Part Two: Joe Arpaio: America's Favorite Concentration Camp Operator

I ate a lot of meat with my hands. Oh, good hand meat. Yeah, everybody's good hand meat. Yeah yeah, now it was my wife brought back some leftovers which I shoved into my face. It was delicious. Yeah, you weigh a handmade. I drank a bunch of creed um. We're both ready to kick off and talk about Sheriff Joe R. Pio in the New Millennium. Noah, very exciting, very exciting. So Joe started off the twenty one century

with a bang. In two thousand, he launched his jail Cam, one of the very first live stream websites, with the stated hope that people would see how horrible his jails were and thus avoid committing crimes. Now, why he did it. He did it as a publicity stunt. He is ahead of the eight ball on this one. You know, if you're live streaming in two thousand, you are on the ground floor. You know, that's about earlier, Mr Beast. Yeah. So by this point, Joe's deputies had already blatantly entrapped

at least one person. And the degree to which he actually saw jail cam as a provincial strategy is debatable. I might argue that this was an early example of the cruelty is the point style logic and mass American politics. You know, Uh, the cameras were not there to scare criminals. They were there to entertain Americans who wanted to see people they had other rised. Joe knew this, and he knew that providing suffering porn to the masses was could

be a key part of his continued relevance. The first day his jail cams went online, more than three million people tried to visit. Now, if you drop a video today that gets three million views in its first day, that's not bad in one. No, like this is two thousand, Like that's huge trip. That's the entire internet. That's the whole internet, and it's the website goes down immediately. It takes them a long time to be able to like

handle that kind of strain. Initially, four cameras made up the jail Cam program, which allowed visitors to view detainees being led into jail, being fingerprinted, and being taken to their holding areas. Quite frustratingly, Joe claims that a private company paid for the project, and I have not found

more information on who that was. In an interview with The New York Times shortly after the cameras were installed, Joe claimed, we get hundreds of emails from all over the world and love it and feel it's a great deterrent. When people pointed out that the folks shown on his cameras were all innocent until proven guilty, he actually had a pretty smart response. Unfortunately, quote Sheriff our Pio compares the unfiltered viewing with news photographs of crime suspects or

even the televised chase involving O. J. Simpson. He wasn't even arrested yet. The sheriff said, what's wrong with it? In a jail which is fucked up moral object, but is a good response, like a smart you know, the back to the three million for a second. Maybe that's just I mean, first of all, who knows if that figure is true? And secondly, maybe you just got like a a denial of service attack. He got something awful

went after it. Yeah, Like, I'm sorry, I don't think like the entirety of the two thousand Internet was like let me, I mean I was on the Internet and two thousand. Yeah. Same, You know, I don't think the entirety of the two thousand Internet was like let me check out this suffering form. That just doesn't seem true. It gets that number gets reported by a lot of news agencies covering him at the time, but I think

they are relying on him for those numbers. Um, I have no way of but I have I also have no way of verifying what the real numbers were. It does seem to have been popular, um and will well, I'll explain the degree to which it was popular in just a second here. But yeah, I think you're right. Obviously, when you're only getting your only source for the number is Joe R. Pio, you have to question that source. And again, it's kind of frustrating the degree to which

a lot of people don't. That said, if you're writing about if you're working with the New York Times and writing about the Internet in the year two thousand, you are probably fifty seven years old. Don't understand that about the internect So that is true. Now. That New York Times article ended with a whiff of frustration from Joe, noting that while the website had a disclaimer warning viewers that they might see extreme and disturbing situations, what happened

on camera was mostly boring paperwork. Joe seems to have been frustrated by this, and he discussed wanting to add audio and expand the reach of the cameras to make it more interesting, and he did. In two thousand one, cameras were added to the men's and women's restroom's one right, So then it becomes literal jail porn. Yeah, yeah, that's

exactly where this is headed. Noah, your instincts of people. Immediately, people with very specific fetishes realized that there were cameras in the ladies room of a jail and started linking them on porn sites like obviously, that's what's going to happen. Now. This pretty quickly became a problem for the department, and the spokesperson claimed that stated that inmates were only visible

due to a misalignment, which was soon correct. They also claimed that no women could be seen using the toilet, which I find questionable at best best given the previous statement. Um. The most disturbing part of the whole saga is this line from a write up by the Los Angeles Times. Jack McIntyre and an attorney for the Maricopa County Sheriff's office, told the Arizona Republic that a short partition blocked the

camera's view of the toilet itself. No juveniles would have been displayed unless quote, they look older and lie to us. So there's no child import unless a kid lies, or if they look old, maybe it's a hard fourteen. Oh god, So America's sheriff is fresh off of of of setting up a teenage pyromaniac for a fake assassination attempt. If this is in part one, haven't listen. It is now become America because sheriff has now become a child pornographer. Well,

you can't prove it. No, you can't prove that any children were on those cameras, and if they were it's because they lied or they looked older. So no one committed a crime, is the important thing here? Yeah, Okay, So in two thousand four, a court ruled that Sheriff Joe's jail cameras violated the rights of pre trial detainees, who are again by definition, not criminals. Now for the last episode, obviously jail came to But he got what he wanted out of it, right, he got the pr boost, Right,

he got everybody covering his jail camps. That's all this is. You know, you want to get You want to get a couple of news cycles out of it. That's all you ever hoped for. You don't care if the program gets declared illegal a couple of years later. It's the same with the assassination attempt. That guy was exonerated four years later. Our pios still got the news cycle. That's all he ever wanted. Now, for the last several years, Joe made repeated claims that he could easily become the

governor of Arizona if he wanted. And I don't think this is him lying. He was, for like a decade or more, the most popular politician in Arizona. Very consistently he there's a good chance he would have been able to win the governorship if he decided to run for it, but despite solid polling in two thousand two, he decided not to run, saying I want to go out into the sunset. As a law enforcement officer. He would remain

in office for fourteen more years. So I don't know why it's weird, right that he doesn't go for governor. I think it's maybe because he would have had to do ship other than just like torture people and do news interviews. No, that's the not the why I said what I said. What because he this guy was still in office till Yeah, it's fucking bonkers. My reaction, it is, it is out of its mind. How long this motherfucker is in doing his job. Like this guy has been

like definitely on some like Neo Abu Grabel torturing at minimum. Yeah, then it's like there's a fake assassination plot that puts uh innocent man, you know, in these sensities for four years. Then there's like, okay, maybe it was only he was running an adult porn site. There were probably no children, photographs, maybe jail camps, and then this dude keeps going for more more than a dozen years. I can't believe it. It's it's outrageous, it's really fucked up, and I have

to give credit. Like you're going to note that we have a lot of sources for this episode, Like half of them are different articles from the Phoenix New Times, who for like twentysomething years like bit onto this guy like a bulldog and and deeply reported every fucked up thing he did. Um. And eventually it did matter. It did not matter soon enough. As a journalist, you don't want to wait twenty two years or so for this

to have an impact. But it does eventually breakthrough. Um. And credit goes to them because they really like they had some people who were who stuck to him like glue. Um. Now it's here, I should note Noah, as I talked about briefly teased really last episode. In the nineteen nineties,

Joe R. Pios started a posse. Now this was what it sounds like, a group of volunteer amateurs, untrained, who were given certain law enforcement powers and partnered off with real cops to do cop ship, or at least Joe's version of that. Some of these men were allowed to carry firearms much of what they did was publicity driven.

