Letters from the issue of Thursday, March 6, 2008

Thank you, New Times, for turning over the rocks and exposing the slime that lives beneath. Indeed, you help us understand the difference between facts and the BS we are fed.
Robert W. Gately, Tempe

How do you break up Joe's cult?: I am an occasional reader of New Times. I do love the articles about Mr. Arpaio, and whenever I learn there is an article about the sheriff, I have to pick up the paper from the newsstand. I am very pleased that NT has the guts to shine light onto what appears to be an almost cult-like following the sheriff has created.

I have heard enough and read enough now that there is no doubt in my mind that Sheriff Joe is not an asset to our community. My only fear is that the reach of his cult has grown too large for anything less than a major scandal to break it up.
Dave Ryan, Phoenix

Glad you saw the light, Bess: Can it be that Sheriff Joe is finally stinking up the place so badly that only the most ignorant will vote for him? Media besides New Times, like Channel 12, are now sniffing the stink and going after his corruption.

Funny thing is, I used to think the sheriff was great, until I started reading New Times regularly.

It seems a new scandal arises everyday, and now this lawsuit! What happened to force Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey to write their grand jury [subpoenas] story was almost surreal. Watching Lacey on TV outside the jail in the darkness on the morning of his release was especially so.

I seldom root for people filing lawsuits, because most of them are frivolous and not worth the paper they're written on, but most of us in the community — those of us with any intelligence — will be rooting for New Times in this one.

When you get the money out of the bastards (and you will!), you should donate it to charity. You should start an investigative journalism chair at ASU or somewhere. You've been the only news outlet in this community, until lately, that stands up for what is right when it comes to the sheriff.
Bess Gibson, Phoenix

Everybody wants a piece: On the lighter side . . . You're going to file a lawsuit against Curly, Larry, and Joe (I can't be the first to have used that) for $15 million on behalf of your readers and the Constitution. I'm a reader, over 60, looking forward to retirement. How much of the $15 million can I count on?
Dean M. Brayton, Gold Canyon

Let's hope there's not another one: What is your purpose in ridiculing and constantly hate-bashing one of the few sheriff's departments in the nation that is trying to do what it is elected and paid to do, a.k.a. enforce the law?

I do not understand the newspapers of this country. Rather than simply reporting the news, they seem to have the sole purpose of promoting their agendas. I'm a hard-working taxpayer who appreciates all the Sheriff Joes in our great country.
Russell Dark, Houston

But there's only one Gandhi: Michael Lacey engages in civil disobedience and then sues when he suffers the consequences. I cannot imagine Gandhi doing that.

The fact that Lacey was arrested for knowingly committing a crime is not the basis of a lawsuit. I respected Lacey for his principles in publishing the original story, but this lawsuit shows he is not a man of convictions but someone who wants more time in the limelight, and money.
Craig Parks, via the Internet

It may be the best the GOP has: This lawsuit is the best news I have heard so far! Go get 'em. We're right behind you. These slugs think they can come in and do as they please and answer to no one. Hmmm. This is a total abuse of power and they have been doing it all along. You can fool some of the people some of the time . . .

Those billboards advertising themselves for their next political position and paid for by the voters ought to be burned down, or captioned, "I am costing you, the public."

Pity the ignorant [fools] who allow TV [coverage on Sheriff Arpaio's latest stunt] to dictate their small minds. And now certain officials are using the churches to run around telling people how to prevent crime? That is not the job of a chief prosecutor.

Who else is watching these three musketeers [Arpaio, Andrew Thomas and Dennis Wilenchik]? Look what happened to Mitt Romney when he teamed up with "an incompetent vaudevillian campaigning for a duplicitous moron," to quote the Tucson Citizen. [Arpaio officially backed Romney for president.] Surely this can't be the best the Republican Party has to offer.
Name withheld by request

Thanks for the heads-up: Thanks for watching out for us. Officials in the Sheriff's Office are showing no remorse for their thug-like actions against Joe Arpaio's enemies, New Times, and its readers. They need to be made to understand that there will be repercussions for their actions. They don't get that at all. Somebody — perhaps the feds or the Attorney General's Office — needs to step in.