I know that he's popular in Maricopa county, but the inhumane conditions that Arpaio routinely subjects prisoners to should lead to him being criminally prosecuted. Punishment is one thing, but humiliation, degradation, and routine denial of medical care have no place in our criminal justice system.

"Punishment is one thing, but humiliation, degradation, and routine denial of medical care have no place in our criminal justice system."

It's ok for criminals to inflict them on innocents.

I hardley think that someone's being a junkie is justification for allowing them to die a slow, painful, tortuous death from lack of medical care.

She'd been arrested, not convicted. Something like this could happen just as easily to someone who was picked up for PI. You don't have to be violent to end up in jail.

*I meant "torturous."

It's ok for criminals to inflict them on innocents.

wat?

Diabetics die, pretty routinely. It doesn't have to happen in jail, but can. And every person booked into a jail-and I mean every one-claims a medical need. Most are lying. Sometimes, they aren't lying. Other than providing unneeded and expensive medical testing to every con arrested, I'm not sure how the odd tragedy can be avoided. Life sucks sometimes, eps if one has decided to take actions that put them in the penal system. And people die who maybe shouldn't every hour of the day.

@Dave: That woman was in jail for a non-violent drug offense. Possession. She shouldn't have been imprisoned in the first place, let alone left to die slowly in her own waste.

Diabetics die, pretty routinely.

Diabetics, on average live about 7 years less than non-diabetics. They don't drop like flies, unless they're denied medication.

Life sucks sometimes, eps if one has decided to take actions that put them in the penal system.

Your ignorance appears to be only matched by your callous disregard for others' lives.

momof4 there are far too mny incidents under sherrif Joe to attribute soley to the occasional 'odd tragedy'

Like the house they burnt down while serving a trafic court ewarnet wth a swat team, diving the household dog back into the flames

Like the mother who lost her baby due tonot being taken to the hosptal for 4 hours after the onse of a placetal abruption

Like the guy who "rolled over and fell" off a bunk less than three feet and managed to break his skull and toes and arm. His familly got 44 million after it came to light that the sherriffs office was destroying medical recodrs and had threatened hospital staff should the open their mouths.

Far, far too many incidents to attribute to the odd tragedy. He's the only guy in amercia to be condemed by amnysty international.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arpaio/

Goto the link, even if you dont read a single story just note the shear number of them in the side bar on the left hand side of the screen

I don't question that this woman should have been given adequate medical attention, but I can't make out what really happened from the tendentious 'newspaper storytelling' that's presented. Arpaio may be a complete asshole, but it's not apparent how he is directly responsible here.

Also as a rule of thumb, when someone uses terms like 'first-person voices' they mean that they're going to present a preconstructed narrative and use these 'voices' to play the roles. The use of 'voices' indicates the presence of the post modern assumption that the speaker has no genuine agency. They are not speaking they are only a voice for their race/class/gender/...

Interestingly enough, nowhere did I say I was a fan of ol' Joe. I said diabetics die. They do. At the park, in the movie theatre, even in hospitals. I can't see blaming the sheriff on this one.

And I say that as someone who once spent a night the guest of the county. For a reason later unproven and dropped. I can assure you, had I had some freak cardiac episode or something, i would have died.

Paulo, what IS adequate medical attention in a place where 99.9% of the inhabitants will lie about needing something medical in order to get out of their cell? How much are we supposed to spend on them? What portion of your paycheck are you willing to give in order to see they get it? Jail-more so than prison-is a hazardous place for those with medical issues. You'd think the at-risk might take more responsibility onto themselves than, say, intentionally breaking drug law. She knew damn well she had a serious life-threatening medical condition. The responsibility for her death lies foremost with her.

And forgive me, Christopher, for my callous disregard for human life. There are 156 MILLION girls missing from the world population due to abortion, but I'm going to worry overmuch about one lawbreaking diabetic? No, sorry. There are greater tragedies afoot in humanity.

That is especially hilarious to anyone reading this who has met Mike Lacey.

I'm quoting Jason Zaragoza not Mike Lacey. But if Lacey refers to people's statements as 'voices' then he's doing the same thing.

I don't understand what the fuss is all about. American prisons are run by racist gangs. Violent anal rape is a common occurrence.

Since no one cares to fix those abuses, I'm not sure why we should care about one dead diabetic.

I mean, it was a prisoner. It's not like they're human or anything.

Paulo, what IS adequate medical attention in a place where 99.9% of the inhabitants will lie about needing something medical in order to get out of their cell? How much are we supposed to spend on them? What portion of your paycheck are you willing to give in order to see they get it? Jail-more so than prison-is a hazardous place for those with medical issues. You'd think the at-risk might take more responsibility onto themselves than, say, intentionally breaking drug law. She knew damn well she had a serious life-threatening medical condition. The responsibility for her death lies foremost with her.

A glucometer at Wal-mart costs about $15. The test strips in a 100 bulk package are about 60¢ each for a regular consumer. Buying in true bulk, they would be about 30¢ a piece. Training to use one should be about 10 minutes -- at most.

Multiple people tried to get her medical attention. Including her daughter who was not imprisoned, and had no reason to lie. The daughter was not asking for her to be released, just spend 30¢ to check her glucose level.

The next portion of it is that when you are confined or detained by a city, county, state or federal agency they have automatically taken a custodial role.