It became an annual spectacle from members of Joe's Posse to patrol malls and shopping centers armed during the holiday season, Joe's Posse would max out at about thirty five men, many of whom were taught to breach rooms and again carry weapons. They're doing like armed entry trainings and ship. What the hell? This guy's whole job is to run

the jail. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's got he's managing the Sheriff's for partment, which does law enforcement ship right, Like if the town doesn't have a copse of its own, that it's the sheriff's deputies they call, you know, sure, but these guys weren't, like basically they were. This isn't like the Phoenix p D. No, Like this is Phoenix p D. Gets very angry at them in a number of occasions. This guy's main gig is to run the jail. Instead, he gets yeah, like volunteers, Yeah, to patrol the mall

on Christmas. Don't worry, they do what they're fucked up shit. In two thousand four, news broke about a prostitution sting carried out in November of two thousand three, that, in the County Attorney's words, violated accepted standards of professionalism. Now, what this means in practice is that, as part of one of his big ongoing media pushes, Sheriff Joe sent dozens of undercover deputies and members of his posse sixty men in total, a mix of death beats and POSSE

members to do a huge bust on sex workers. They arrested almost sixty women in tenor so John's At first this looked like normal are pioship. He held a big press conference, there were news stories he claimed that like this was the largest single day bust of sex workers

in county history. But then the real story trickled out from the Phoenix New Times quote the County Attorney's office said that some undercover deputies and certain POSSE members engaged in oral sexual contacts, breast fondling, genital contact, masturbation, nudity, and other behavior which is contrary to professional law enforcement and legitimate public policy. The techniques undermine prosecution by reducing

the likelihood of conviction. A key factor to note is that all that is needed to establish commission of a crime in a prostitution case is for two people to discuss the exchange of money for sex. No sex act need occur, nor does anyone have to remove a shred of clothing. Therefore, prostitution cases are the simplest to make virtual no brainers for cops. Here's an example of how POSSE member Glynn Kaufman handled an encounter with an alleged

prostitute last October twenty nine. The Kaufman drove to a massage parlor on West Thomas Road and agreed to pay forty dollars for a thirty minute rubbed down. A woman in her early fifties told Kaufman to take off his clothes. Kaufman agreed. He then lay faced first on a massage

table and the woman began rubbing his back. She started to chew on my left ear, put her tongue in my ear, and whispered words to the effect of me not to be surprised if she ran her tongue over my balls in my shaft until I came all over her, Kaufman states and his signed police report. She told me that for an additional hundred dollars, she did the massage in the nude and would give me oral sex. I told her I would get a hundred dollars. I got off the table, took the hundred dollars out of my

trouser pocket and gave it to her. At this point, a crime had been committed and Kaufman should have made the bust, but the Sheriff's possemember was far from done. He contendued to pay for sexual act acts from her for quite some time. The article goes into much more detail about what this possemember did and what other posse members and deputies did. I'm not going to belabor the point.

The gist of it is that our Pio's men, a mix of cops and volunteers, were straight up using prostitutes for sex and then arresting them once they got their rocks off so they didn't have to pay. That's what they were doing. Oh my god, Oh my god. So this is wild. That's incredible. So okay, So this guy starts out his career in drug enforcement pretending to be a pimp yep, and then then maybe what they called

the treatment, the full circle. Fifty years later, he's sending his crew out to get blow jobs and then instead of paying for them, arresting the blow jobs. Yeah, that is my God. The good thing is all of these women had their charges dropped, like no one actually because what the police we're doing and these posss were doing was blatantly criminal, right, like, yeah, nobody actually got in trouble.

I mean some possible they still probably had to send Wait a minute, they got the do they have to go to our Pio's tense city and you know, yeah I think they didn't. Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, great, they got their charges dropped, but still it fucking sucked for whatever the twelve twenty four hours it was. Yeah, it's definitely not trying to say it was not horribly fucked up, but at least none of these women wound up with fucking felonies, you know. Um, but yeah, it's

like just incredibly fucked up and it shows. We'll we'll talk more about his posse later, Noah, there's more to say about this posse. But like that's the kind of shift the posse got up to. Oh my god. Now, two thousand six is the year when things really started to shift for Joe R. Pio and he became the man we know him as today. Again. He'd started his career focusing on is a sheriff, focusing on the cry times he'd gone after as a law man, drugs and

sex and violence in the like. But two thousand six is when he really started to shift his focus towards immigrants. One important fact to note about Joe R. Pile is that while he's always exhibited a degree of personal racism, racism was not initially central to his political campaigns. He ran for sheriff the first time by making two points. One was that the existing sheriff was shitty and wasting money, and the other was that he could reduce crime by

doing drug war bullshit. By the time he settled into his third term, though, the United States had gone through some pretty significant shifts in two thousand one. You may remember this Noah. In two thousand one, the Tim Allen movie Big Trouble debut, and it was followed shortly thereafter by a terrorist attack on New York City, and both of these events changed our nation forever. Umm Allenvie was the big one. Oh yeah, totally, yeah, yeah. The war was ever the same after that. The War Tim Allen

continues until this day. Until this day, Tim Allen hiding in the mountains of Afghan Stand with the Tim Ala band. Yeah we can, we can workshop that idea. Wow, that is a that was Are you a dad? That that dad joke was really him? Alan Ban? Come on man uh I think it could be a fun ABC show. Tim Allen is like a like a like a conservative suburban dad who through some quirk of circumstance moves into Kandahar. We had we didn't make that work. It gives a

whole new definition to tool time. Yeah. So um. Obviously, by the time Sheriff Joe is in his third term, everyone's worried about terrorism. Right, Drugs are not as big as a concern. You know, crime is down, like two thousand six, crime is down to its lowest level in generations. Right, So terrorism is like the big thing everybody's freaking out over.

And the right wing media is particularly warning people in the early aughts that a whole bunch of terrorists are sure any day now going to cross into the country via Mexico, despite the fact that this has never happened to my knowledge, it's the thing they keep harping over. And over the next few years, the number of undocumented immigrants into the United States began to rise, and by two thousand six, border crisis was a term Democratic and

