More on Arpaio

Well, it looks like Mayor Smith has realized that its probably a good idea to sit down with Arpaio and try to work things out instead of letting things escalate out of control. Probably a good idea, since it felt like we were only a week or so away from the Sheriff's tank rolling down Main Street. There are still allegations flying of who knew what and when. It appears that it will take awhile for the complete story to come out, but I would like to note that it appears that Mesa seems to be readily able to produce information backing their claims, whereas, its taking the Sheriff's office a bit longer to do the same.

I wanted to take a minute to add some more clarification to my post from last week about the Sheriff being out of control. First, I want to thank everyone for their positive responses and all of the comments I have received so far. Its one of the busiest posts we have seen in awhile.

Second, I want to point out that just because I think the Sheriff went too far with raiding a municipal complex in the middle of the night does not mean I am pro-illegal immigration. It doesn't even mean I have a problem with the employer sanctions laws. I believe there is a differnce between the enforcement of the law and the abuse of it. There are many other ways to enforce the law and even serve a warrant that do not include breaking into municipal buildings with armies of armed gunmen looking for alleged illegal immigrants who may be working as janitors. Perhaps they could have called the city and spoken to the chief, the city manager, or heck, even the mayor and discussed what they knew. They could have waited outside the facilities for the workers to leave and aprehended them outside. They could have done a public records request and looked for any sort of paper trail regarding the allegations from the anonymous tip and saw if there was any actual follow up.

I am all for enforcing the law. However, I am also all for public safety. I don't know how much is true or false about the allegations and the legality of the workers, but the city and county should have been working together to figure this out before the fact, instead of waiting until after a huge blow up to try to put the pieces together. What could have been an opportunity for cooperation is just another big media debacle, where the Sheriff steps out, does whatever he wants, and the citizens have to spend the next few weeks picking up the pieces. Meanwhile, this spectacle has completely eclipsed the fact that ANOTHER inmate has died in the Sheriff's Jail. The family of the killed inmate has already filed a $2 million suit - and they'll probably win. So, we'll have more fun paying the Sheriff's bills.

Finally, just because I think the Sheriff is out of control does not mean that this blog endorses Saban. The fact is, people should look closely at all the candidates. Saying something critical of one candidate does not immediately translate into saying something pro about the other. There is more to Saban than the fact that he is anti-Joe, which is something he should be working on. We already saw how well it worked for Kevin Gibbons when he ran as the "not-Russell Pearce" candidate. I think he has a little more establishing to do in these last two weeks if he thinks he is going to change people's minds.