What would you do if one of your children went on an overnight trip with the public school system -- they ignore or dismiss his complaints that he feels ill. So then he vomits multiple times. They still don't take him to urgent care or call you?

The child eventually dies. Would you say he should have died?

Read the story, perhaps, instead of the paragraph about the story?

I did read the story, but I didn't trust the story because of the way that he's constructed it. Newspaper storytelling isn't a credible way to present the facts.

Would you really want to see the news presented this way - as though it's a docudrama? I know that you like the guy, but I don't agree with his methods here.

Sheriff Joe's illegal immigration stance buys him a pass in my book. Woman dies in custody, yawn.

I'm going to worry overmuch about one lawbreaking diabetic? No, sorry. There are greater tragedies afoot in humanity.

Yes, once a person is born and accused of a crime, fuck 'em. Only the unborn merit your compassion.

Sheriff Joe's illegal immigration stance buys him a pass in my book. Woman dies in custody, yawn.
Posted by: ronc

Somehow I doubt if you were one of the thousands of American citizens locked up for looking to brown, you wouldn’t be so disinterested.

And she didn’t die in custody, she died slowly, painfully, and torturously at a cost of tens of millions of dollars in medical care and lawsuits for lack of one shot of insulin at less than $5 dollars

Have you ever seen anyone die from lack of insulin? its sort of like dying of starvation. No matter what you eat or how much you eat your cells still die as your body cant process the sugar. The excess sugar build up in your system leading to kidney failure as well as cellular starvation. Its one of the most painful ways to die naturally.

Do you know how many american citizens not convicted of any crimes have died in this mans jails?

Hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful death cases still winding there way thru the courts.

Did you know the insurance agency which underwrites for Maricopa county has forced a 5 million dollar deductible on the sheriffs department? Any lawsuit under 5 million is not longer covered by insurance.

Did you know maricopa county is larger then the state of New Jersey? There are more than 3.8 million people in the county which is a larger population then 20 of the states according to the last census. There are more than 700 cites, town and municipalities in the county.

And yet sheriff Joe spends more money rounding up illegals within cites that already have their own police forces than he does investigating rapes murders and burglaries in the towns which pay for his services and the unincorporated areas of the county.

Now the Phoenix metro area is a hodge podge of cities and a few scattered county islands, and a couple of small towns which contract with the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office for police services. Despite the political boundaries of the towns and cites the Phoenix metro area is one giant 7,000 square mile metropolis with no real open space between the towns

A couple of years ago there were a couple of close kidnapping attempts by a pedophile in one of the small town which uses the MCSO, due to one town's news paper printing an unfavorable article and another town' police chief going on the record about Sheriff Joe being an ass, the MCSO did not inform any of the neighboring towns of the pedophile trying to kidnap children, leading to more attempted kidnappings

There is nearly 100 million gone missing and can be accounted for

He uses his office to harass his political opponents

They tried to frame a retired guy as the mastermind of an intricate assai nation plot.

He claims he arrested Elvis for speeding, and was the guy to crack the French connection.

His officers were so threatened by a wheel chair bound paraplegic that they took him out of his wheel chair and broke his neck while strapping him into a 'restraint chair'. Turned him into a quadriplegic - for demanding a catheter so he could urinate

Countries are refusing extradition requests to Maricopa county specifically. And prosecutors of those extradition hearings have publicly agreed with the rulings

Inmates are routinely denied prescribed medication

One guy had the air circulation to his cell cut off, when the coroner arrived hours later the body's temperature was 109 degrees.

Did you know that for the longest time 'tent city' which houses 1,800 inmates had only 4 detention officers? That is one detention officer for every 450 inmates. That seem reasonable to you?

Then there was the time the sheriffs office raided the mesa police headquarters to round up suspected illegal immigrants on the cleaning crew. Imagine that for a moment, an armed invasion of a police station with no heads up to that police force. Its a wonder no one got shot

He's had reporters arrested for copying press releases.

He had a guy in pink shorts and a US forest service hat arrested for impersonating a peace officer.

And finally ronc, did you know that most of the illegals who sheriff Joe arrests get papers? Its kind of funny. They get arrested and turned over to ICE, if they challenge their deportation they are given a work permit, social security number, and legal documents to stay in the country until their ICE hearing, which due to the number of people challenging is often more than two years away.

Unfortunately it's fairly difficult for inmates to sue prison officials and win for lack of medical treatment. The standard under federal law is "deliberate indifference," that is the officials knew of some health risk and did nothing about it.

There could be some lesser standard under Arizona law though.

Serious question: if there's all this crap he's pulled, documentation and witnesses and all, why haven't the feds gone after him?

Becuase he has nation wide support from ignorant fools like ronc who have no idea what really goes on and only see the illegl immigrant angle.

Alot of people are unwilling to testify given they frightening regularity that those who oppose him wind up jailed on some trumped up charge and lose their life savings defending against the sperious charges

Plus there is the whole pubic relation nightmare that will explode if they ever do take him down and this stuff becomes public knowledge outside of the state as people start to wonder why its taken nearly/more than to decades to do anything about him.

Hmm. "Nation wide support from ignorant fools" is enough to stop Federal action?

Wow. Just like illegal immigration!

"She shouldn't have been imprisoned in the first place, let alone left to die slowly in her own waste."

I hope you are doing more than simply protesting current American drug policy, AND recognize that police misconduct is not the same thing. Thank you.

Pretty much Rad

Makes me think of "It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt