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Authorities
have confirmed that an apparent bomb addressed to Maricopa, Ariz.,
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was uncovered and diverted, and now
investigators are beginning to look into a list of his enemies for any
links or connections.
Those who have had conflicts with him, those who might be coming
under investigation, those who have been unsuccessful in fights with
him.
That should be a job.
Arpaio, who has described himself as the “toughest sheriff in
America,” has had conflicts over the past few years with advocates for
illegal immigration, those who don’t like his enforcement of state laws
in Arizona, and those who don’t like him investigating certain topics,
including the validity of Barack Obama’s birth documentation. Others
don’t like him because he’s been aggressive in fighting the war on
illegal immigration in his border state, and his stand on law-and-order.
Historically, he’s made enemies for his procedures of dressing jail
inmates in pink and letting them live in tents in the Arizona heat.
A spokeswoman for
his office
today told WND that five members from Mexican drug cartels in just the
past few years have threatened Arpaio’s life, including offering a $4
million bounty announced by one suspect just this week.
The spokeswoman told WND that over the last 18 months there have been
a dozen threats to the sheriff’s life, resulting in four arrests so
far.
She said there even has been concern among authorities about a
recall-petition group that has organized to oppose Arpaio’s tenure in
office, and one man associated with that effort recently was
investigated for threatening Arpaio.
While there apparently are no links between the current case and the
sheriff’s past conflicts with the federal government – which launched
two investigations of him and later closed them down, the overall
atmosphere could be a contributing factor, she said.
“The rhetoric is at all time high which may be encouraging the increase in threats,” she told WND.
Asked whether confirmation was available that the sheriff would
remain committed to his law enforcement and investigatory
responsibilities, she said, “That’s an understatement!”
According to reports,
an explosive device in a package addressed to the sheriff was found in
Flagstaff last night, and an X-ray revealed a “device,” which quickly
was neutralized.
The debris was being examined, according to Postal Inspector Patricia
Armstrong, to try to determine exactly what it was. Reports say she
credited a “very astute” carrier for noticing the suspicious package in
collecting mail in the Flagstaff area.
Arpaio brushed it off as an occupational hazard. “I’m getting many threats. This isn’t the first time,” he told reporters.
He cited the recent deaths of a sheriff in West Virginia as well as
the murder of two prosecutors in Texas and the corrections chief in
Colorado.
Arpaio’s bold leadership and dedicated rule-of-law stance has irritated many over recent months.
Gun rights
Just in the past few weeks
he’s made statements that a brash agenda of gun restrictions, rules and
regulations may be stepping over the line established by the Second
Amendment.
And he joined a growing list of more than 340 sheriffs who have
reportedly vowed to uphold the Constitution against efforts to undermine
Americans’ gun rights, a list compiled by the
Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
“I took [multiple] oaths of office, and they all say I will defend the Constitution of the United States,” Arpaio
told Mike Broomhead of KFYI Radio in Phoenix, Ariz.
“Now if they’re going to tell the sheriff that he’s going to go around
picking up guns from everybody, they’re going to have a problem. I may
not enforce that federal law.”
Broomhead pushed even further, asking Arpaio if the feds passed a law
banning ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, would his
deputies confiscate such magazines?
“No,” Arpaio said. “My deputies, I said before, I’m going to arm all
my deputies – a month ago I said before this – with automatic weapons
and semi-automatic weapons. We’re going to be able to fight back. … I
don’t care what they say from Washington.”
Re-election
Arpaio also infuriated a contingent of county residents with his successful re-election campaign recently. He’s been in office for two decades, and an organization called
Respect Arizona is demanding through a petition recall procedure that he be removed from office.
A group called Citizens to Protect Fair Election Results,
or CPFER, immediately formed to defend their sheriff, and it said, “The
dangerous, subversive-like activities of Respect Arizona have the
potential to launch this county and possibly the entire state in what
can only be called an ‘Electoral Civil War’ that could cost the citizens
of Arizona millions of taxpayer dollars; and a civil war where others
could well start their own recall efforts against every newly elected
officials at the county, city and state levels, and quite possibly,
appointed officials, too, including judges.”
The defense team charges that claims from Respect Arizona are fraudulent.
Investigating Obama
A situation that earned Arpaio piles of hate mail
developed when a group of his county’s residents asked him to look into
the validity of the documents through which Barack Obama claims to be
eligible for the Oval Office.
Entire books have been written
about the problems with the “birth certificate” that was released by
the White House purportedly documenting Obama’s birth in Hawaii.
Computer imaging experts have found it to be fraudulent and the
conclusion of an official law enforcement investigation assembled by
Arpaio is that it is just not real.
The special cold case posse investigators said there is probable
cause to believe there was forgery in the creation of the birth document
presented and fraud in its presentation to the people of Arizona as a
valid document.
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley found himself agreeing, after going through the probabilities that each of the anomalies in the document was a random error.
He said he figured the chances of all of those circumstances simply
developing at one in 62,500,000,000,000,000,000. (That’s 62.5
quintillion).
In a column for WND, he
crunched the numbers to show that such things developing in the ordinary
course of events and those “mistakes” carrying no meaning are, well,
unlikely.
Mike Zullo, the lead investigator
in Arpaio’s investigation of Obama’s eligibility, has said he’s
convinced Hawaii’s Department of Health is maintaining a cover-up of
Obama’s 1961 birth records.
Civil rights
And the U.S. Attorneys office had launched
an investigation of Arpaio’s office alleging financial improprieties as
well as civil rights abuses through racial profiling, only to close
them later without action.
