CONSERVATIVE voters have much at stake this November’s general elections, but few feel this as keenly as the members of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Posse. The posse is a 1,000-strong force of volunteers who buy their own police uniforms, guns and, in some cases, their own marked patrol cars. For more than 20 years members have served as unpaid auxiliaries for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a law-and-order showman who styles himself “America’s toughest sheriff”.
Mr Arpaio, a gruff 84-year-old, won election as sheriff of Maricopa County—a sprawling, sun-baked tract of Arizona that includes the city of Phoenix and is home to nearly 4m people—in 1992, cruising to re-election five times. He is a frequent guest on conservative television and talk radio, earning fame for housing county prisoners in a Tent City where temperatures have been known to reach 145F (63ºC), for making inmates wear pink underwear and feeding them meals whose average cost is between 15 and 40 cents, and for establishing what he boasts are the “world’s first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs”.
Critics single him out for other reasons, notably federal court rulings finding that he...Continue reading
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