Sunday, June 15, 2008

GOOD OLD SHERIFF JOE

My daughter-in-law forwarded me the following piece about Joe Arpaio, the much maligned (by liberals) sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. She added, "Can we get some people like this in office - PLEASE?? I really like his style!" Well, God bless her, I too like his style! I do not know who wrote the piece or when it was written, but nevertheless, I am reproducing it in this blog.


You all remember Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona , who painted the jail cells pink and made the inmates wear pink prison garb. Well......... SHERIFF JOE IS AT IT AGAIN.

Oh, there's MUCH more to know about Sheriff Joe!

Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said okay. The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows.

The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Teresa and I adopted a Weimaraner from a Maricopa County shelter two years ago. He was neutered, and current on all shots, in great health, and even had a microchip inserted the day we got him. Cost us $78. The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of his budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals.

I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand. He has a pretty good sized hog farm, which provides meat and fertilizer. It fertilizes the Christmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a living Christmas tree for $6 - $8 for the Holidays and plant it later. We have six trees in our yard from the prison.

Yup, he was reelected last year with 83% of the vote. Now he's in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural that has a special hotline phone number painted on it. You can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn't doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. He's kind of a 'Git-R Dun' kind of Sheriff.

Some of you may not be familiar with Joe Arpaio. He is the Maricopa, Arizona country sheriff. He keeps getting elected over and over again. Here are some reasons why:

He created the ' Tent City Jail'. He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights, cut off all but 'G' movies. He started chain gangs so the male inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then, he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination!

He took away cable TV until he learned there was a federal court order that required cable TV for all jails, so he hooked it back up again. BUT he only allows Disney Channel and the Weather Channel. When asked why the Weather Channel, he replied, "So they will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs!"

He doesn't allow inmates to have coffee anymore since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them, "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton....if you don't like it, don't come back!"

He bought Newt Gingrich's lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied, "A Democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place!"

More On The Arizona Sheriff:

With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees just set a new record), the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed wire- surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their govt-issue pink boxer shorts. On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted inside the tents, in which temperatures reached 138 degrees the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.

"It feels like we are in a furnace.", said James Zanzot, an inmate who has lived in the tents for a year. "It's inhumane." The tough-guy sheriff, who created the tent city and long ago began making his prisoners wear pink and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. He told inmates on Wednesday: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents, too. And they have to wear full combat gear, but they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths!"

Way to go, Sheriff! Maybe if all prisons were like this one, there would be a lot less crime and/or repeat offenders. Criminals should be punished for their crimes - not live in luxury until it's time for their parole, only to go out and commit another crime so they can get back in to live on taxpayers' money and enjoy things taxpayers can't afford to have for themselves.

Sheriff Joe was just reelected Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On April 4, 2008, Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix asked the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division to investigate the "discriminatory harassment and improper stops, searches and arrests" by Sheriff Araipo's deputies in his crackdown on illegal immigrants. Gordon, alongside civil rights and immigrant-rights activists, must be upset that the Sheriff does not recognize Phoenix as a sanctuary city.

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