A bad week for Sheriff Joe Arpaio

It seems to have been a bad week for Maricopa County’s geriatric gendarme. He, who thinks he is above the law has been smacked down on several fronts.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has been after Arpaio for some time now to produce financial records pertaining to the possible abuse of Jail Enhancement Fund money. That fund is supplied by a voter-approved sales tax, and the cash is supposed to go for jail construction and related expenses, not for the sheriff’s slush funds to pay for his terrorizing Maricopas Hispanic population.

Friday, Superior Court Judge Richard E. Gordon slapped down Arpaio’s attempt to dodge the County Boards calling Arpaio to a hearing to explain why he was holding back docs on the MCSO’s financial matters

From The Phoenix New Times and Stephen Lemmons:

But the Supes suspect Arpaio’s office has been misdirecting the money for bogus investigations of public officials, and doing anti-immigrant sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods.

So they demanded to see Joe’s books. Joe and his flunkies ignored them.

The Supes ordered Arpaio and his chief financial officer Loretta Barkell to attend a contempt proceeding. Joe’s law dogs asked for the court to intervene, arguing, essentially, that the Supes have been pickin’ on ol’ Joe, that the order violated the Arizona Constitution’s separation of powers and a bunch of other baloney.

Gordon wasn’t buying. He ruled that,

“The Arizona Supreme Court has held that the failure to obey a non-judicial subpoena for documents, like the one at issue in this case, is considered direct contempt…As such, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors was permitted to expeditiously and summarily adjudicate the matter. The precise characterization of the contempt at issue, however, does not matter because the board appointed a hearing officer, gave Sheriff Arpaio advance notice, as well as an opportunity to be heard. The Sheriff therefore has been given all the process constitutionally due him.”

So now what? When do the Supes get the docs? And will they force Arpaio to attend a hearing and sit under a hot lamp while he shuffles marbles in his hand and does his best Captain Queeg impersonation?

“We don’t know yet,” said Supes spokeswoman Cari Gerchick of whether the hearing will be rescheduled. ”We are first going to try to get the documents. If that doesn’t work, we will take all necessary and legal steps to protect the public’s financial interests.”

There was a lot of speculation in April that Joe could actually face an arrest warrant if he continued to stonewall the Supes.

And what if Joe were to keep on telling the Supes to take a long walk off a short pier? Well, then, maybe we’d finally see Joe in a pair of those famous pink handcuffs of his…

PHT is also reporting that it looks as if Wells Fargo wants Sheriff Joe out of his high rent offices in their building and are finally getting their way about it. Poor Joe! Now he’s gotta come down out of the clouds and mingle with the common folk.

Now this is really interesting. The Arizona Republic reports that the Maricopa Sheriff’s office, in an attempt to hide it’s operations from the oversight of the County Board of Supervisors, and it’s correspondence from the eyes of Federal investigators who could even now, be measuring Sheriff Joe for some pink punk underwear, has discovered the sheriff’s office secretly established an e-mail server away from the prying eyes of his bosses.

Here’s the report:

Many of the disputes between Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office and Maricopa County administrators are unsightly public affairs, complete with derogatory comments, outrageous allegations and lawsuits at taxpayer expense.

The issue of who controls and has access to Sheriff’s Office e-mail has proceeded on a decidedly more inconspicuous course for the past two years – but that could soon change.

At its meeting Wednesday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors quietly approved a resolution forbidding “a Maricopa County department” from establishing its own e-mail system separate from the county system.

The board was, of course, referring to the Sheriff’s Office.

The dispute over e-mail control began in part because sheriff’s officials didn’t know that county administrators, in August 2008, secretly began archiving the office’s e-mails until it came to light in a court proceeding this year.

That news prompted the Sheriff’s Office to transfer some e-mail addresses to a secure server in the County Attorney’s Office. When then-County Attorney Andrew Thomas, Arpaio’s ally, resigned to run for state attorney general this year and was replaced by an Arpaio foe, Rick Romley, the Sheriff’s Office was left in the lurch over how to keep those e-mails from county administrators’ eyes.

It was revealed last week that the Sheriff’s Office simply created a new, unique server outside county control. That news prompted the board to take Wednesday’s action.

The cost to taxpayers for the new e-mail server isn’t known – the Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t detail any cost in setting it up – but sheriff’s administrators say the move was necessary.

“We learned attorneys working for the county secretly archived all of the Sheriffs’ Office e-mails that included classified law-enforcement-sensitive information, e-mails on current on-going criminal investigation including those of the (supervisors) and county management, and e-mails of attorney-client-privileged communication regarding criminal and civil litigation,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “The (supervisors’) mean spirited and retaliatory action in halting this secured law-enforcement e-mail systems will continue to allow the (supervisors) and their minions to have the ability to spy on Sheriff’s Office investigative activity should they desire to do so.”

The sheriff’s statement indicates the office has no intention of reversing course and moving its e-mail server back under the control of county administrators. It did not address whether the new system set up by the sheriff complies with litigation demands.

According to Tom Irvine, a private attorney who advises the board, the sheriff’s concern about snooping is “pure paranoia.”

“Nobody’s ever looked at their e-mails,” he said.

The e-mails and their content have played a role in a pair of high-profile cases targeting the Sheriff’s Office: a racial-profiling lawsuit against Arpaio and an FBI criminal investigation into the Sheriff’s Office.

David Hendershott, Arpaio’s chief deputy, testified in the profiling lawsuit that e-mails were purged from the system after 28 days, so documents requested by plaintiffs’ attorneys no longer were available.

But during the course of the lawsuit, it was revealed that the county’s technology office was able to “recover” erased e-mails because it archives messages from all but two county departments: the County Attorney’s Office and the libraries.

Sheriff’s officials called the county’s efforts “unethical and reprehensible.”

In light of the ongoing legal battles between the sheriff and county management, the Sheriff’s Office, in court proceedings, referred to the archiving as “secretly recording” information that belonged explicitly to the Sheriff’s Office.

That in itself has become the subject of litigation between the sheriff and the county.

When Romley became interim county attorney in April, he realized that some sheriff’s executives were routing their e-mail through the County Attorney’s Office to sidestep county review, because the county attorney’s office e-mails are not archived by the county’s technology office.

Carol McFadden, the county attorney’s executive chief, confirmed that the Sheriff’s Office had been using the county attorney’s e-mail server but no longer was doing so.

The county’s technology office discovered the new system, said Irvine, the board’s attorney.

The problem, he said, is that installing a proper system could cost millions of dollars, which the county doesn’t have.

Last week’s resolution was passed to prevent or undo its installation.

Irvine, asked at Wednesday’s meeting what the supervisors could do to prevent the sheriff from building the system, said supervisors could make line-item vetoes of expenses incurred.

Wonder if Sheriff Joe will have his own digs in tent city or will have to share?

Related posts:

1. Sheriff Sigi Gonzalez – 4 suspects identified in David Hartley Death
2. Suspects in BP Agent Brian Terry will not be charged – Arizona Mayors to Sheriff Babeu – “BACK OFF!!!”