Barry Graham
 |
| Great Eastern Hotel, Glasgow |
I’ve misrepresented myself several times: I dressed in rags and pretended to be homeless in order to get admitted to the Great Eastern Hotel in Glasgow, because I wanted to examine the conditions there. When I heard that a nursing home was neglecting its residents, I pretended that I had an elderly relative I wanted to find a place for. I’ve gone on ride-along with cops who didn’t know I was a journalist, because I wanted to report what they actually said when they didn’t expect consequences. When Sheriff Joe Arpaio was acting as a “celebrity waiter” at a charity event, I went to the restaurant for dinner, pretending to be a tourist from Scotland, and asked him whether he was going to run for governor. There have been other such deceptions - these are only the ones that spring to mind right now - and the sad fact is that they are often necessary in matters of public interest. It should be exceptional, and a last resort, but as long as the privacy of individuals is not being violated, I see no ethical problem with it.
 |
| Phil Gordon |
While rightly crediting him for standing up to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and for the opening of A.S.U.’s downtown campus, the reporter, Monica Alonzo, overlooks his most significant achievement - the implementation of the light rail.
Journalists at Phoenix New Times opposed the light rail before and after it opened, but it has worked well, and the actuality is that it is the city’s only chance of survival. It needs to be expanded much farther, no matter the cost, because as this car-culture collapses, the various parts of this vast city - and its outposts like Tempe and Scottsdale - will have to become self-contained, compact communities. To think otherwise is the logic of the ostrich. History may remember Phil Gordon as Phoenix’s savior.
- Booklist
Since moving to the U.S. from his native Scotland, Graham has staked out the Southwest as his territory, and written about it in a way that no one else has. His is not the Southwest of scenic natural wonders, petroglyphs and ancient Indian civilizations juxtaposed with modern spiritual seekers. His is the Southwest as gritty emblem of 21st Century America, of urban blight and the dispossessed, of the people left behind.
Graham writes with corrosive honesty, giving no quarter to anyone, especially himself. This book contains his award-winning story of the two executions he has witnessed, along with other pieces that form a beautiful and terrifying portrait of a civilization in the process of collapse.
 |
| David Hendershott |
The ramifications of this could be interesting. A few months ago, Nick Hentoff and I were speculating as to whether Hendershott might try to save his own skin by giving evidence against Arpaio. Hentoff thought it was likely. I disagreed somewhat; I said that even though I didn’t think Hendershott would hesitate to sell out Arpaio (or anyone else) if it seemed expedient, he’s so arrogant, so used to getting away with anything he does, that he’d be unlikely to feel desperate enough to turn on his nominal boss. I say “nominal” because it’s always been Hendershott who’s run things in Arpaio’s office.
It never occurred to me that Arpaio might fire Hendershott - again, not because of any integrity on Arpaio’s part - they’re both amoral - but out of the same arrogance, and also needing Hendershott to keep running his corrupt administration.
Now, having been fired by Arpaio, and in legal trouble, and in need of money, he’s not only angry and desperate, but may have nothing to lose by giving the Feds what they need to nail Arpaio. It’s looking more and more likely that “America’s Toughest Sheriff” will end his days wearing a prison uniform.
I wonder if Arpaio will try to avoid that by blaming Hendershott and testifying against him. I’d guess right now that’s the strategy he’s laying in place by firing him.
Read the rest.
So, Arpaio intends to have vigilantes use automatic weapons against people who are already risking their lives walking through the desert in order to get jobs that most Americans don’t want.
The Arizona Republic reports that the Phoenix Police Department wastes hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars paying officers accused of misconduct to wait at home as internal investigations drag on for as long as a year, even when there is no dispute about the misconduct the cops are accused of.
Nine years ago, just after the Diamondbacks had won the World Series, I was about to leave Phoenix. I remarked to M.V. Moorhead, “I think the jig’s up here. Colangelo has bought Phoenix the one thing it didn’t need and should never, ever have - respectability.”
How wrong I was. Phoenix has always been corrupt, was actually founded as a hustle, but in the last decade it’s gotten worse beyond my most feverish imaginings, worse to the point of near-apocalypse. We have elected officials who belong in a mental ward, led by a governor who’s barely literate and whose education, such as it was, ended in high school. We have cold-blooded murder by cops, we have cops involved in organized fraud, we have a sheriff who behaves like a regional warlord, we have a new law that’s so racist as to be unconstitutional, we have vast wealth in a state that’s so broke that education and health care aren’t being adequately funded…
As bad as things were here before, the current state of the state makes me almost nostalgic for how innocent and just a little bit mischievous things were back then.
Respectability? That was stupid, even for me.
Stephen Lemons reports that retired Judge Charles E. Jones described Andrew Thomas’ time as Maricopa County Attorney as a “reckless, four-year campaign of corruption and power abuse.”
I’d say that’s about right. And his accomplice Arpaio has been doing it since 1993.
The Arizona Republic reports that the Supreme Court will recommend disbarment for former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Perhaps this well serve as a warning to Bill Montgomery, Thomas’ replacement and fellow Arpaio stooge.
This shows Maricopa County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Gerster stomping on the neck of a psychiatric inmate, then punching him four times.
As anyone who lives here should know, this kind of thing is the norm.
When Terry Greene Sterling interviewed Joe Arpaio for her book Illegal, he told her he got the idea for his posse from the Westerns he watched when he was a child. Her latest report on Arpaio is here.