Republican politicians were dropping constantly. That year, Joe Biden boasted about voting to add seven miles to the US Mexico border fence. So the immigration and like the border becomes a huge political hot button. By two thousand six, um

and again, crime itself is down really low. So the only way that that Joe R. Pio can tickle the amygdala of his electorate and make it seem like he's protecting them from something is to go after immigrants, and in this case he's specifically protecting them from demographic change because Arizona, as this election showed, Arizona was rapidly growing less white, a fact that horrified all of these retirees who were in a lot of cases pretty racist and

made up Joe's base. Um, he decided to use a state human trafficking law to go after smuggler who were bringing immigrants into the country. But being Joe R. Pio, he found a way to give this application of the law and added twists to make it much more harmful. From the New Yorker, the law's target is, of course smugglers known as coyotes, but Opio and Thomas who is the the attorney for the state, charge undocumented immigrants the

coyotes cargo as co conspirators in their own smuggling. This is a class four felity which makes the subjects ineligible for bond, so they can't leave his tent jail and is one reason why our pios jails are so full. Maricopa is the only one of Arizona's fifteen counties that interprets the law this way, and the Sheriff's office is the only agency among the twenty five and Maricopa that does so. The other's figure and a few are vocal about it that their limited resources are better spent fighting

serious crime. So again, he's not super popular at this time with a lot of other law enforcement because he's keeping the jails that the whole county has to use. Phoenix p D needs to use these jails too, filled with random people who are just trying to live their lives. He's charging with class four felonies because they're smuggling themselves into the country. Yeah. The using the human smuggling statute to charge the smugg old, not the smuggler, that is

some next level Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you really wanted to get into it. You could make some you could we have a conversation about the ways in which human trafficking laws aimed at protecting sex trafficking victims are used to harm people who are themselves sex workers and

in some cases even victims of sex trafficking. Um, this is not the only time, and he's not the only law man who's interpreted a law in this way, but he is kind of he's on the cutting edge here, and he's not popular among cops around him for doing this. One of the people he piste off was George Gascon, who was the police chief in Mesa, which is basically a suburb of Phoenix, but it's a big city. He's about half a million people in Mesa. Gascon did not

like our Pio. He was brought into the job from Los Angeles in order to reduce crime, and he decided a big part of that would be to build trust with communities who traditionally did not trust the cops. This particularly included Latinos, many of whom were immigrants or had family who were and were thus terrified of people like Joe R. Pio. Gascon told The New Yorker quote, they need to believe that you're ethical and honest, that you're

not the enemy. I'm not an open borders man. I believe we have a problem with illegal immigration, but I want to make sure we don't throw away the Constitution in the process of solving it. Now I'm not obviously, I don't think I would agree with George Gascon on much, but just the point that, like other cops who are not open borders types think that, like what Joe is doing is fucked up, and they say so at the time, like he's not he's not he's not surfing on a

wave of of of only positive response. Other cops are like kind of coming after him in this period, which yeah, yeah, I mean, look, it's like he's playing a cop on TV, right, Yeah, And so the actual cops are like, bro, what are

you doing? I mean, this guy failed the test to be a border patrol agent, Like he literally couldn't handle it, right, And so then you know, all these years later, he's got to pretend he's got it now now that he's he's got some power, he's got to swing his dick like he's uh, like he's some cartoon version of a border patrol agent. Meanwhile, the guys that really need to do the gig are like, come on, man, like you

got you gotta stop this. I'm just blown away. I'm a little bit tongue tied here, but like I just can't believe. I can't believe it. I mean, I remember hearing about it, and I still can't believe it. It's outrageous. Now, when Joe R. Pio started doing, he starts, he takes his posse and he uses them to do these massive

sweeps of immigrant neighborhoods. And again he's going into other police departments turf because he's he's the sheriff of the county, so he's not generally you're not supposed to do ship unless you know Meso or Phoenix asks you to come in right like you're supposed to be focusing mainly on like sheriff's department stuff. Um, he starts sending not just his officers, but hundreds of volunteer randos into other people's

cities to do sweeps of immigrant neighborhoods. They're busting into like auto shops and grocery stores, pulling people out of their jobs and taking them to spend years in his tent city like blong people out of their Yeah, the blue job guys. Blow job guys are like, okay, cool, we've we've busted, We've gotten some free blow jobs from prostitutes and then put them in jail. Uh. And then aren't time to destroy some families? Oh my god. Yeah, he's an outrageous piece of ship. But you know who

won't tear people away from their families? Noah? M products. Well, the good news about Raytheon, Noah, is that they'll get you with your family. See, this is the beauty of We like to talk about hexagen on on this show here as an explosive compound. If you want to make sure that the whole family goes, you want hexagen. That's the hexagen difference. And that's the Raytheon guarantee. All right,

here's some ads. We're back, uh and and just just having a lovely time thinking about show our pile and the fact that he's now has gangs of goons ripping people away from their families and their jobs. Now this again, cops tend to be they're kind of like cats. Right when you you got a cat, it has a territory. You throw another cat in that territory. They're probably going to fight, right. Cops are kind of the same way, and Joe R. PIO is really fucking with other cops territory.

He's coming into these communities, he's fucking things up. He's damaging, like in a lot of cases, hurting people's businesses because they're reliant on these people. So Gascon, the the the police chief of Mesa, gets really angry about this ship and he tells the Maricopa County Sheriff's office that these raids are not welcome in Mesa. Unfortunately, Gascon does not have the power to stop our Pio. See, the sheriff

of Maricopa County has a wide ranging purview. Um, there's all these little communities without their own police forces, and state law gives Joe the power to police those towns. But his deputies can go and do law enforcement ship anywhere in the county, even if other sheriffs or even if O they're like police chiefs don't want his men around the best part of this is that, you know, police chiefs are appointed generally, sheriffs are elected, so they

can't be fired. Like, no matter how much he pisses people off, unless the voters kick him off. He's staying, and the voters like never, don't vote him out for you know, they love this ship. The New Yorker wrote about a raid in October of two thousand eight. Quote, he sent sixty detectives and posse volunteers into Mesa after midnight. The plan was to raid the Mesa city Hall in the public library to look for undocumented Yeah. Yeah, the fucking librarian city all so he sent the blowjob posse

into the city. All yeah, to look for undocumented janitors who, according to the Sheriff's office, were suspected of identification. Theft Gascon was not notified beforehand, or Pio claims he did inform someone at Mesa police headquarters about the raid. A Mesa police officers spotted a large group of heavily armed men and flak jackets silently down down bark Gascon. When I asked about the episode, took a deep breath. It

was a very, very dangerous scenario, he said. My entire law enforcement career, I have never heard of anything close to this. His officers managed to identify the armed men, but then had trouble getting a straight story from them. The rate eventually went forward, monitored by the Mesa police and resulted in the arrests of three middle aged cleaning women are Pios. Press release said that another thirteen suspected

illegal immigrants were arrested later at their homes. So not just like fucked up more, that was a really reckless like you could have You could have had two different sets of cops shooting each other up in the city hall for this, Like, oh my god, this makes like the movie l A Confidential, look like a model of effective policing. It is hard not to look like a good cop next to Joe r Pia, Oh my god, Like Rudy Giuliani looks all of a sudden, like you know,

a model mayor and law enforcement official. Joe Rizzo in Philadelphia all of a sudden looks like, you know, uh, not a racist authoritarian, but all of a sudden a model office because they don't have just gangs of armed goons busting into city hall to arrest janitors. Like, oh god, it's so fucking bad now. That New Yorker article I found included some incredible context on the PR game. Joe

had by that point gotten extremely good at playing. He'd hired an expert, Lisa Allen, who was the wife of one of his officers and someone who would prove to be an extremely savvy public relations expert. She was hired in nineteen nine, soon after Joe took office. When Joe would institute a new rule in his tin jail, it was Lisa's job to make sure that rule went viral. A good case study would be the pink underwear. In the early aughts, Joe started issuing pink underpants to all

of his inmates. Depending on who asked him, the purpose of this was to stop theft, to emasculate the inmates, or because the color pink has colmbing properties. The real purpose was spectacle, because people would make news articles about the Joe's He's given his pink underwear all these hardened criminals. Uh. It was Lisa Allen's job to get the maximum spectacle

out of every decision Joe made. The Phoenix New Times writes about one such moment in two thousand five, captured for a documentary about Sheriff Joe, she practically directs our Pio as he oversees the media spectacle of moving about two thousand inmates to a new jail, handcuffed together and stripped to their are Pio mandated pink underwear. I want you to look tough, Alan tells Joe as the prisoners mark past. Just stand there and watch him tap your foot.

