At President Trump’s most recent campaign-rally-style tantrum in Arizona Tuesday night, he emphatically affirmed his support for the cartoonishly evil, criminally convicted former Sheriff of the state: Joe Arpaio. This past July, Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for willfully failing to follow a federal judge’s order to stop detaining individuals based on racial profiling. Friday evening, the White House confirmed that Trump would indeed use his presidential pardoning powers to absolve Arpaio of this conviction — something he heavily hinted at during Tuesday night’s rally.
This isn’t surprising, per say — Arpaio was one of few prominent and vocal supporters of Trump during the early stages of his 2016 campaign, and the former sheriff practiced the hard-line prosecution of illegal immigrants that Trump has espoused as a crucial issue of his presidency. Still, especially considering the current climate, we shouldn’t normalize the President’s unreserved willingness to pardon such an overt racist.
This recent conviction aside, Arpaio leaves behind a horrific record as Arizona Sheriff. In an attempt to brand himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” Arpaio consistently subjected prisoners to dehumanizing conditions — frequently violating detainees’ constitutional rights. While this “tough on crime” public persona ostensibly served as a deterrent to possible criminals, in reality it served to satisfy Arpaio’s sadistic megalomania and narcissism. These are just some of Arpaio’s most heinous offenses:
- In 1993, Arpaio set up what was infamously known as a “Tent City”: an extension of a county jail which Arpaio himself proudly referred to as a “concentration camp”. Prisoners would be forced to live and sleep outside in these camps, often in unbearable heat. This camp didn’t shut down until earlier this year.
- In 2000, Arpaio launched a “jail cam” website that broadcast live feeds of inmates’ cells. A year later, he was forced to turn off one of the cameras which showed female prisoners using the toilet, after it came to light that a porn site was promoting the feed.
- From 1996 to 2015, the suicide rate among jail deaths under Arpaio’s watch was 24%.
- During his tenure as Sheriff, Arpaio allocated so much time and resources on cracking down on illegal immigrants (using racist methods which often victimized innocent Hispanics) that he consciously ignored investigations of other crimes. Most notably, Arpaio failed to investigate more than 400 sex crimes over a three year period — including 32 child molestations.
These appalling cases don’t even begin to scratch the surface of Arpaio’s historical ghoulishness. And yet, this is the man that President Trump has without hesitation decided to be worthy of his first presidential pardon. If nothing else, this pardon should clearly highlight what exactly Trump means when he says America needs to bring back “law and order”. This has been a frequent talking point in his vision for the country, and now should be called out for what it is.
When Trump says “law and order”, he doesn’t mean respect for the rule of law or the Constitution — by these standards, Arpaio would be law and order’s most egregious opponent. No, “law and order” to Trump (and to every other “defender of conservative values” in the Republican party who will undoubtedly say nothing about this pardon) means a perpetuation of a fascistic police state that incarcerates the poor, and people of color.
Joe Arpaio embodies everything that’s wrong with America’s corrupt, immoral criminal justice system, so it’s only fitting that he be made exempt from it.
Photo: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
