.

Phoenix Police Detective Christie Hein identified Aguayo as "Tia" based on the photo on the Web site when she arrested her on August 28, 2008, the lawsuit claims.

We've seen pictures of both "Tia" and Aguayo and we gotta say if Aguayo can be identified as "thin, white, and blonde," so can Aretha Franklin.

Aguayo is -- to put it politely -- more of a "plus-sized" woman, she's black, and is missing the tattoo that is so clearly visible in the photo of "Tia" on the "Desert Diva" Web site.

Simple, um, mistake, right?

After being arrested, Aguayo spent nearly two months in jail before she was granted a supervised release pending an upcoming trial.

While she was in the clink, Aguayo lost custody of her daughter, Jasmine, and has since been unable to get her back.

These guys have totally lost it. OK, they have always been bonkers, but they have finally lost their ability to paper over their nutty paranoia and quest for power in the media.  Remember I told you the other day that Arpiao and Thomas keep filing wider and wider criminal conspiracy charges against their critics.  Basically anyone who criticizes them or seeks to keep their power limited within Constitutional boundaries is a criminal in their eyes.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas called for investigations into the chief prosecutors of two neighboring counties on Thursday because they publicly criticized him and Sheriff Joe Arpaio earlier this week.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk and Pinal County Attorney James Walsh sent separate letters to the Arizona Republic, criticizing what they called "abuses of power" by Thomas and his close ally, Arpaio.

Polk, a Republican who described herself as a passionate believer in limited government, accused the two men of "totalitarianism" and said they have become "a threat to the entire criminal-justice system" because of a series of a investigations they have launched against their foes.

In recent weeks, Thomas and Arpaio have announced more than a dozen criminal investigations into public officials who have criticized them in the past. The pair has said their fellow Maricopa County officials are engaging in a massive conspiracy to obstruct justice and limit their power. The investigations have resulted in criminal charges against two elected officials and a judge.

Now, Thomas wants a former state Supreme Court justice to investigate his neighboring prosecutors as part of what he calls "an orchestrated campaign to pressure law enforcement in Maricopa County to drop charges against influential criminal defendants and suspects."...

In his request to McGregor [PDF], Thomas ... accused the other prosecutors of essentially breaking the law by criticizing him and the sheriff. He said the pair violated rules for attorneys in Arizona, as well as tainted the pool of possible jurors in the ongoing cases....

In his request for an investigation into the comments, Thomas alluded to a supposed campaign to enlist these attorneys "and possibly other third parties" to criticize him and the sheriff.

Arpaio is the same paranoid who cost the County hundreds of thousands of dollars when he demanded extra security because he believed himself to be an assassination target.

If it wasn't so overdone, I would do another Downfall mash-up on this for YouTube.

It is not uncommon for certain shady dealing to go on for years, with a small group of critics but never really breaking out into the media.  We skeptics have been criticizing climate scientists for years for various problems with their temperature indexes and historical temperature reconstructions, but never really got traction until the CRU emails were made public, and then there has been a real firestorm of media attention.  Criticisms that never got much traction before are now being actively investigated.

I am hoping that we have a similar situation with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas.  The story is so wacky it simply defies easy description, but Arpaio and Thomas have been pursuing a number of corruption probes against their bosses in the County government.  All well and good, except for the funny fact that the targets of the probes all seem to be historic critics of Arpaio and Thomas, who have brought out their biggest guns for the one Democrat on the County Council (Arpaio and Thomas are both Republicans).

Both these men have  a history of indifference to civil liberties.   When Arpaio is not busy arresting folks for breathing while Mexican (he once managed to make a crime sweep through the 99% Anglo neighborhood of Fountain Hills and arrest 75% Mexicans), he likes to haul folks off to jail whose only crime is speaking out against the Sheriff .   He arrested (with Thomas's help) newspaper reporters and editors who wrote critically of him.  This is a man who in his paranoia invented an assassination plot (against himself, of course) and got the city to spend $500,000 protecting him.  If his deputies want to see a defense attorney's working papers, they just take them.  If he can't get a judge to release computer records, he has his posse storm into the County computer center and take it over at gunpoint.

Most recently, Thomas and Arpaio wanted a judge who has handed them a number of court losses removed from a certain case.  To make that happen, Arpaio and Thomas bizarrely charged the judge and numerous other county employees in a giant RICO case, a case attorneys are still laughing about because it was so transparent and shoddy.  When that didn't work, he charged the judge with felony bribery, apparently on the interesting theory that getting a new, updated court house building was effectively a bribe to the judges working there.

It gets much weirder even than this, with Arpaio's stealing documents from a defense counsel in court (caught on video) with this same judge holding Arpaio's deputy in contempt for the action and then the sheriff's deputies essentially going on strike at court, refusing to bring in prisoners.

But after years of fawning, positive publicity as "Americas Toughest Sheriff," the dam may finally be breaking.  When the AZ Republic finally covers it, you know the situation has to be bad:

Hundreds of attorneys gathered on the courthouse steps in downtown Phoenix to protest Thomas and Arpaio's public campaign against public corruption.

LOL, I have a picture of these guys with suits and holding placards.  Anyway, this was a real blow:

And, in a scathing letter to The Arizona Republic, the Yavapai County attorney

, who previously handled some of Thomas' cases against county officials, blasted the prosecutor and sheriff as "a threat to the entire criminal-justice system."

Oops, so much for the respect of your peers.  Shelia Polk, the Yavapai County attorney (that is a neighboring county) handled the investigations into some of Arpaio and Thomas's early charges against our County officials, so she knows the details of the story.  And she is a Republican, the same party as Arpaio and Thomas:

In her letter, Polk wrote that although Maricopa County isn't her jurisdiction, she can't sit by and watch the abuses from a distance anymore.

"I am conservative and passionately believe in limited government, not the totalitarianism that is spreading before my eyes," she wrote. "The actions of Arpaio and Thomas are a disservice to the hundreds of dedicated men and women who work in their offices and a threat to the entire criminal-justice system."

Polk had stayed out of the legal drama in Maricopa County, and her remarks offer the first insight from an outside law-enforcement official who has some knowledge of the cases Arpaio and Thomas have lodged against county officials.

Arpaio's response was predictable:

Hendershott spoke on behalf of Arpaio. Hendershott said that Polk's office repeatedly failed to issue subpoenas the Sheriff's Office needed.

"It seemed clear to us that this case was being deliberately stalled," he said. "We basically let her know that her work product was ineffective."

This is a constant refrain from the sheriff - anyone who seeks to impose any limit on his power is therefore evil and conspiring to thwart his will.  It comes up time and time again - he simply does not react well when denied a subpoena, or a search warrant, or access to certain information.  If they are not rubber stamping Sheriff Joe's requests, then they must be corrupt.  If he had been honest, his RICO charges would have simply read "they didn't give me what I want."  But there is a reason these third parties are part of the process, and you can see it in Polk's letter:

Polk said she worked with the Sheriff's Office on the cases for the next six months, then returned the cases to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

In Polk's letter, she wrote that she was "happy to remove myself from the cases and from contact with Sheriff Arpaio. My discomfort grew daily and my role in restraining potential abuses of power increasingly more difficult."

Photographer Carlos Miller of Miami, and a blogger I really enjoy reading, won his appeal of his criminal conviction (here and here).  Some of the details are important to bloggers:

A three-judge panel determined there were errors both in my conviction and my sentencing. The panel reversed both with directions for me to be tried again before a different judge.

In other words, they realized that Judge Jose L. Fernandez allowed his personal bias to affect my trial, including in how he allowed the prosecutor to use my blog against me "“ even though I did not even launch the blog until after my arrest "“ and how he allowed those blog postings to affect my sentencing.

The charge was effectively one of taking pictures of police in public, a perfectly legal and Constitutionally-protected activity that many police have none-the-less convinced themselves should be illegal, so they treat it as such.  The actual charge was "resisting arrest without violence," perhaps the most abusable statute on record.   Especially when there is no underlying illegal activity for the arrest in the first place.  In effect, if a police officer hassles someone for no reason, the citizen responds verbally that the officer is out of line - boom, "resisting arrest without violence." It's amazing one can be convicted of this without there being any underlying crime justifying the arrest, but I guess Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to the police about something that turned out not to be a crime as well.

In this particular  case, the Judge made this outrageous statement to Miller during sentencing:

I can't imagine why you thought this situation was worth getting arrested for. I can't imagine for the life of me.