I knew, Lisa knew the minute we put these guys in the pink underwear, that will be what goes on air our Pio tells the filmmakers after the inmate parade. Do you really think that no one is going to show these guys in their pink underwear? Again? That's why he's doing it. And he's got this PR lady who you know, PR people are the greatest evil in the world.

I'm of the opinion, but she gets yeah, I mean she she fucking is a huge part of this of his six she works with them for like twenty something years, um, and she's constantly he's in the news. How does she spin? Like the armed attack on city Hall in order to get a couple of janitors. We arrested a bunch of illegal immigrants. They were breaking the law, committed felonies, dangerous people. Got him off, got him off the street. No tolerance and Joe R. Pio's Americopa County. Yeah. In two thousand

and eight, Barack Obama was elected President. Joe R. Pile was not happy with this, and he immediately went on the war path, demanding an investigation into the president's birth certificate. He eventually launched one himself through the sheriff's department staffed by POSSE members. Postea, he was the O G. Here's

the O G. Not but he's he's he's early in that. Yeah, Like when Trump is starting to like whine about the birth certificate, he launches he sees that this is the right wing caused celeb and he opens an investing gation staffed by his posses for his sheriff's department into So it's like, okay, guys, you smoked it on the on the prostitute and entrapment. Uh move, you killed it on the attacking city hall. Next up, find Barack Obama, instigate

the president certificate. Oh my god. You know, uh, my old man Say is a book author and uh actually wrote a book about Obama's dad uh and his his trip uh here to the United States. And it's like this completely moving, amazing uh the story and uh there's no question, unlike with Joe Pio's family there, you know, there's no question about whether you know he came here legally, and it's just it's so vile that, you know, the first black president, they just immediately try to turn him

into you know, the other he's a dangerous foreigner. Like yeah, it's that. You can't we can't say enough about how disgusting the whole fucking berther thing is and our PIO. I think the thing that's grossest to me about this is he doesn't start this. He just cashes in on it. He just sees, oh, we can make we can make bank on this ship. People are ready to eat this up if I if I open an investigation and and he knew, and crime is way down, crime is way down in my uh in my area. You know. Yeah,

I've done I've done every stunt in the book. Now I got one more card to play, investigate the president. And we have some footage behind the scenes of him and Lisa Allen talking about this PR stunt and we knew Number one, Joe is the entire time bragging about how many UH donations he's going to get from racists, Like he's just laughing about how much money he's going to get sent over this, right, Like what a what a big profit thing? It's going to be for him.

Lisa Allen makes fun of him because of how racist and dumb this is. In a meeting filmed for a two thousand and fourteen documentary, she says, you might as well go to your press conference in big old clown shoes and a big old nose. Um. Yeah, his own pr person. In two thousand ten, Joe started a webcast and Lisa told viewers during this like kind of proto podcast thing, sheriff. Joe is referred to as a media hog.

He's referred to as a media whore. But there's always been a reason behind it, and the most obvious reason was political power. But over the years and morphed into

something more for Joe. When you read enough articles about him that include interviews with people that knew when worked with him for periods of time, significant periods of time, it becomes clear that sometime in the mid odds, right around when he pivoted heart on immigration, he got terminal viral brain disease, which is what happens when someone gets addicted to causing outrage online. Today it's better known as Glenn Greenwaltz syndrome. But Joe R. Pile, I'm sorry, but

Joe R. Pilot. Yeah, let me be clear, Glenn Greenwald has never sent train has never set teams. This true of armed Yahoo's into city all that is. And and Glenn Greenwald, let me make this clear, has never sent posses into entrap sex workers. No, he has not. He has not. That is that is an area where Joe R. Pio has an edge on him. Um. I also don't think Joe R. Pio is nice to dogs, and I'm fairly certain that Glenn Greenwald is great with dogs, so we're being fair here. But he does have this, he

has this. I'm gonna read you a quote from a two nine New York article, and I think gets what I'm trying to say here. There is a there's clearly something going on to his head that I think is the result of how bad chasing fame in this viral troll way is for you. Right, It's this thing. We see it in a million public people today, right, Like basically every public person has a version of this this going on to their brain. But our pile gets it

really early. He might be the first online man, you know, like, right, So I'm gonna quote from this New Yorker article. I think it makes the point well. Mary Rose Wilcox, who is Latina and the only Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, remembers a quite different sheriff. Our pile was not like this before. She told me he was flamboyant.

But I don't know this guy. For Wilcox, The last straw came this February, when our pile marched more than two hundred undocumented immigrants shackled together to a new tent jail, parading them before news cameras. Our pile had staged prisoner marches before. In two thousand and five, he forced nearly seven hundred prisoners wearing nothing but pink underwear and flipflops, to shuffle four blocks through the Arizona heat pink handcuffed together to a new jail. When they arrived, one prisoner

was to cut a pink ribbon for the cameras. This elaborate degradation, which is remembered fondly by Sheriff Joe's fans, was ostensibly in the name of security. The men were strip searched both before and after the march, but our Pile also told reporters I put them on the streets so everybody could see them. He marched another nine hundred this April. So I don't know. It's interesting to me

what Wilcox reports. Right, this woman who has no vested interest in making him sound good, who has been a political on the different side of the aisle for him for a while, but was friendly with him, and says that like this changes him. And there's another quote I'm going to read from that article about Joe ore Pio hasn't a Colbert Report appearance in two thousand nine. Um, and it's it's kind of gross. Uh yeah, I'm just gonna read it. We were in New York and he

was about to be interviewed on the Colbert Report. Is this the green room? He asked? These walls are blue? Are they going to powder me? The producer, an intense young woman, persisted, try to be funny. She said, he will be funnier than you are. Pile shrugged. He wasn't familiar with Colbert Show. I'm pretty funny, he said. From a rumpledmanilla envelope, he pulled two pairs of pink boxer shorts. I brought the underwear, he said. The producer stared. An

assistant looked on helplessly. Then the producer reached for the shorts. Thanks, she said, do you want me? Don't you want me to take these on the show? No, our pile looked nonplussed. Well, at least let me sign him. He autographed the shorts, one pair bear out of jail and one for the producer's son. The Colbart segment was, Yeah, it's just like that's something wrong with a guy too, Like not that you should feel bad for this monster, but like that's

not that's something wrong with a dude. Symbol of a broken brain. Yeah, your brain. Yeah, you know, I was thinking earlier about um, about Michael Flynn, the general turn trumpst maniac, and how so many people that served with him in Afghanistan interact were totally baffled by who this guy had become and that you know, he was a

little bit uh you know, you know, original thinker. Let's say, uh in the in the mid two thousand's that but by the time he had gotten uh you know, into the tens, just this guy's brain cracked in half and just became like this weird conspiracy peddling you know, anything for filing troll. It's so weird. It is like you get addicted to the outrage, you get addicted to the to the trolling, and you start to maybe believe your own nonsense. I don't know, it's just it's so weird.

