Sheriff Joe’s, “tough enough to keep us safe,” takes the cake as a cynical, sidestepping-the-truth political slogan. Tell that to the hundreds of children whose sexual assault cases he didn’t bother with; tell that to anyone who bucked him during his decades-long reign-of-terror against his political enemies; tell that to all the families of prisoners who died in his jail from mistreatment; tell that to every Hispanic family torn apart or terrorized by his deport-them-all mentality—and tell that to the taxpayers of Maricopa County who have been left on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in judgments against him.
This isn’t a record of toughness, it’s a record of incompetence. This isn’t a record of safety, it’s a record of disaster.