I don't know if you think you're some kind of hero or something like that, but if you want to see a hero, go visit Arlington. All right? I don't think any of those people that are back here are those people that are giving you the "” the thumbs up on your blog.

If I were to sentence you to jail, none of those people would volunteer to go in there to serve the time with you. They might say they would, but I guarantee you they wouldn't. I'm shocked at your lack of remorse.

Miller gets double extra style points for defending himself through this whole process, and managing to win a victory at appeals when fewer than 1 in 15 trained attorneys are able to do so.

The police are very good at enforcing their own version of the facts after an encounter with citizens goes wrong.  It is only the advent of the inexpensive digital camera that has started to save folks from the police's ability to make up a story and stick to it when they screw up.  In fact, I am constantly amazed at how long the police will often hold on to their story even in the face of video evidence.

So after reading stories like this one, I am strongly considering buying myself a Flip camcorder or something similar and just tossing it into my car.  Of course the downside is, as documented by Carlos Miller, there is nothing guaranteed to enrage your average law enforcement officer than filming his or her actions in public.

Related, here is a good video:  10 Rules for Dealing with the Police.

And on a lighter note, here is some classic Chris Rock on the same topic.

A blog that specializes in criticizing the Phoenix police argues that Judge Gary Donahoe, recent target of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, has a bad record of aiding and abetting overly-easy search warrants.  I am willing to believe that -- I think about every judge in the nation is too close to police and prosecutors on search warrant issues.  But I don't think this is why Sheriff Joe is after him.  Sheriff Joe likes to make the wrong-address no-knock raid as much as anyone, and protection of civil rights has never been in Arpaio's top 100 or so concerns.  So Danahoe may have issues, but I Sheriff Joe's charges against him are likely pure power play.

You know those movies where the populist politician is revealed slowly over time as an insane paranoiac taking increasingly over-the-top actions?  Welcome to Maricopa County, Arizona, home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Joe is not really big on restrictions on his power and authority.   When he is not busy arresting folks for breathing while Mexican (he once managed to make a crime sweep through the 99% Anglo neighborhood of Fountain Hills and arrest 75% Mexicans), he likes to haul folks off to jail whose only crime is speaking out against the Sheriff, who spends a lot of County money to maintain his public image.   He arrested newspaper reporters and editors who wrote critically of him.  This is a man who in his paranoia invented an assassination plot (against himself, of course) and got the city to spend $500,000 protecting him.

If his deputies want to see a defense attorney's working papers, they just take them.  If he can't get a judge to release computer records, he has his posse storm into the County computer center and take it over at gunpoint.  And if he doesn't like a judge's ruling, he and his sidekick County Attorney Andrew Thomas file a series of bogus charges against the judge until he recuses himself from the case.

This last and most recent story is almost impossible to summarize.  The Valley Fever blog makes an attempt here and the AZ Republic, who is generally in the tank for Arpaio, is even fairly incredulous here.

The short version is that Arpaio and Thomas are mad that some of Judge Gary Donahoe's past decisions did not go their way in a probe that have been conducting into the construction of the new county court tower.  There was another important hearing scheduled for today, and I suppose Arpaio and Thomas wanted the Judge out before the hearing.

last week, Thomas' office filed a "racketeering" lawsuit in federal court, which bizarrely accused the supervisors, their lawyers, and the judges of being a criminal enterprise under RICO laws.

Thomas gave away the purpose of this suit yesterday:

Because of that pending suit, Thomas said, Donahoe should have recused himself from considering Irvine's legal argument in court today.

"That's how lawless this behavior was," the County Attorney said. "Nobody is above the law."

Pot-kettle, and all that.  But Thomas as much as admits his expectation was that after he filed this really, really bizarre RICO suit, the judge would recuse himself from a case Thomas wanted him off of.  When the judge did not (the judge said, effectively, that the RICO suit was so goofy it hardly merited his stepping down) Thomas and Arpaio fired again.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas this afternoon struggled to explain his decision to charge the county's presiding criminal court judge, Gary Donahoe, with three felony counts -- including bribery, obstructing a criminal investigation, and hindering prosecution.