And there's so many of these guys now out out today that are like, you know, if they're like Greg Kelly or Charlie Kirk or or you know, your boy Ben Shapiro like that are just addicted to being horrible morons. It's crazy their brains have broken. Yeah, It's it's really bleak because I don't know, you know, I've heard a number of theories about like guys like this who have this broadly normal career for a while and then like lose their mind at a certain point, seemingly, um, guys

like Flynn and stuff. And I don't know, I I think the Internet is doing a kind of damage to our brains that the present state of neuroscience isn't well suited towards analyzing, but we will eventually come to understand the scope in a pretty profound way. Like there's something yeah, yeah, there's like forget long COVID. It's like there's like long

Twitter brain. Yeah, long Twitter brain. Yeah. Um, now that Cold Bear segment was brutally awkward and first off, kind of frustrating that Steven had him on in the first place. Our Pio did it to plug one of his memoirs, and Colbert obliged him in that. But Joel's Joe's whole appearance on the show is very revealing. The other guests that night was kin Quinn, who was the second mate from a container ship that was famously hijacked near Somalia

that April. He was one of the guys with Captain Phillips. Right, so this guy has just gotten out of being captured and stuff. He tells his story. The audience is very moved. They give him a standing ovation, pretty normal for a guy who's just been through like a deft defying spirit experience like that. But Joe gets really jealous because this other guys getting more intention than him. So when it was his turn, he tells Stephen Colbert this, the Republic

did a poll last week Who's your hero? And I beat out Tillman. I beat all these guys. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying. He's referring to the NFL star from the Arizona Cardinals, who then went to Afghanistan and got killed shortly thereafter. You can listen in the Army hero than that guy gotten wayboard gun fights to totally happened Turkey. I could out type Pat Tillman, that's for sure, So well Sheriff, It's just such a weird brag, like this

guy just got kidnapped. Man, let him have his moment in the sun, right right, he got kidnapped by the smiling pirate. No big deal, No big deal, well Sheriff. Joe enjoyed being a celebrity sheriff, doing photo ops with every major right wing politician and showing up on TV constantly. His inmates continued to suffer. One case study was Ambrett Spencer. In two thousand eight, she was arrested for drunk driving, and months later, while her case made its way through

the court system, she got pregnant. Now at this time, when she gets pregnant, she's in treatment, she's not drinking. And Brett, who was black, was eventually sentenced and was sent to Joe R. Pios Tent City to do I think six months or something. So she goes through the late stages of her pregnancy and Joe R. Pios Tent City doctor visits prior to her incarceration confirmed that the fetus was healthy, but after a month in Sheriff Joe's custody,

she grew terribly ill. Now we don't know specifically why. That year alone, at least four other pregnant inmates reached out to the Phoenix New Times to report miscarriages or still births in our pios, tent city, tin jail, whatever you wanna call it. They suggest a wide variety of causes. The food Joe feeds as inmates was often trotting. The water well was infested with mice and mice feces since two thousand five, and mice carry the toxoplasma parasite that

can cause birth defects. Prenatal vitamins were also forbidden for pregnant inmates. To cut costs, Joe made sure to avoid hiring medical staff with proper training. The night Ambrett got sick, the nurse on duty had no prenatal education. Despite ambrett severe pain, the nurse decided her case was not an emergency. An hour later, Ambrett passed out. The nurse checked her blood pressure and realized it was fatally low. She couldn't

even get an ivy into the woman's arm. By the time Spencer was finally taken to the hospital, she had been in severe pain and kept from seeing a doctor for nearly four hours. Her child was delivered dead. The cause was placental abruption, a condition caused by internal bleeding. The treatment is immediate delivery, and this was a very late pregnancy. The baby would have probably survived if she had been taken to a hospital immediately and had the

baby delivered. The most horrifying detail about that story is that for so Joe had specific policies when his inmates gave birth that they were not allowed to hold their children after birth. It was to be taken from them immediately. The staff violated that rule in this case to let her hold her dead child. Um and direct and now I'm sure that are Pio's allies in the conservative um part of of Arizona who are pro life. Of course, we're outraged by this, uh and and hated him for

for violating their pro life principles. Right, I don't think they. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of dust stop. I mean, the Phoenix New Times made a big deal about it, but none of his voters cared. Um it did not harm him in the next election. Now, the death of Ambrett Spencer's baby did not make it into any statistics about death in Sheriff Joe's tin jail. As a rule, deaths of inmates very rarely did. In two thousand fifteen, The New Times attempted to find out how

many people actually died in his jail. They spent six months waiting for records requests from Joe R. Pio's office to no avail. Eventually, they were forced to check other government databases, where they found at least a hundred and sixty reported deaths. Quote, but that is an yeah is the minimum. That's all they were able to find evidence of, because again, Joe wouldn't give them any data on this. The Sheriff's department has deliberately obfuscated how many people are

dying in the tents jails. Oh God, the truthless seems like a very high number of people dying in we'll talk about how high it is. The truth is that no outside authority keeps track of how many people die from brutality, neglect, disease, bad health, or old age in our pios jails. Federal Judge Neil Wake twice has ruled that medical care is so deficient in the jails as to be unconstitutional. The Department of Justice supposedly monitors conditions in the jails, but has shown little or no appetite

for confronting our pile. What my research discovered is that people hang themselves in the jail at a rate that dwarfs other county lockups, and many of the deaths are classified as having occurred in the county hospital or in a cell without further explanation. People die and no one asks how, no one asks why. Ring the reign of Sheriff Joe R. Pio, research requested and provided from the Corners Office showed a hundred and fifty seven deaths in

and of itself. That number is not necessarily out of line with jail deaths and other jurisdictions, but digging into this data raises troubling questions, particularly when compared with jails across America. Suicide is an all too frequent consequence of

incarceration in jailhouse deaths across the nation. The U. S Department of Justice notes the following rates of suicide over a three year period from two thousand to two thousand two Los Angeles jails eleven percent, New York jails nine percent, Cook County jails six percent, Philadelphia jails fourteen percent, Harris County jails percent, Dade County jails six percent. Now, during that same period, the suicide rate among jail deaths and

Sheriff Joe R. Pio's lock ups was twenty four percent. Yeah. In two thousand eight, two reporters from the East Valley Tribune Americopa County paper did a five part study into the CSOs operations. They found that due to the sheer amount of resources are Pio devoted to going after immigrants, response times to emergency calls to the Sheriff's office had increased by a significant margin, arrest rates had dropped, and dozens of violent crimes had not been investigated. The series

won a Pulitzer four months after it was published. Joe R. Pio one reelection, Oh my god, this guy really is. He's a supervillain. He's causing more crime than he's then then he's uh, then he's you know fixing or that he's you know stopping. He's getting people killed left and right,

which just uh suicide rate. He's torturing these people at minimum sending out crazy posses of armed yahoo's to terrorize these cities and neighborhoods, and even then its own city hall, you know, denying pregnant women medical treatment and making them eat mouse species water. This guy is like what is it? You know, he's like, you know, a psalm Uh. Bad guy. He's like he's a mustache twirling fucking monster. Holy shit. Yeah, I mean this guy was bad, but I didn't realize

it was like this. Yeah, it's and and to be clear, it's of jailed deaths or suicide. It's not right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want to make that clear for listeners. So people aren't like a quarter of people are killing No, it's not that that would be that would have been quite a bit of a different story. Um to a quarter of me has died inside listening to this. Yeah, yeah, it's it's outrageous. Um, it's just horribly fucked up. But you know what's not horribly fucked up. It's the ads.

