For those not familiar with Joe Arpaio, he is the county sheriff of
Maricopa County, Arizona. He keeps getting re-elected over and over
again. These are some of the reasons why:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio created the “tent city jail” to save Arizona from
spending tens of millions of dollars on another expensive prison
complex; inmates sleep in tents!
He has jail meals down to 20 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.
He banned smoking and pornographic magazines in the jails, took away
their weightlifting equipment and cut off all but “G” movies. He says,
“They’re in jail to pay a debt to society, not to build muscles so they
can assault innocent people when they leave.”
He started chain gangs
to use the inmates to do free work on county and city projects and save
taxpayer’s money. Men work in pink “Clean(ing) and Sober” shirts. Their
underwear is also pink!
Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination.
He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court
order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV
again but only allows the Disney Channel and The Weather Channel. When
asked why the weather channel, he replied, “So these morons will know
how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.”
He
cut off coffee because it has zero nutritional value and is therefore a
waste of taxpayer money. When the inmates complained, he told them,
“This isn’t the Ritz. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.”
He
also bought the Newt Gingrich lecture series on US history that he pipes
into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series
by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series that actually
tells the truth for a change would be welcome and that it might even
explain why 95% of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.
With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116° F set a
new record for June 2, 2009), the Associated Press reported that about
2,000 inmates living in a tent encampment surrounded by barbed wire at
the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to
their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On that Wednesday, hundreds
of men wearing pink boxer shorts were overheard chatting in the tents,
where temperatures reached 128 degrees. “This is hell. It feels like we
live in a furnace,” said Ernesto Gonzales, an inmate for 2 years with 10
more to go. “It’s inhumane.”
Joe Arpaio, who makes his prisoners
wear pink and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic.
“Criminals should be punished for their crimes, not live in luxury until
it’s time for parole, only to go out and commit more crimes so they can
come back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things many taxpayers
can’t afford to have for themselves.”
The same day he told all the
inmates who were complaining of the heat in the tents: “It’s between 120
to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents there too,
and they have to walk all day in that sun, wearing full battle gear and
getting shot at, and THEY have not committed any crimes, so shut your
damned mouths!”
Sheriff Joe was just re-elected for the fourteenth time as Sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona.
The HiV of Western Culture
5 years ago
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