Self-promotion is the ultimate form of placing one's own interests over the public interest, but we expect it from politicians. It's an ego thing. It has no place in an ethics code.

But the four-term-plus sheriff of Maricopa County, AZ (which includes Phoenix and Scottsdale) has turned self-promotion into an extreme sport.

The following is based on an online New York Times editorial [1], a David Carr column [2] in today's Times, and a recent report [3] from the Goldwater Institute, entitled Mission Unaccomplished: The Misplaced Priorities of the Maricopa County Sheriff ’s Office.

Billing himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff" so loudly citizens keep re-electing him, Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio has found a new nadir for his self-promotion:  a reality show [4] on which nonviolent offenders are falsely lured into situations where they can be taken into justice. I didn't make this up, but someone actually did.

That isn't actually the sheriff's major misplaced priority. While violent crimes are up, the sheriff focuses on highly-publicized immigrant sweeps. While arrest rates are down and satellite booking stations have been closed, prisoners are dying in custody, so far 117 of them, leading to more federal prison condition lawsuits than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined (and $30 million paid out in damages in just the last five years). Last year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care revoked its accreditation of the jails Sheriff Arpaio runs on the grounds of failure to provide adequate health care for inmates.

While the sheriff is busy going after a handful of nonviolent offenders with his television show, there are 40,000 unserved felony warrants. And yet the budget is out of control.

If you want to get really angry, watch a video on You Tube [5] of a Maricopa County Supervisors meeting, where people who, for only a few seconds, applauded the supervisor chair after he announced the name of the first citizen speaker, are arrested and taken away, even listed speakers.

This is not the work of just one man or even one department. The county and state are responsible, too. It's clear from that video that the County Supervisors will do nothing. And neither will other politicians. Governor Janet Napolitano, named to be the head of Homeland Security, has backed the sheriff. No one seems willing to oppose a popular sheriff, no matter how much harm he brings to individuals and to the county budget. The sheriff sent a strong message when, in 2007, he had two New Times editors, who had been criticizing the sheriff for years, arrested in the middle of the night. After writing this, I might not be able to attend the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) conference later this year.

Will national humiliation be enough to change things in Maricopa County? Probably not. An attack by the liberal New York Times is just another feather in the sheriff's cap.

But what about that conservative Goldwater Institute's report? Well, that came out two weeks before the County Supervisors meeting, so it doesn't amount to much either.

What would you suggest?

P.S. It will come as no surprise that in Maricopa County, ethics rules [6] apply only to employees and are handled by the Human Resources department.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics

203-230-2548