Editor,
Besides having no respect for “The Law” which he swore to uphold, the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, refused to obey a federal judge’s order and was convicted of criminal contempt. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton wrote that the Sheriff had shown a “flagrant disregard for the court’s demand… and not only did Defendant abdicate responsibility, he announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise.”
Sheriff Arpaio’s business as usual: he swept into restaurants, hotels, etc., to arrest people he thought might be undocumented; held people trying to come to the U.S. to work in detention facilities until they would plead guilty; threw people who had been arrested into The Matrix, which was the practice of moving a person from cell to cell continuously for 12 hours to sleep on cold concrete with only rotten food to eat; stopped any motorist who “looked Mexican,” frisked them and searched their vehicles; housed inmates in tent cities in 115°-plus summer heat with the only cold water available from vending machines that usually ran out; vending machine-food, grossly overpriced, was the only food available to work furlough prisoners (if you were too poor to buy food from the vending machines, you ate slob, an unknown, thick substance that looked like stew and tasted like cardboard; no heat in the tent cities during winter nor any warm jackets allowed.
Those in full detention had to wear pink socks and pink underwear and flip-flops and were fed only peanut butter and bread or baloney and bread.
The illegally elected “President” pardoned Arpaio, his early supporter. This is only a preview of what he intends to do for all his cronies, his family, and himself when the Mueller investigation discloses his thievery and money laundering.
A previous inmate who was arrested for drunk driving said, “… this is the time for our community to come together and keep fighting for those whose voices go unheard and kept in the dark. Hope for a better future is what helped me survive the agonizing times I spent in those horrendous facilities, and hope will lead us into a better future for America.”
T.A. Laughlin
The “pardon” will backfire on Trump and Arpaio – everything Trump does makes a bad situation worse.
The war on drugs in the U.S. goes back to 1800’s according to this Stanford report https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/paradox/htele.html
It is easy to blame countries producing drugs.
Why are there so many people in the U.S. addicted to drugs?
Mexico is a barrier for drugs coming from Colombia and other countries, at a very high cost. Mexico just happens to be on the way to the U.S.
The drug trade is driven by the U.S. demand for drugs.
Trump has demonstrated great ignorance and irresponsible behavior. The U.S. has lost many friends and is now alone, at risk of a deadly war with North Korea.