Legal settlements from Joe Arpaio’s reign of rogueness are still flying out the door.
The latest is a $3.1 million payment to a Phoenix restaurant owner for raiding his business.
Previous settlements have been for things like “jail deaths, failed investigations of … political enemies and immigration raids of businesses.”
This one pushes the ex-sheriff’s legal liabilities billed to Maricopa County taxpayers to over $100 million.
If the county’s costs of complying with a racial profiling consent decree against him, but implemented by his successor, are counted it’s over $275 million.
Arpaio calls it “reasonable.” Read story here.
It’s an object-lesson in what voting mistakes — or reckless voters — can cost citizens.
Rightwing extremists often argue sheriffs are the supreme law of the land. Arpaio certainly thought so. And like a few others, he acted like it, too.
Although Republicans loved him, Joe Arpaio was voted out in 2016 by taxpayers tired of paying for his antics, and eliminated in the GOP primary when he tried to run for U.S. Senate in 2018. He lost another primary in 2020, when he tried to get his sheriff’s job back. Now he’s running for mayor of a nearby town.
Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt by a federal court in 2017 for violating citizens’ rights and not complying with court orders, but was spared from serving jail time by one of Trump’s most controversial pardons. One of his deputies went to jail for stealing papers protected by attorney-client privilege from an attorney’s courtroom files (story here and video below).