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Calls for Arpaio’s resignation grow louder
By Valeria
Fernández
New America Media, News Report
May 12, 2011
Traducción al español
PHOENIX -- Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox called for the
resignation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, following findings of fiscal
misspending by his office and an internal investigation that revealed
corruption within his staff.
“Sheriff, do the right thing and resign,” Wilcox said during a press
conference on Wednesday inside the Board of Supervisors’ meeting room.
Pro-immigrant rights groups and members of the Maricopa Citizens for
Safety and Accountability joined her in the call for his resignation.
The group has been demanding for the last three years for a closer audit
of Arpaio’s finances by the board.
Lisa Allen, a spokesperson at the sheriff’s office, said Arpaio would
not comment on the calls for his resignation. During a press conference
last week, when asked by a reporter if at any point he considered
resigning, Arpaio said, “I’m not going to resign, as long as the people
want me and elect me. Whether it's this position or maybe another
position, I’m not leaving.”
The sheriff and his agency are currently the subject of a two-year-long
federal grand jury probe on alleged abuse of power as well as a civil
rights investigation by the Department of Justice into allegations of
racial profiling.
Arpaio’s critics are also calling on the federal government and
President Barack Obma to support grand-jury indictments in the Arpaio
investigation.
“We are asking the Justice Department to finish the investigation and
indict Arpaio,” said Salvador Reza, a leader in the pro-immigrant PUENTE
Movement.
Wilcox also called on the Department of Justice to take administrative
control of Arpaio’s jails as they continue the investigation into his
office.
Last week, another Maricopa County Supervisor, Don Stapley, sent a
letter to the president asking for his support of grand-jury indictments
in the Arpaio probe.
“I am a first-hand witness to the crimes committed,” Stapley wrote,
“having been falsely charged, subjected to staged media show arrest,
publicly humiliated, damaged politically and nearly ruined financially.”
Wilcox said there were three main reasons to call for Arpaio’s
resignation: his abuse of human and civil rights by conducting racially
motivated immigration raids; his fiscal misspending; and findings of
corruption in his agency, according an internal affairs investigation.
During the last few months Arpaio has been facing increased criticism in
the wake of troubling findings from several investigations.
A six-month investigation by county budget officials revealed that
Arpaio’s office had misspent $99 million from two jail funds over eight
years to finance unauthorized law-enforcement activities—including the
sheriff’s controversial immigration sweeps.
The partial findings of an internal investigation that he commissioned
to examine allegations of abuse of power by his own staff also raised
concerns about corruption within his agency.
The heavily redacted 1,000-page report issued by Pinal County Sheriff
Paul Babeu stemmed from a memo written by Deputy Chief Frank Munnell and
submitted to Arpaio last fall. The memo detailed years of accusations of
misconduct and mismanagement by Arpaio’s former chief deputy, David
Hendershott. Employees told investigators that they had informed Arpaio
about some of the problems. Rather than look into the allegations, they
said, Arpaio asked Hendershott about them.
The investigation resulted in the firing of Hendershott and other high
officials in his agency.
“Time after time, this report justifies that his office was run in a
corrupt manner,” said supervisor Wilcox.
Arpaio said during a press conference last week that he wasn’t aware of
the misconduct that took place.
But several of his critics find that hard to believe.
“He’s given us a very limited amount of information,” said Chad Snow, a
member of the group Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability.
Snow argued that the Munnell memo leaves out any culpability on the part
of Arpaio and criticized the sheriff for assigning the internal affairs
investigation to Babeu, a political ally.
“What we are seeing is a very carefully orchestrated campaign by Arpaio
to throw other people under the bus,” Snow said, “when the evidence
shows that he had his finger on many of those things.”
Supervisors Stapley and Wilcox said they were first-hand witnesses and
victims of abuse of power by Arpaio’s agency, in what they believed was
retaliation for their criticism of his office.
During the press conference, Reza of the PUENTE Movement repeated
concerns about possible racial motivations for Arpaio’s immigration
sweeps, pointing to evidence from a racial profiling lawsuit that found
that several deputies within Arpaio’s staff had sent racially derogatory
emails.
“We need to change and hold Arpaio accountable, it’s not about him
firing a couple of deputies or firing his chief deputy David Hendershott.
Hendershott was following orders. Whose orders? Sheriff Arpaio’s,” said
Randy Parraz, the head of MCSA. “We are going to hold him accountable
until he resigns. Today marks the end of Arpaio’s reign as Maricopa
County Sheriff.”
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