It's the sponsors of this podcast. No that that that's what's fine and dandy. We're back. Okay. So in two thousand nine, Barack Obama's Justice Department opened a massive investigation into the mc s O. Among other things, they found that deputies had used stunned guns repeatedly on prisoners who were already strapped into a restraint chair. Two men had died, costing the county more than fourteen million dollars in settlements.

By two thousand nine, the brutality of Joe and his deputies had cost the county more than forty three million dollars. Merricopa County Jail generated lawsuits at a rate that was unprecedented in the nation. One Phoenix New Times investigation found that between two thousand four and two thousand eight, the county jails of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston, which combined holds six times as many inmates as Maricopa Jail,

were sued a total of forty three times. During the same period, our PIOS department was sued almost twenty two hundred times in federal two hundred. Yeah. M oh my god, Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, it's it's it's out of it's goddamn mind. Like that's when you compare, because like those are nice jails. It's not like that. It's not like fucking Los Angeles County Lockup. Is the Shangri law. Like that's how bad Joe hard Bios jail is. The l A County Sheriff's

department is notoriously fun horribly racist. Yeah, really bad like Sheriff's department. But like dozens of people, dozens of sheriff's deputies have been charged with all kinds of nonsense. But like forty three lawsuits and that's New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston combined to twenty two hundred for Americo paccaunty. Like when you put it, it's just out it's a

fucking outrageous. Also, like you imagine being like, okay, you're like you go to law school, you study really hard, and you know, you you stay up all night, you know, trying to race those tests. You work hard to pass the bar, and you finally get a plumb gig in you know whatever Phoenix or Mas or what have you, and you know it's your first job, and your job is to defend Joe R. Pios crazy evil ten jail over over and over and over and over and over again.

It's so yeah, there's not enough liquor in the damn world to do that job. Yeah all right, so yeah, lawsuits in federal court, The New Yorker rights. Remarkably, our Pio has paid almost no political price for running jails that are so patently dangerous and inadvertently expensive. Indeed, until recently, there were few local or state politicians willing to criticize him publicly. Those who have, including members of the county Board of Supervisors, which concrols his budget, tend to find

themselves under investigation by the Sheriff's office. Local journalists superturb our Pio have also been targeted. The Phoenix New Times ran an investigation of our Pio's real estate dealings that included our pios home addressed, which he argued was possibly

a violation of state law. When the paper revealed that it had received and impossibly brought subpoena demanding, among other things, the internet records of all visitors to its website in the previous two and a half years, Sheriff's deputies staged late night raids on the homes of Michael Lacey and James Larkin, executives of Village Voice Media, which owns The

New Times. The deputies arrested both men, they said, for violating grand jury subpoena The county attorney declined to prosecute, and it turned out that the subpoenas were issued unlawfully.

Outspoken citizens also take their chances. Last December, remarks critical of our pile were offered during the public comment period, and a board of supervisors, eating and four members of the audience were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for clapping their cases are pin he can I ask you a question, where is Arizona's very popular Senator John McCain and all this? That is a good question. I should where is John McCain, holy cow man? Like you know,

you're the You're the king of this ship. They didn't seem to like each other. Joa. Pio wouldn't call him a hero. I guess, yeah, but come on, let's see. I found it. I found an easy Central article John McCain saw through Jora Pios Bologny. Um, let's see. I don't know if he actually did anything. Let's see here. Um, it's listing all of the different Sorry, I'm not trying to derail your stuff, but I'm just like, this is a good question. Though, I wanted where is John McCain

in this? Yeah? Where after Trump pardoned our Pio. The Senator issued a statement saying Mr. A. Pile was found guilty of Chris and Okay, so yeah, I don't think he did anything. He did much earlier. I don't think any at the end. Yeah, I don't think anything. Um, yeah, I I don't I don't think. Yeah. It seems like all of the ship that he uh he well let's see here, Oh no, no, you know what in two thousand twelve. Um, it seems like he had made a

number of comments in two thousand twelve attacking Jo R. Pio. Okay, that's still pretty late in the game. Yeah, that's kind of um yeah, ye, but definitely he did. He did speak out against him over all of the sex well some of the sex crimes stuff. Um, okay, all right, well maybe yeah, I definitely not early on, but he he before the Trump years, McCain did eventually speak out against him. It looks like, so, I don't know, I'm not going to make a comprehensive statement about it one

way or the other. Certainly, I mean, legally, obviously, he state congressman can't do anything about a sheriff, but he can politically. You said this guy was a political figure. He couldn't be. That's why he was. He was he was too popular. Yeah. Well, and we're about to talk about why more wasn't done because obviously a lot of Republicans let this happen, right, and encouraged it and made hay out of it, right, But so did Democrats. And

this is where it gets really frustrating. So President Obama is in office for like the last eight years that Joe R. Pio was sheriff, when he is getting repeatedly like attack like, repeatedly shown to be breaking the law, and Obama's Justice Department issues repeated condemnations of conditions in our Pious jail, but they don't do anything to him. There are theories as to why he was allowed to

thumb his nose at federal judges for so long. One of them involves his very close relationship with Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security from two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen. Before that, she was the U S Attorney for Arizona. When conditions in Our Pios jails were investigated by the d o J for the first time in the nineteen nineties, we quoted from that report in the first episode but it was horrific, and it noted

that his treatment of inmates was unconstitutional. Despite this, Janet did very little to penalize our Pile. She held what the New Yorker described as a friendly press conference with him, where they announced a settlement with the county sheriff's office. During that press conference, the Arizona Republic described her as quote trading compliments with the sheriff. Napolitano later became the state attorney general, where she actively encouraged our Pio to

run his jails however he wanted. When she ran for governor in two thousand two, our Pile backed her even though she was a Democrat. He made a campaign commercial for her that some suggest was crucial in her narrow victory. It was not until two thousand eight, in her second term, that she took any kind of stance against our Pio, ordering that one point six million dollars in funding to his department they used to investigate felonies, not immigration. Joe

later got the funding reinstated. And yeah, there's a lot of like he's they don't he's not. He's treated with kid gloves, even though he's directly disobeying federal judges in a lot of cases repeatedly refusing to fix problems with

