Dunn wins endorsement of man some call toughest sheriff in U.S.

Albuquerque — You've probably heard of America's Toughest Sheriff, Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz.

The man the Arizona Republic calls "a powder keg of public bravado" has garnered heaps of publicity for his unusual techniques. He moved 2,000 inmates into a tent city in the Arizona desert and re-instituted chain gangs for men, women and juveniles. He feeds his inmates the cheapest food in the country: two meals per day that cost an average of 15 cents each. He has the inmates' sheets, towels, socks and underwear dyed pink.

On Thursday Arpaio endorsed rancher Aubrey Dunn in the Republican primary race in the second congressional district.

"I'm honored to have the endorsement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio," Dunn is quoted as saying in a press release on his Web site. Dunn has made immigration a theme of his campaign run. "As our next Congressman, I'll take the Sheriff's same no-nonsense approach with me to Washington as we fight to protect our border and crack down on illegal immigration."

But Sheriff Arpaio's "no-nonsense" approach doesn't work for everyone.

Critics have long complained about Arpaio's harsh treatment of prisoners; in the late 1990s, two independent investigations by the Department of Justice (and one by Amnesty International) resulted in blistering reports condemning the sheriff's office. As the Phoenix New Times reported in 1998, quoting the second DOJ report:

An unwise abundance of stun guns, pepper spray, restraint chairs and the practice of hog-tying, combined with Arpaio's macho rhetoric about getting tough on inmates—70 percent of whom await trial under an assumption of innocence—has led to an environment where Arpaio's employees have made "unprovoked, unnecessary and, consequently, unjustified and excessive" use of force.

According to Ray Stern, a Phoenix New Times staffer who has covered Arpaio extensively, the sheriff's supporters believe he’s the only law enforcement official who’s actually doing anything about illegal immigration. "The only trouble is ... what he’s been doing is rounding up Mexicans on the pretense that he’s doing crime suppression sweeps. So what’s happened is there’s a lot of fear in the immigrant community." As a result, Stern says, "This is probably the only place in the country where illegal immigrants are in danger of being deported just because they’re driving around with a cracked windshield."

Contrary to the anti-immigration groups' hopes, Stern says immigrants aren’t necessarily going home as a result of the raids, but they're living in fear. "It’s almost like terrorizing a portion of the community," he says.

Last month, Joe Garcia of the Arizona Republic interviewed the sheriff and asked specifically about his immigration tactics:

Valley religious leaders, top law-enforcement officers, city, town and neighborhood leaders, Hispanic groups and civil-rights leaders are all calling on you to end your immigration sweeps, saying they're excessive, wasteful, divisive and create the potential for violence. Does such a chorus of pleas cause you to pause, even for a moment, to re-evaluate?

Everybody supports me. I've got thousands of letters from the public. They're my bosses. I do what the people want me to do. I'm elected. If you've got politicians who don't like what I'm doing, that's their problem. Eighty percent of the people (support me). I serve the people; I don't serve mayors, bureaucrats, governors. I serve the people.

But why would an Arizona sheriff endorse a candidate in a New Mexico primary race? According to Mario Burgos, a spokesperson for Dunn's campaign, the candidate did not seek out the endorsement. "The sheriff found out that the race was down to Aubrey and Ed Tinsley, and one candidate does not support amnesty and the other is heavily supported by an organization that has been pushing amnesty for the past few years," Burgos said, referring to the National Restaurant Association. (Tinsley formerly served as chairman of the organization's board of directors.) "When he heard that there is one candidate in that race that does not support amnesty … he came out with an endorsement."

The Dunn campaign did not respond by press time to specific questions about how much Dunn agrees with Arpaio on immigration issues.

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