But Thomas couldn't offer any evidence to the assembled media scrum that Donahoe actually had accepted a bribe of any sort. Instead, he and Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who stood next to Thomas at the lectern) offered the same vague allegations they have made for nearly a year regarding the county's planned court tower, currently under construction.

In fact, the county attorney said no evidence exists that the veteran judge personally has received anything in the way of a personal financial benefit during the flap over the $347 million construction project

Arizona has a "very broad" definition of bribery, Thomas said in response to requests for specificity.

Thomas seems to be alleging that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the county's Superior Court bench, and their "shared" outside counsel, Tom Irvine and Ed Novak of Polsinelli Shughart, are an unholy "triad" working to block his and Arpaio's legitimate investigation into the tower's construction.

But today's announcement that Donahoe now faces felony charges -- when the only evidence of "wrongdoing" on the judge's part is a series of rulings that Thomas and Arpaio vehemently disagree with -- is unprecedented even in Maricopa County.

And again:

Yesterday two county supervisors, Mary Rose Wilcox and Don Stapley, were revealed to be facing criminal indictments.

Just for extra style points

Donahoe also is the same judge who ordered detention officer Adam Stoddard to jail last week for swiping a defense attorney's notes -- drawing Sheriff Joe's ire.

A decision, by the way, the Sheriff's office is still petulantly protesting by refusing to do their jobs at the county courthouse:

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has apparently stopped delivering inmates to the courtroom where a one of its detention officers was caught in an uproar that landed him in jail.

In a statement released late today, Superior Court Judge Lisa Flores said the sheriff's office has flat-out stopped bringing inmates to her courtroom for their scheduled appearances.

None was delivered Monday or today, Flores said in the statement, causing major delays in ongoing criminal cases. That follows several days last week when the sheriff's office either delivered inmates more than an hour late or not at all, she said.

The stonewalling comes after sheriff's detention officer Adam Stoddard was thrown in jail for contempt in an incident where he was caught taking confidential documents from the file of a defense attorney in Flores' court.

Another judge, Gary Donahoe, ordered Stoddard to apologize for the incident or go to jail. Last week, Stoddard chose the latter. He surrendered to his own agency on Dec. 1 and is being kept in an undisclosed location.

I can't resist ending on this Lady MacBeth moment

But Thomas insisted that he wasn't pursuing a criminal case against Donahoe as a preemptive strike hours before the judge was set to hold a hearing that could have ended with Thomas being barred from prosecuting any county supervisor.

He later told the gaggle, "If I'm not explaining this well, I hope you'll help me."

Unfortunately, based on past experience, the Phoenix media probably will.

I hope JD is wrong:

Further complicating this picture is that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, despite erratic and confrontational conduct that has repeatedly put him at the wrong end of lawsuits and press coverage, is immensely popular with Maricopa County voters. In fact, recent polling suggests that the governor's office is his for the asking. He's a favorite for the Republican nod and an apparent shoe-in in the general election.

I was under the impression that the Repub's cut Arpaio loose in the last election, but I don't really follow the politics stuff much.  JD has an update on the latest Arpaio shenanigans, as does Radley Balko:

• The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office announced on Tuesday that Stoddard would surrender to jail ahead of his midnight deadline to aplogize. But when Stoddard showed up, the jail refused to book him, citing a "clerical error." Stoddard insisted on spending the night in jail anyway.
• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced he has filed a federal lawsuit against the county and its judges, alleging a "widespread conspiracy" against Arpaio and his officers. Arpaio remarkably and apparently with no self-awareness whatsoever called the county a "good ole boys network," and commented that he had "never seen these kinds of things occur in the justice system." Arpaio also called Donahoe's contempt finding against Stoddard a "vendetta," and said, "For political reasons, [Stoddard's] been thrown to the wolves."
• Yesterday, the day after Stoddard spent a night in jail, 19 sheriff's deputies scheduled to work security at the courthouse called in sick, throwing the day's court proceedings into disarray. The building also had to be evacuated after a phone-in bomb threat.
• As crowds returned after the bomb threat was cleared, the law enforcement unions commenced with a conveniently-timed rally in front of the courthouse, calling Stoddard a "victim" and demanding that he be released from jail.

Wow, it sure is a real coincidence when a bomb threat against the public defenders (it was a public defender the deputy originally stole the document from) at the exact same moment the sheriff's were trying to disrupt the courthouse over a dispute involving the public defenders office.

