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/“THE SHERIFF” JOE ARPAIO: Toughness Personified
By: Joel E. Gordon
“The only real boss I have is the public and that’s whom I served.” – Joe Arpaio
The media originally gave Joe Arpaio the title “Toughest Sheriff in America.” The story of "The Sheriff," as he likes to be called, begins on June 14, 1932 the day that Joseph Michael Arpaio, the son of Italian immigrants is born; his mother dies during childbirth. “They came through Ellis Island legally,” he said of his parents. A young Joe Arpaio grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts where his father ran a grocery store.
By 1950, Arpaio enlisted in the Army at 18 years old, almost coinciding with the beginning of the Korean War. He served in the Medical Detachment Division, “Where report writing skills and interviewing techniques were critical,” he later wrote.
It was 1954 when Joe Arpaio became a police officer in Washington, D.C., where he served three years as a patrol officer. He then had a short stint in the sheriff’s department in Clark County, Nevada where he is said to have once stopped Elvis Presley for a traffic violation.
Arpaio’s next venture was joining the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, the precursor to the Drug Enforcement Administration. “The bureau was in need of Italian Americans willing to work undercover and arrest fellow Italians,” he later wrote on a campaign website, adding, “I was up to the task.” He worked around the world in locations including Turkey, Lebanon, Central America and Mexico.
After a career spanning more than two decades, Arpaio retired from the DEA as the agency’s top official in the states of Arizona and Texas, where he had gained invaluable insight and experience on border issues and enforcement.
Following his retirement, Arpaio and his wife opened a travel agency in Phoenix which they ran for the next decade.
By 1992, Arpaio was ready to return to his law enforcement roots and decided to run for Maricopa County Sheriff in Arizona. He successfully defeated the incumbent who was embroiled in controversy. Within two years, Arpaio started winning the national spotlight for his techniques. He mobilized a 2,200-member volunteer posse, which included lawyers, doctors, politicians, corporate executives and retirees, to patrol for prostitutes and mall crime. His “get tough” policies for his county’s jails holding up to 10,000 inmates included bans on smoking, coffee and movies. One of his most notable moves as sheriff was erecting the nation’s largest tent city jail for some of his inmates surrounded by a wire fence. He also started the first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs in the United States. “I’ve got a method to my madness of publicity; I want to send a message to the bad guys,” he said in a Los Angeles Times front-page story. “I want them to know that it is so bad in my jail that they won’t want to commit crimes here,” he added.
Arpaio is credited with establishing several other unique programs under his leadership.
When soldiers began returning home he placed veterans at the front of his recruitment list, hiring over 150 individuals with military backgrounds. A special housing unit in his jail was also established which was only for veteran convicts with special programs to assist with PTSD and other related issues.
He began “HARD KNOCKS HIGH,” allowing juvenile offenders to continue their education while being incarcerated. He also implemented a drug treatment/rehabilitation program in his jails.
The Sheriff began an animal cruelty unit, locking up offenders while simultaneously rescuing animals from abuse and neglect. He then gave select inmates an opportunity to care for the animals.
His administration is credited with building two new jails, a sheriff’s academy, food factory, firearms range and a headquarters equipped with a state-of-the-art 911 communications center.
In one of his most famously questioned directives, The Sheriff in 1995 began the pink underwear program. When he learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, he had all their underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. The underwear contrasted nicely with the black and white striped uniforms that had been introduced over 20 years earlier. As a result, the U.S. Justice Department began investigating jail conditions under Arpaio’s watch.
By 1996, polls were indicating that Arpaio, who was running for the first of his many reelections, was the most popular elected official in the State of Arizona. He then began to win the attention of national Republicans, including presidential candidate Bob Dole, who visited the tent city jail and praised it. “This idea may spread in other sections of the country,” Dole said. “I talked to one of the inmates who said, ‘I don’t want to come back here. I’ve learned my lesson.’” Two months later, hundreds of inmates rioted in protest of the conditions at the camp. One year afterward, the Justice Department sued Maricopa County, alleging the use of excessive force and mistreatment at the jail, but the suit was later dropped.
Despite the favorable polls, Arpaio decided not to run for governor of Arizona in 2002, saying, “I just want to go out into the sunset as a law enforcement officer.”
Four years later, with help from his posse of citizens, Arpaio used a state human-trafficking law to start going after smugglers bringing immigrants into Arizona illegally — and also to arrest the immigrants. A Mexican citizen visiting the U.S. legally sued Arpaio after he was detained. The litigation would eventually become a class-action lawsuit, one of several legal actions to be taken against Arpaio in the following years. Following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, a federal judge ruled that the conditions in Arpaio’s jail were unconstitutional.
The Justice Department again sued Arpaio in 2010, saying his department was refusing to cooperate with an investigation of whether it discriminated against Latinos while trying to catch illegal immigrants. Reports note that some deputies and volunteers were stopping people for minor infractions and then asking them for their citizenship status. The next year, a federal judge ordered him and his deputies to cease and desist from racially profiling. The Justice Department then sued Arpaio once again, alleging a pattern of illegal discrimination, specifically against Latinos.
In response to a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU, a federal judge ruled that Arpaio’s deputies did illegally profile individuals of Latino descent. Then, in a 2017 criminal bench trial, the now former sheriff, who lost his bid for reelection in 2016, was found guilty of defying a federal judge’s order. He planned to appeal, saying he was wrongfully denied a trial by jury, which he believed would have found him innocent.
President Donald Trump stepped in to pardon Arpaio, sparing him a possible six-month jail sentence. In a brief statement, the White House praised Arpaio's career. "Throughout his time as sheriff, Arpaio continued his life's work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration," the statement read. "Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now (then) 85 years old, and after more than 50 years of admirable service to our nation, he is (a) worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon." Arpaio thanked the president on Twitter. "Thank you @realdonaldtrump for seeing my conviction for what it is; a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department!" he posted.
Joe Arpaio has been featured in over 4,000 newspaper, magazines and television news programs during the course of his long career. He is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades and is also author of two books Sheriff Joe Arpaio, America’s Toughest Sheriff and Joe’s Law, America’s Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration and Drugs.
The Arpaios, Joe and Ava, have been married for over 60 years and have two children and four grandchildren.
"The Sheriff" remains outspoken and on the front lines for public safety and against unlawful entry by individuals into the United States. Having been elected to six four-year terms his 24 years in office makes him the longest-serving elected sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona history. He is again a candidate in the 2020 election in a bid to once again become the elected sheriff. “I just have a desire to get back into the fight and do what I can do to finish my career. Watch out world! We are back!” Arpaio is quoted as saying.
Regardless of the final outcome of the 2020 election in Arizona, “The Sheriff” Joe Arpaio has certainly already forever cemented his legacy in the annals of the history of American law enforcement.
Joel E. Gordon is a former Baltimore City Police Officer and was Chief of Police for the city of Kingwood, West Virginia. He has served as vice-chair of a regional narcotics task force and is a 2020 candidate for Preston County West Virginia Sheriff. An award winning journalist, he is author of the book Still Seeking Justice: One Officer's Story and founded the Facebook group Police Authors Seeking Justice. stillseekingjustice.com