his jails. Now that happens my my city police department in Portland police department are like in contempt of federal courts that have like like the FBI and SHIP have like ruled that they're like their use of force policies are wildly out of whack, there being like way too violent in ways that are like they've been ordered to

reform and they keep refusing to. Like, so this does happen outside of Arizona, right that you have a police department or a sheriff doing something that a federal judge says isn't okay, and just no one does anything about it. But Joe is like the most blatant example of that. I understand. How can you? Yeah, there's like people being killed in the strail left and right, twenty two complaints like who and nobody's step in, Like it's just it's it's wild, Yeah, it's um, I mean there are like

you know, they get the cameras taken out. There are judges who are like repeatedly ruling against him to their credit. Um, but who's going to force him unless you send in like I don't know the FBI or something. I'm guessing I think it would be the FBI's purview, right, because they're the ones who're supposed to be watching this. But like, unless you send in the FEDS after him, who's gonna

stop him? And and that's kind of nobody wanted that job. Um, so nobody did anything, I think, is really what it comes down to. There's an almost endless flood of horrible stories that I could tell about our pios jails, but yeah, and have I just don't want to, Like, you know, there's there's a there's a limit to which I think that's helpful. Um, I've read enough. I think I've read enough for people to understand how bad his jail was.

Joe himself referred to his tent jail as a constant ration camp on several occasions, and that is a fair description. I've spent hours reading the tale reports about the original cazes, the early Nazi camps for political prisoners, and some of the stories from Joe's jail would fit into those accounts, particularly people being strapped to chairs and beaten to death.

I want to close out, though, by talking more about his posse in two thousand ten, Joe created the Illegal Immigration Operations POSSE, giving hundreds of racists the chance to do what some of them had probably done while wearing clan robes in earlier days. POSSE members would help sheriff deputies bust into places of businesses and homes and tear people away from their families. Actor Steven Seagal and lou Ferrigno helped out. Yeah, yeah, they were both. Yeah, Steven Seagal,

Stevens the original. Yeah, yeah, they they they love that ship. Steven Seagal drove a tank through a guy's fence and allegedly killed his dog as part of one of his raids as out. Yeah, that happened. That's a thing that occurred, wrote wrote to Steven Seagal's terrible book. They're like fiction novel, The Way of the Shadow Wolves horrible. Don't read but listen to our episode on it. But yeah, I feel like I've just taken a massive instant hallucinogen. Yeah, like

there was something about the Way of the Shadow Wolf there. Yeah, and Steven Seagal driving a tank over someone's dog? Did I just with the original? Incredible? Yeah? Yeah it was because he was Yeah, he was I mean he he

filmed a reality show. I don't think his episodes because they used to be a show called Steven Seagal law man um because he he just got to be a cop for some and it's always for like a shady sheriff somewhere in the South who's like, yeah, let's bring in, let's let Steven Seagal beat people up as a cop

um or for prutent. Yeah, but they were filming. They filmed a season that didn't air, that was supposed to be in um Maricopa County, but it got shut down in part because they were like doing some real like he drove a take through a guy's fence and killed his dog, like some ship went wrong. We gotta we gotta find that tape. Yeah, those teams, we gotta we have to find the lost Stevenstology episodes. They've got to

be out there, somewhere out there. So. In a statement of interest in a case against the MCSO, the Department of Justice described the decision to use untrained volunteers to search vehicles, transport arrested immigrants, and carry out work site raids. They noted, quote MCSO provides insufficient supervision and oversight to ensure that volunteer POSSE members taking part in immigration enforcement

activities do so without engaging in unlawful discrimination. After the Sandy Hook massacre, are PIO sent armed POSSE members to troll elementary schools, even though they were not certified peace officers. The New Time sent a correspondent along one of these rides.

Quote the one time Detroit cop explains that he'd rather be in our pios posse in this case that involves driving around fifteen miles per hour around Diamond Canyon Elementary School and through all the dead, silent residential streets that provide access to the school's property. That's his definition of a hobby, he explains. And these are the kind of

like weirdos who want this gig right like. It's this very bizarre mix of people who had been cops and missed feeling like, you know, important, and people who could never be cops because they were in some cases dangerous criminals, but wanted to play it being a cop. And Joe would let them do it if they'd work for him for free. They were all bad at their job. The commander of his executive posse, who was also the former

chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party. The warehouse that was used for his auto parts business and in nineteen was to make campaign signs for a PIOS reelection campaign. In nineteen seven, it was found that a massive marijuana smuggling network had been using the warehouse to move millions of dollars in the pot. They liked the location because they were always patrol cars parked outside and scared off competitors.

M H, I mean, I gotta ask, are we sure that this guy wasn't We absolutely are not sure of that. We are in no way sure of that he hasn't been charged with it as far as I'm aware, but we are not sure of that. So in two thousand nineteen, three years after a Pile left office, an audit was carried out that investigated the POSSE. I'm going to quote

from twelve news a local network here. An MCSO audit found poor record keeping had resulted in some unqualified individuals being allowed to continue participating in POSSE activities, For example, individuals with prior arrests and our convictions for domestic violence, drug offense, sex offenses, and other criminal activity. Those individuals have been removed from the POSSE. Former Sheriff JR. Pio spoke up for the group of MCSO volunteers Tuesday in

a phone interview with twelve News. We did background checks on them, are Pio said, adding any big organization is bound to have a couple of problems, but all on all, that was a great program. We saved the county millions of dollars every year. Now. The new audit information came nearly two weeks after the temporary suspension of the POSSE program by Sheriff Paul Pinzone when he dropped this bombshell

at a press conference. Only four of the posse's two five members cleared to carry guns were actually qualified to do so. That's that's the rate of armed possy members had actually legally qualified to carry a gun. Four out of Yeah. That's bad, very bad, bad ratio. Yeah. Yeah.

During my research into this, I found a fascinating article in the audivist atavist out a police ativist about a police impersonator named Steve Farzam and his best friend who is a security guard who also pretended to be a cop and eventually ratted Farzam out to the fence for dozens of felonies far Zem was illegally impersonating FBI agents to access sealed records. He was owning, He owned and sold restricted uniforms and machine guns illegally. He was just

criming all hardcore. Now, Farzan was not a member of Joe's posse, but his friend was, and the two were working together on getting far Zan membership when their friendship fell apart and one of them ratted the other out. And these are both guys that like dressed up as cops all the time, like drove around l A with like police lights, pretending to be officers illegally carrying out like that. They're that kind of dude um, And they're the kind of people who loved to be a Joe