Those who don't live here would be appalled and disgusted by how such a large segment of the local population absolutely revere this man.  He's like the right-wing Obama, living off a manufactured image.

I totally missed this angle on Sheriff Joe, though to be fair our major paper in town never runs anything negative about him, so you have to ferret this stuff out from other sources.  Sarah Fenske observes, relevent to Sheriff Joe's deputy who was cited for contempt for swiping papers from the defense table during a trial and refusing to appologize for it:

Yesterday, the Maricopa County Sheriff's deputy accused of brazenly swiping -- and photocopying -- a defense lawyer's paperwork reportedly checked himself into jail, as ordered by Judge Gary Donahoe.

Deputy Adam Stoddard had refused to apologize for his actions, which ignited a firestorm from defense attorneys across the country. That put him in contempt of Judge Donahoe's order, and that meant jail time.

But as astute readers may recall, everyone in Maricopa County knows there's jail time -- and then there's jail time for Friends of Sheriff Joe.

For at least five years, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has maintained one jail for the hapless pre-trial detainees and Mexicans he boasts about tormenting -- and another one, a posh place New Times dubbed the "Mesa Hilton," for his supporters and celeb friends.

Any guesses which jail might now be housing Deputy Stoddard?

She links to an older John Dougherty article, who has been a long-time pain in Arpaio's backside:

Rather than serving time in hellish Tent City, Arpaio allows his special guests to serve their sentences in private, climate-controlled cells at the Mesa Hilton. The lucky inmates are also allowed to bring luxury personal items into the jail, including cell phones, musical instruments, computers and takeout meals.

Arpaio knows that the genteel class is willing to do just about anything to avoid having to serve time in the tents, where inmates are packed in like rats to swelter in the summer and get chilled to the bone in the winter.

It's not uncommon for those who serve jail sentences in the Mesa Hilton to do substantial favors for Arpaio.

Country-western singer Glen Campbell served his DUI sentence in the Mesa facility last July. On his last day in jail, Campbell threw a concert at Tent City that got Arpaio's smiling face on news shows across the globe.

Professional-sports mogul Jerry Colangelo's daughter, Mandie, also served her DUI sentence at Mesa, after which dad hosted an extravagant fund raiser for Arpaio that raised $50,000 in one day.

Likewise, Phoenix businessman Joseph Deihl served time in the Mesa jail on a solicitation conviction after his father donated $10,000 to Arpaio's reelection campaign.

When Sheriff Joe Arpaio does not have his deputies busy arresting anyone found driving while Mexican, he is showing his contempt for the legal process.  Another weird story just keeps getting weirder:

Defying a court order, Maricopa County detention officer Adam Stoddard said he would rather go to jail than apologize for swiping a defense attorney's court file.Now it's up Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe to follow through on his contempt of court finding against Stoddard and place him in jail.

However, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio "“ who runs the jails "“ has vowed to challenge the order if it comes down to that....

...when it appeared that Stoddard was not going to call a press conference for his public apology, he called an impromptu press conference at 8:30 p.m. tonight "“ to state that he wasn't going to apologize.

If you missed it, Carlos Miller at the link above has the act of the deputy taking defense briefs off their table in court on video.

This is not the only example of the Sheriff going to extraordinary lengths to obtain information to which he has no right.  In an incredible and under-reported story, his armed posse actually stormed into the County offices and took over the computing center that contained emails he had been unable to obtain through court order.

Update:  Not sure I think too much of a judge's order to issue a public apology, but that is another story.

From Great Britain, which really seems to be losing its mind of late, via Daniel Mitchell of Cato

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty". Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday "“ after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon. In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: "I didn't think for one moment I would be arrested."

"¦ The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden. In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges. "I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him. "At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall." Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

"¦ Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a "strict liability" charge "“ therefore Mr Clarke's allegedly honest intent was irrelevant. Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

"¦ Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge. "The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant."

Phoenix police pump six rounds into the back of an innocent Phoenix homeowner who was still on the phone with 911 calling for their help with an intruder.

