During a press conference Tuesday, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio lashed out at the Tribune when questioned by a television reporter about some of the findings produced in our 2008 investigation of his controversial “crime suppression’’ sweeps, which target illegal immigrants.
Channel 12’s Joe Dana asked whether shifting resources back to traditional policing might help clear more cases. He cited the Tribune series, which last year found the sheriff’s diversion of resources toward the sweeps came at the expense of response times and criminal investigations elsewhere within its jurisdiction.
The sheriff couldn’t resist taking his swipe at the Tribune.
“First of all, I don’t want to talk about that garbage five-part series with their own agenda. They’re going out of business,’’ he snarled, as he went on to explain how his office has 15 deputies dedicated to the sweeps who are funded by the Legislature.
“So you can take your Tribune articles and you know what you can do with that.’’
I don’t know if the sheriff has some inside information on the Tribune’s future – I know I don’t.
I do know what’s already been reported by us and others: That our parent company, Freedom Communications, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. It also has retained an outside firm to facilitate the possible sale of the Tribune and other Freedom properties in the Valley.
I also know we remain in business, publishing three days a week and seven days on evtrib.com, and hope to be for a long time serving the East Valley.
As for the “garbage’’ series – which this year won the Pultizer Prize for local news reporting – the sheriff seemed to have a suggestion on what folks could do with it. But he didn’t finish the thought.
Allow me to make a suggestion.
What you can do with the series is read it. Read it again if it’s been awhile. Read it for the first time if you haven’t. Read it and decide for yourself whether there were legitimate questions raised about the sheriff’s approach.
It has been more than a year since its publication, and even though some things may have changed since then (hopefully for the better), the issues we first raised in July 2008 remain relevant to the discussion today.
Every story (as well as graphics and reader comments from last year) is on evtrib.com, on a special page devoted to our series, called “Reasonable Doubt.”
Here is the link: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/reasonable_doubt
Chris Coppola is editor of the Tribune Newspapers and eastvalleytribune.com. He can be reached at ccoppola@evtrib.com. Follow his newsroom updates on Twitter: EVTribEditor.)
Go Joe!!! Keep up the good work!
Hey Trib, how is business these days?
tkotko obviously can’t read. And he’s obviously a mindless sheep.
The old man is showing more and more signs he is losing it. Wish there was a law that allowed elected leaders to be examined for competency.
I know who will win in the Joe vs. Janet struggle, but I’ not sure about Joe vs. the Trib.
Check the scoreboard, follow the money, let the people vote.
Public not buying Tribune news, Tribune files for bankruptcy.
Tribune clearly does not have the support of the people.
How many times has Joe been re-elected in open election?
Check the scoreboard, follow the money, let the people vote.
Arpaio is acting like a child who had their toy taken away. For all of his hot air and the millions of taxpayer dollars he has spent on his “brown-skinned-people sweep,” ALL he got was 264 arrests!
I’d remind people that the 30,000 others that were brought in were NOT brought in by Arpaio’s deputies. That’s what he wants you to think. Rather they were brought in by other police departments who are REALLY do the immigration enforcement; cities like Phoenix and Mesa brought them in. All Arpaio’s staff to do was run ID checks. There was no real police work at all.
Arpaio’s way past his time. He should retire and hopefully then he can stop being mad at the world who just doesn’t see things his way any longer.
We support you Sheriff Joe!
Save a tree every year Tribune…quit printing your one page three times a week!
That must have been some news conference. Yes, Arpaio is “losing it.” (Or has lost it.) Yes, he “is acting like a child who had their toy taken away.” Yes, he is and has been “mad at the world who just doesn’t see things his way.”
He couldn’t or wouldn’t address the specific question as to the findings in the Tribune’s “Reasonable Doubt” investigative series. So what does he do? He attacks the messenger and angrily lashes out at the Tribune….like he’s recently lashed out at the Republic….like he’s previously lashed out at Phoenix New Times. “It’s all political. All the newspapers are against me and are trying to destroy me.” “It’s all political. Obama, Napolitano, Holder, Goddard, the Board of Supervisors and the Arizona judiciary are all against me and are trying to destroy me.”
Now, according to his most recent statements, he’s going to “go it alone” and continue with his “crime suppression sweep” — despite what he’s limited to by the new ICE agreement. When is this all going to end?
Real Americans are finally taking back their country, and Lefty bedwetters can’t stand it!
Joe Rocks! There’s no way around it, he’s the go to guy for Real Americans … Too bad about the Trib failing, I guess that old Putzer Prize isn’t paying the bills. So when the paper goes under what are the little old ladies going to use to line the bird cage?
The scary thing is that those who are supporters of the Sheriff won’t read anything critical of him, and if they do, dismiss it as propaganda by the “open borders” crowd.
Now, anyone who’s read the Trib for awhile knows it is a very conservative paper, including the immigration issue. But the Sheriff backers don’t see that and instead see an attack on the Sheriff as evidence that the paper is somehow “liberal.”
These same folks are those who tacitly allow the Sheriff to consistently misuse and abuse his office. As long as he is misperceived as “the only one who enforces the law” he seems to be able to get away with just about anything.
Sad.
Wow…….who the heck does this Joe guy think he is….a cop or something….rounding up illegals……..undangbelievable…..next
thing you know people are gonna want a border or border
patrol…….of course there is absolutely no correlation here
that Phoenix is one of the top cities in the nation for car
theft……come on Joe…have a donut and chill out..the rest
of us do not expect you to do anything….hey…you could
go to Washington…..they don’t do squat back there either!
Ahhh, he’s just mad you guys got ‘im. I’ve worked as a crime reporter and it’s the classic love-hate media/law enforcement relationship. I should write a dramatic romance movie about it. =) You guys did great, don’t let his angry backlashes get to you, a final desperate attempt to delegitimize true journalism. And to hymie: what’s your definition of Real Americans, huh?
