Riding along with Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse of steely retirees
More fun than golf @ Dreamland Villa here in Mesa?
CONSERVATIVE voters have much at stake in this November’s general elections, but few feel this as keenly as the members of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Posse. The posse is a 1,000-strong force of volunteers who buy their own police uniforms, guns and, in some cases, their own marked patrol cars. For more than 20 years members have served as unpaid auxiliaries for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a law-and-order showman who styles himself “America’s toughest sheriff”. . .
Critics single him out for other reasons, notably federal court rulings finding that he ordered his deputies to conduct immigration sweeps and raids that unlawfully targeted people who appeared to be non-white or Hispanic. Mr Arpaio, a Republican, is running for re-election this November, and—unusually—has fallen behind his Democratic challenger in some opinion polls. His woes may not end on election day. A federal judge has recommended that the sheriff be prosecuted for criminal contempt for defying court orders to stop racially biased policing: charges that could conceivably end in jail time.
The ripples from this turbulence have reached the men and women of the sheriff’s posse. These helpers are as much a part of Mr Arpaio’s brand as his tents and chain gangs. Though the force dates back to Arizona’s rural past, when locals would turn out to help the sheriff find lost travellers or hunt down scofflaws on horseback, Mr Arpaio is proud of expanding it into what he calls America’s largest volunteer posse . . .
In early 2013, shortly after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut, Mr Arpaio dispatched armed posse members to guard schools and invited Steven Seagal, an actor in action films, to help train them.John Pawloski is the grandfatherly, silver-moustachoied commander of a nine-member posse in Dreamland Villa, a no-frills retirement community dating back to the 1950s, comprising some 3,100 bungalows built around a community club, swimming pools and shuffleboard courts, . . Mr Pawloski’s neighbours, who include retirees from the northeast, the Midwest and Canadian “snowbirds” who spend winters in Arizona, are not wealthy folk. But each year they dig deep for a fund-raising drive, whether buying new police radios at $6,000 a time, or a gleaming black and gold patrol car (the newest of the posse’s three vehicles cost $40,000). . . in his trim office, with its map of crime statistics on the wall, Mr Pawloski sees threats.
Encountered at the headquarters of the Arizona Republican Party in Phoenix, Mr Arpaio agrees that he has built up the role of the posse. He is proud of sending members out on raids to help catch criminals. “I don’t just send the posse out to rescue horses,” he says. As it happens, Paul Penzone, a veteran Phoenix police detective trying to unseat Mr Arpaio as sheriff, and therefore running as a (rather shy) Democrat, says that he is a “huge fan” of the posse, which he would not disarm. “This is Arizona. This is a state with a lot of gun-owners,” he notes tactfully.
Still, he would make changes.