The scary part is how absolutely natural and well-polished the police's actions are in initiating a cover-up.  They may be screw-ups in the use of force, but they seem well-practiced in protecting their own from accountability.  Only the lucky break of having the 911 call still in progress and being recorded in the room the police were planning the cover-up prevented it from working.  Without this evidence, one wonders if the victim (who lived, incredibly) would have found himself accused of some heinous crime to take scrutiny away from the police.  "Oh, what's this here -- looks like a bag of white powder..."

One priceless detail is that the officer said he fired without seeing any gun in part because he thought he saw a Hispanic guy.  Wow -- if he loses his job with the Phoenix police (doubtful) I am sure Sheriff Joe would be thrilled to hire him.

We see this all the time nowadays - police roll without a thought into cover-up mode, and only the accident of video or audio recording prevents the cover up from working.  One wonders how many times they get away with this game when there is no electronic scrutiny.  Which is, I suppose, why police have invented a non-existent law that it is illegal to record their actions in public.  I am all for lojacking all of them with permanent electronic recorders.  (via Radley Balko, who has a roundup of a lot of similarly scary stories).

Postscript: The innocent homeowner (Tony) survived despite this treatment by police of his bullet-riddled body:

Officers ... painfully dragged Tony by his injured leg, through the home and out to his backyard patio, where they left him bloodied and shot right in front of [his family]."

The Arambulas say the officers later dragged Anthony onto gravel, then put him on top of the hot hood of a squad car, and "drove the squad car down the street with Tony lying on top, writhing in pain."

It appears that our Maricopa County government (which is the county that Phoenix is in) has risen to new levels of dysfunctionality.  Apparently our Sheriff Joe Arpaio missed his calling as South American general, launching a coup last week against the rest of the county government (for whom he supposedly works).

Maricopa County sheriff's deputies on Wednesday stormed into a county building, seized control of a computer system and threatened to arrest county employees if they tried to stop them, according to county officials.

County management responded by asking a Maricopa County Superior Court judge for a temporary restraining order against the Sheriff's Office.

The system, which provides access to law-enforcement databases, is the subject of a lawsuit between the Sheriff's Office and the Board of supervisors.

It links county computers to Department of Public Safety databases, which store criminal background information. But it also is a server and e-mail platform for several county agencies, including the Sheriff's and County Attorney's offices and the Superior Court.

Its management is the subject of a 2003 interagency agreement. But in light of recent layoffs of system operators due to budget cuts and squabbles among the agencies, the Sheriff's Office felt that sensitive data that should be the sole domain of law enforcement had become too available to the system's civilian administrators, who work for County Manager David Smith and the supervisors....

"The sheriff did not receive permission from - or give notice to - any other elected official or stakeholder agency before barging in with armed officers and demanding that he be given exclusive control," he said.

It turns out that the Sheriff's concern about protecting confidential information could well be a smokescreen.  For years, the Sheriff's office has been, unsuccessfully, attempting to gain access via the courts to records and emails from other departments, information that, coincidentally, resides on the seized servers.

Just as the Sheriff's Office is concerned about civilians' access to records, county management is concerned the Sheriff's Office now has access to information from other county agencies it is investigating, such as the Superior Court. State appellate courts have rebuffed Arpaio's attempts to obtain privileged court e-mails, which would be accessible through the system. Superior Court Judge Joseph Heilman has scheduled a hearing for today regarding the restraining order.

...requiring dash cameras in every police vehicle would be a great idea.  Via Radley Balko, of course, video in his post here.

I do think Ms. Harmon has her lawsuit a bit misdirected.  I don't think Tasers per se are the problem.  If this guy didn't have a Taser, it would just be a nightstick or physical force.  The issue is that many police act as if they are dictators of the local area within their line of sight.

I did a double take when I found these two stories back to back in my feed reader

1. Via TJIC (welcome back!) Spokane policeman gets drunk, chases another patron out of a bar,  participates in a drunken car chase, shoots the other man in the head, and then initiates a cover-up.  Acquitted and paid $150,000 in back pay.
2. Via Photography is not a Crime (one of my new favorites) Spokane policeman caught peeking into bedroom of 14-year-old girl (possibly after making obscene phone calls) and then  gets in a fight with police who show up.  Charges dropped by accommodating prosecutor.  The officer did have to accept a "last chance" agreement with the force (having already had a history of discipline problems) but since this is his third last chance agreement, I do not think that word means what Spokane thinks it means.