If there were more dedicated law enforcement professionals like Sheriff Arpaio and his officers, we wouldn’t have:
– 20 million illeqals causing havoc in our schools, medical systems, language, jobs, communities; not to mention traffic with gangs, drugs, domestic abuse, rapes, welfare fraud, and a host of other calamities foisted upon America.
– We wouldn’t suffer 25 American deaths daily by illegals who kill 13 of us on our highways in additon to 12 deaths from knife and gun violence.
– We wouldn’t have 16,000 new cases of Tuberculosis, 7,000 cases of leprosy, 4,000 cases of hepatitis, dengue fever, Chagas disease, and a virulent new AIDS and STD epidemic.
–We wouldn’t have 618,000 convicted illegal felons in our prisions at an annual cost of $1.6 billion.
– We wouldn’t have 11,000 MS-13 gang menbers operating in 33 states distributing over $10 billion in drugs to our children.
– We wouldn’t be paying $2 billion for “anchor babies” and have $60 billion transfered anually out of our country.
– We wouldn’t have thousands of illegals committing car thefts, insurance fraud, driving while drunk and I.D. theft.
– Employers couldn’t cheat, lie, steal, and hire illegals for obscene amounts of money, or have Mexican flags marched through our streets by subversive and disloyal illegal aliens.
Yes indeed, you condemn and chastise a dedicated law enforcement professional for doing his job, upholding the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the Rule of Law,and who, unlike your newspaper, understands that you do not help the Third World by becoming The Third World, or a welfare state for the Mexican government.
It is you in the liberal media, who, because of your flagrant leftist bias, have sacraficed your integrity and objectivity for the advancement of an Eglitarian- Socialist-Collectivist state. Is it any wonder that, after your treatment of Sara Palin and her family, that a used car salesman in Tijuana has more respect and intergity than all of you combined, and that 70 precent of America hates your proto-Socialist/Facist guts.
Lightning Jack, that’s quite a creative post. And the sources of each of your numerical claims are……???? However, , the least you could do is spell your heroine Sarah Palin’s name correctly.
Poor Arpaio, he knows his days are numbered but he believes his own lies. The Tribune published an outstanding “Pulitzer Prize” analysis but he can’t still swallow the fact that he is a substandard law enforcement agent.
He should be more professional and correct the things that have been uncovered.
Lies fom LOU DOBBS….this that have been discovered to be LIES!!!!!
—————————————————————————–
– We wouldn’t suffer 25 American deaths daily by illegals who kill 13 of us on our highways in additon to 12 deaths from knife and gun violence.
– We wouldn’t have 16,000 new cases of Tuberculosis, 7,000 cases of leprosy, 4,000 cases of hepatitis, dengue fever, Chagas disease, and a virulent new AIDS and STD epidemic.
————————————————————————–
We hear ever day from the minority republicans…”We need to take our Country back!!” Back from where or who?
Sheriff Joe has that crazed look in his eyes as Hitler did in some of his speeches.
“I also know we remain in business, publishing three days a week and seven days on evtrib.com, and hope to be for a long time serving the East Valley.”
The Tribune should be indicted for murdering the English language.
See what the Maricopa County sheriff does to people? Has the editor of the Pulitzer Prize winning Tribune managed to get up off the floor yet after falling off his chair from laughing too hard?
Was at board of supervisors meeting yesterday. Mary rose wilcox
continues to support illegal aliens in her open border, to heck with
public safety agenda.
Thank Kunasek, Wilson, and Brock for the deciding vote on 287g.
The Sheriff will continue to protect citizens from this onslaught
of open border, leftist, arrogant elitists
Yeah, Joe…The end is coming. Your career is about over, and I’d like to take this time to tell Lightning Jack that he’s a brainwashed, zombie idiot. Yeah Jack, because white people that were born in this country never drive drunk or rape people *hits the sarcasm key*. I’m willing to bet Lightning Jack is Arpaio himself. I can’t wait until this generation of “my way or the highway” baby boomers die off so we can progress and evolve intellectually as a planet.
If the Sheriff follows the same pattern as he did with the New Times I guess the real question is who from the Tribune will get arrested by the MCSO?
These people who buy into Arpaio’s “The Tribune is out to get me” theory didn’t really read the series of stories that won the paper a Pulitzer.
The series basically pointed out how the Sheriff’s resources were being spread a little thin because he was focusing a lot of his force on targeting illegal immigrants. That meant that many law-abiding Maricopa County citizens were having to wait a long time for someone from the MCSO to show up if they called and many crime investigations were being ignored.
Nowhere in that series did it say that the illegal immigration problem should be left alone, it just was showing how the sheriff was neglecting his other duties. Grossly neglecting his other duties. But, anyone who points out Arpaio’s shortcomings is a pro-illegal, open-borders lunatic, right?
Most people who love Arpaio are the same people who rail on and on about big government and greedy politicians. But Arpaio is just as greedy and power-hungry as anyone in Washington.
Well said, StotheizzE23. You nailed it.
We need Sheriff Joe Arpaio to run as an Independent Presidentail Canadate or help lead an Independent Presidential Party!!
All that money he is saving Maricopa County, can go toward medical insurance coverage for the uninsured.
Pat, you … can’t even spell presidential.
And you can’t spell candidate either.
jaja now hi is by him self he is going to end in a retirement home
but don’t worry joe i’ll visit you to make fun of you
Sheriff Joe’s the real man and the Trib is toast in another month. Nappy Napolitano couldn’t do anything to control her illegal cousins from coming into AZ when she was Gov, but now that she’s sucking up to POTUS and running DHS, she’s showing her revenge side. Hope both POTUS and Nappy enjoy their short stint in DC.