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

Robert is joined again by Noah Shachtman to continue to discuss Joe Arpaio.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
You want me to do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
was good. That was good. You're natural, You're natural, and
this is behind the bastard. Thank you, Sophie. I didn't
need to hear that today. But podcast Bad People, where
I get shown up at my only talent A totally

(00:27):
introducing a podcast by today's guest, no Noah shactman of
the Daily Beast soon to be of Rolling Stone. Noah,
how how how was life changed for you in the
last I don't know, seven minutes since we concluded part one.
I ate a lot of meat with my hands. Oh,
good hand meat. Yeah, everybody's good hand meat. Yeah yeah,

(00:50):
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,

(01:13):
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.

(01:33):
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

(01:55):
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

(02:16):
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

(02:39):
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

(03:00):
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

(03:22):
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

(03:43):
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

(04:05):
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,

(04:29):
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

(04:53):
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

(05:14):
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

(05:35):
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

(05:58):
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.

(06:19):
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,

(06:42):
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,

(07:04):
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,

(07:25):
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

(07:46):
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

(08:07):
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.

(08:30):
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

(08:51):
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

(09:12):
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

(09:33):
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

(09:55):
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

(10:16):
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,

(10:41):
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,

(11:01):
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

(11:29):
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

(11:52):
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

(12:12):
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

(12:34):
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

(12:56):
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

(13:16):
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

(13:37):
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.

(14:00):
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

(14:22):
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

(14:44):
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.

(15:08):
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

(15:29):
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

(15:52):
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,

(16:15):
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

(16:37):
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

(16:58):
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

(17:19):
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

(17:41):
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

(18:02):
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

(18:25):
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

(18:47):
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.

(19:08):
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

(19:28):
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

(19:49):
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

(20:11):
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

(20:32):
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,

(20:53):
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

(21:15):
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,

(21:36):
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,

(21:57):
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

(22:19):
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

(22:42):
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

(23:04):
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

(23:27):
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,

(23:50):
he's an outrageous piece of ship. But you know who
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the good news about Raytheon, Noah, is that they'll get
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(24:11):
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here's some ads. We're back, uh and and just just

(24:35):
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

(24:56):
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

(25:17):
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

(25:38):
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

(26:01):
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

(26:24):
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

(26:47):
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

(27:08):
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

(27:28):
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

(27:52):
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

(28:14):
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

(28:35):
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

(28:57):
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

(29:20):
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

(29:43):
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?

(30:05):
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

(30:28):
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,

(30:51):
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

(31:13):
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

(31:35):
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

(31:57):
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.

(32:17):
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

(32:39):
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

(33:00):
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

(33:23):
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

(33:44):
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

(34:05):
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

(34:26):
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

(34:49):
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

(35:12):
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.

(35:34):
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

(35:56):
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

(36:17):
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

(36:40):
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

(37:01):
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,

(37:25):
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

(37:47):
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

(38:08):
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

(38:32):
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

(38:54):
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

(39:15):
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

(39:39):
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

(39:59):
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

(40:19):
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

(40:41):
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

(41:06):
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

(41:28):
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.

(41:48):
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

(42:08):
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

(42:29):
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

(42:50):
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

(43:11):
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

(43:34):
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

(43:59):
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.

(44:20):
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

(44:42):
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,

(45:03):
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

(45:25):
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

(45:46):
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

(46:09):
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,

(46:33):
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.

(46:53):
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

(47:14):
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

(47:35):
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,

(47:57):
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

(48:19):
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,

(48:40):
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

(49:04):
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

(49:25):
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,

(49:47):
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,

(50:08):
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

(50:35):
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

(50:56):
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,

(51:20):
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,

(51:49):
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

(52:13):
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

(52:36):
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,

(52:58):
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

(53:19):
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

(53:42):
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

(54:06):
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,

(54:29):
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

(54:51):
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

(55:12):
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

(55:33):
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

(55:55):
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

(56:16):
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

(56:36):
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

(56:58):
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

(57:20):
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

(57:41):
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

(58:02):
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

(58:27):
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

(58:50):
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,

(59:12):
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

(59:34):
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

(59:56):
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

(01:00:16):
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

(01:00:37):
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

(01:00:57):
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

(01:01:19):
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

(01:01:40):
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.

(01:02:03):
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

(01:02:26):
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

(01:02:49):
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

(01:03:14):
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

(01:03:34):
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,

(01:03:55):
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,

(01:04:16):
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

(01:04:39):
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

(01:05:01):
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

(01:05:25):
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

(01:05:47):
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.

(01:06:09):
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

(01:06:33):
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

(01:06:54):
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

(01:07:16):
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

(01:07:38):
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

(01:07:58):
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

(01:08:20):
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

(01:08:41):
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.

(01:09:02):
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

(01:09:24):
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

(01:09:48):
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

(01:10:09):
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

(01:10:30):
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

(01:10:52):
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

(01:11:15):
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.

(01:11:36):
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

(01:11:57):
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

(01:12:19):
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

(01:12:40):
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,

(01:13:04):
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

(01:13:26):
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

(01:13:51):
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

(01:14:14):
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,

(01:14:36):
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,

(01:14:57):
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,

(01:15:20):
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

(01:15:45):
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

(01:16:06):
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

(01:16:27):
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

(01:16:47):
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