O Pilos posse. And the article gives a description of both men that I think does a good job of explaining the kind of people who volunteered for the posse. Generously, you could call them police wannabes, guys who longed to be associated with, or better yet mistaken for, officers of the law. Dancel and Farsim spent years obsessing over police culture. They became fluent in the lingo from copy in place. If I understand to the numbered codes cops used when

speaking over radios. A favorite is four seventeen, which means I'm armed. They accumulated dozens of certificates and skills like handling firearms, picking locks, losing, using tasers, and responding to accidents. And it's that's like the it's cop want to be weirdos um who can't do the job because like they're dangerously unhinged in a lot of cases like far As, it was like selling machine guns to people and stuff,

like they're where they've gotten major felony arrest themselves. Yeah, and I think a lot of these guys did, and they want to they want to carry guns, but they can't legally qualify to. And he just gave them this gray area for all of these really dangerous people in a lot of cases. So it's it's giving felons a chance to do cop cosplay. Yes, this cosplay is real, and you can go in and you know, rip off

hookers and mowdown neighborhoods and ataxity all. Yeah, and that felons usually, but a lot of them had some sort of I mean some of them were felons, yes, so ex felons whatever you want. I mean, or you know, some proportion, but I mean it sounds like there's a lot more people with records than there were people qualified to do the job. Yes, absolutely, um And because yeah, it's it's not a job for people who are qualified

to do it. It's a job for people who want an excuse to be a big man and ideally do some violence with the States backing. So. The case that would eventually lead to shaff Joe's criminal conviction happened in two thousand seven. It started with a traffic stop of a Mexican man with a valid tourists visa. Joe's deputies arrested him and held him illegally for nine hours. The man sued, alleging racial profiling, and the suit turned into a class action for all Latino motorists in Maricopa County.

Joe lost the case, and the judge ordered our pile to stop detaining anyone not suspected of a crime. And being in the US illegally is not a crime. It is a civil violation. It is not something normal cops are supposed to be able to do. Ship Over That was two thousand eleven. For the next half decade, multiple federal judges found Our Pile in blatant violation of the injunction. He repeatedly showed up on Fox News to say he would not abide by it. He also lied under oath

in an attempt to obstruct further inquiries. After twenty one days of hearings in two thousand fifteen, he was found in civil contempt. The judge in that case was so frustrated by Our Pile that he referred him to another

judge for criminal contempt of court. Joe was convicted, and he could have faced six months in jail, but the National Center for Police Defense sent forty thousand petitions to the Justice Department, and with Donald Trump in office, there was never any chance that Joe was going to serve time. Trump pardoned Our Pile when he never served a day in prison. The good news is his political career is pretty dead at this point, although he unfortunately is not.

He lost reelection in two thousand and sixteen due to a mix of demographic change. There weren't as many old white people in Amercope as there had been, and due to the fact that by this point vast mountains of lawsuits against his brutal jail had cost the county more than a hundred and forty million dollars just on a conservative small government thing. I can't overstate how expensive it

is to have Joe R. Pio is your sheriff. Paul pinzoned the new sheriff, beat our Pile, largely on a platform of cleaning up the MCSO and making it less brutal and thus less expensive. In two thousand eighteen, Joe our Pile ran for Senate and a bid to replace Jeff Flake, and more than anything, a bid to return to political and cultural relevance. The eighty six year old law man slash criminal wound up dead last and to

an twenty. He ran for sheriff again, but lost his primary bid to Jerry Sheridan, who basically promised to be Joe R. Pio but less old and disgraced. Sheridan went on to lose badly to the incumbent pen Zone and that's where things stand today. Jesus, I can't I keep thinking about this guy who would literally uh pick up people for the crime of driving while Mexican and put him in his like torture chambers, his own concert, and put him in a concentration camp by his own admission.

Would then was then free to go on Fox News and say funk off to a federal judge. And you know, it's like he he felt not wrongly, that he was like allowed he could continue his criming and his flaunting these the law as long as he wanted. And he could, he and his team of armed Yahoo's could pick up whoever they wanted, treat him however they want, with no indications they did any crimes whatsoever. Yep, yep. And Donald Trump loved this guy. We didn't even I feel like

we didn't even get into that. But I mean that part I remember it is Donald Trump like praise this guy. You know, Seven Ways of Sunday. Yeah, it's uh, it's horrible. It's just incredibly frustrating. I think probably I don't know if he if. I'm more frustrated by his partner, Maniforts parton. They're both pretty awful. But yep, yeah, pretty bad guy. No kind of sucks, Joe Pious. This was not the

uplifting episode, you promise me. Yeah, I apologize. I had to lie to get you in the chair talking about Pio famed philanthropists. It's like he doesn't, I mean, and the come up and is like Okay, great, he like got charged with criminal contempt of court like six you know, after six straight years of ignoring don't don't detain people for no reason like ignoring everything else. Yeah, it's wild. And you know, the people that enabled him are are on the hook for this, for his crimes too. Let's

be clear about that. If you if you kept voting for this guy time after time after time, you're on the hook for it. If you were a politician, it sounds like democrat. Some democrats democrats for sure. Yeah, you're you enabled that ship and you are part of You are part of it, and this there has to be the conversation to the there's a lot of media that are complicit. Oh my, if you if you were, you know, buying into this guy's you know, suffering porn, you know,

you were part of the problem. And you know, I like not to get too meta, but I feel like his story is like just a story about how fucked up our entire political media criminal justice ecosystem is right now and how easy it is for like a bad actor to exploit yep. As if we needed another lesson, because if we don't have a lesson after lesson every day. But here's another one. Here is another one, and a

particularly horrifying one for sure. Um and like and like his ability to wiggle into the like you know, like parasitically wiggle into the cerebellum of America and and be unable to for to be cast out is just it's wild. Like his the length of of his criminal service is is incredible. Yep, yeah, it's I mean, he's in there for so fucking long. Um, And I'm sure there's more.

I just haven't found a ton of granular detail about his time, you know, in the Bureau of min Narcotics and then the d e A. But I'm sure there's fucked up ship that we we we don't get from that period, just knowing the kind of guy that he is, right, Um, but yeah, I did have one thought about that though, about the Elvis thing. Remember, um, how Elvis like got a badge to be a fake narcotics asan Oh yeah he didn't do that. Huh Maybe maybe maybe you know,

that's the sheriff Joe connection, that's the shared Joe connection. Yeah, that I might. I might believe that at then actually I might believe that. Then then everything else is all good. Yeah, mind sure, if Joe, if you got Elvis his badge, if you got narc yeah, it's all good, dude. Um okay, so uh no, uh you got any got any plug doubles, don't any pluggables, nothing really a plug. But you can find me at Noah Shackman. That's n O H s h A h t A man now Ah Shackman on Twitter.

I'll be starting my new job at Rolling Stone Magazine real soon, and uh we're gonna have some fun uh causing trouble uh for the ship bags of the world. Looking forward to it. Yeah, well, good luck doing that. Um, thankfully. It looks like you won't have Joe on your roster because my god, he can't possibly win election again for anything. He's too old and he's he's too failed. At this point, it has to be the end, right, This has to

be the end of him. Have you never heard before? God? Yeah, he just totally he becomes presidents somehow, it's going to be Joe versus Joe. At least nobody can make jokes about Joe Biden being old. Yeah, that that would be the I thought you would think that, given Trump's age, that wouldn't have happened this election either, but nobody, nobody gives a ship about anything anymore. It's amazing and nothing

at all matters. Uh Noah, thank you for coming on the show, um, thank you for talking with me about Sheriff Joe, and thank all of you for listening to a tale that I hoped made everyone's life a little bit worse. Just a little bit worse we tried to do in the past. Dudes, Oh God, all right bye MH