During the end of January a group named Respect Arizona filed a petition drive to recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio. According to the Associated Press, the group claims that they have 200,000 of the 355,000 signatures needed to force a recall. Respect Arizona (yeah, right) is actually a leftist group hell-bent on taking Joe Arpaio down. I admit he has done some stupid things and Arpaio should be held accountable including if his employees have flagrantly violated the law or are corrupt. I have no doubt he is taking steps to prevent incidents like wrongful deaths from happening again. I also think if the federal government actually did it's job of securing the border with Mexico then police agencies (like Maricopa County Sheriff's Office) would not have to take so much time and effort in doing the job the U.S. Border Patrol and National Guard should do.

I am sure there are heavy-handed deputies who seek to skirt the law and the ones who abuse their powers, prisoners or even civilians should be disciplined severely or prosecuted. However, there is only so much oversight the head of any agency can do especially since the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is discharged to police the fourth largest county in the country. Admittedly, he is responsible for the people who work for him but you notice the press tends to report what Arpaio does wrong and hardly when MCSO actually stops violent criminals? When he is wrong Joe Arpaio and his deputies are, rightly, vilified. When he is right he is ignored, condemned for something else, or for not doing enough.

I wrote the Sheriff criticizing him for jumping on the birther issue and included evidence that debunks his claim that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen and that his birth certificate is forged. He has obviously dropped the issue because he knows he doesn't have a case. The fact is that Latino and other Leftist political groups do not like Sheriff Joe Arpaio because he says what is on his mind when it comes to the border and actually does his job by enforcing immigration laws the Federal government cannot or will not.

Up until a little over a month ago, the people hired to circulate recall petitions were having anyone sign in which they were getting paid no matter who did. Also, Recall ... er ... Respect Arizona was hoping to do with Joe Arpaio with what they did with Russell Pearce using a shotgun method of flooding county or state election offices with petitions. I would not be surprised if this included collecting the names and addresses of people they could keep for later projects including get out the vote efforts.

 

Fortunately, the group's finances are dwindling. One Respect Arizona leader confirmed during a press conference that his group's funds were drying up. I hold out hope that the recall effort crashes and burns not just for their alleged lack of funds but due to the hurdle they face just to accomplish their goal. However, what leads me to conclude their financial disclosure maybe a charade is that shortly after beginning, Respect Arizona (yeah, right) stated they ran out of money and that their fraudulent sham would instead rely on volunteers. The recall group is now working with like-minded churches which is where they are circulating petitions but they are still using paid signature gatherers.

The people leading this effort are of the purest evil. Unfortunately, there are others who have bought into the lies that Sheriff Arpaio is a racist, extremist and/or a demagogue. The accusations spread about Arpaio are (of course) nothing but lies and it is unfortunate that the information to refute them gets out slower than the spin that has perpetuated the opposition to him. To better understand why this effort began and continues would be to ponder the thoughts of Senator Marco Rubio when he discussed the Left's demonizing Governor Mitt Romney during the 2012 Presidential election. Romney was cast by Obama and his backers as an evil capitalist hostile to the middle class and poor in which this fits the situation perfectly with Joe Arpaio since the leaders of the recall effort accuse him of racism:

All they hear is that one side is fighting for the people who have made it and the other side is fighting for those who are struggling.

It is the political groups accusing Joe Arpaio of racism who are the racists themselves. The minority groups screaming racism on the part of Sheriff Arpaio are exploiting their race in order to benefit from the lies they tell about him. Despite claims of racism or racial profiling there has been no official racial profiling of Latinos or any other minority group under Sheriff Joe Arpaio's watch. He has told his deputies point blank that racially-motivated activities will not be tolerated.

 

What the media hasn't or won't report is that the raids MCSO conducts have not and do not specifically target minority groups since the raids have been conducted in different parts of Maricopa County. I am friends with a Deputy Sheriff who works in Maricopa County Jails in which prior to doing so was a booking officer during most of Arpaio's raids. He told me that anyone who had outstanding warrants regardless of their race was arrested. The US Justice Department recently dropped a criminal case against Arpaio and I have no doubt the other cases against him will be bagged as well. Joe Arpaio is doing what every Sheriff in the country should do: their job.