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(US AZ) ATTENTION ANIMAL LOVERS!Senator McCainParanoia Reigns Pissed at Joe's insanity, Senator John McCain makes it official: He endorses Saban. BY JOHN DOUGHERTYjohn.dougherty Rand Carlson Senator John McCain's change of heart. If hundreds of angry phone calls and e-mails in response to my commentary on a harebrained MCSO raid in Ahwatukee are any indication of the public's disgust, elderly Joe Arpaio may soon be the ex-sheriff of Maricopa County. Readers are livid over the bungled July 23 raid by Joe's goons that left a house destroyed by fire, a car wrecked by Joe's "tank," a neighborhood terrorized and a burned-up puppy left to rot in the rubble for a week <AHREF=" issues 2004-08-05 feature.html?>In other words, Saban wouldn't send SWAT teams into another police jurisdiction's turf without prior notification. And most important, Saban would adhere to

constitutional protections that pretrial detainees in America are entitled to receive -- protections that Arpaio gleefully tramples with horrific results. McCain's endorsement caps a great week for Saban. His shoestring campaign continues to gain momentum, despite the fact that nearly 100 of his 600 campaign signs across the Valley have mysteriously disappeared. "I feel wonderful," he tells me. "I feel we have a chance. We certainly are on equal ground. We are head to head. I think we can win this thing." I'm beginning to think Saban may be right. McCain's public endorsement comes the same week that a federal appeals court let stand an injunction that forced Arpaio in 2001 to remove Web cams from the Maricopa County jail. One camera showed female detainees using a toilet. Outlaw Joe sold the streaming video to a dot-com, believing this was a great way to humiliate people who had been arrested but

hadn't been so much as arraigned. The federal appeals court disagreed with the sheriff's thinking. "We fail to see how turning pretrial detainees into the unwilling objects of the latest reality show serves any . . . legitimate goals," the 9th Circuit Court stated. Wasting taxpayer money to feed his insatiable ego is nothing new to the increasingly paranoid Arpaio. Angered by Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley's refusal to prosecute about 60 alleged hookers arrested last winter in a dumb-ass MCSO sting operation -- where deputies and posse men got naked and had sex with call girls -- Joe decided to make a bad relationship with Romley even worse. Recently, the County Attorney's Office discovered that Arpaio's detectives were secretly taping telephone conversations with prosecutors. This unprecedented breach of trust between the MCSO and line prosecutors could jeopardize pending criminal cases,

Romley's chief deputy, Paul Ahler, tells me. "I don't think the public is being very well served by the sheriff's office directive to do this," Ahler snarls. The level of distrust between the sheriff's office and the county attorney is now so high that prosecutors will no longer discuss any substantive issues with Joe's detectives over the phone. All discussions must be at the County Attorney's Office. This will only further muck up the legal system and drive up the costs to taxpayers. Which is the true legacy of Arpaio's 12 years in office. He is costing taxpayers hugely in legal settlements stemming from the brutality unleashed on prisoners in the county jails. The unconstitutional abuses inside the jail system -- the countless deaths, beatings and injuries -- are a heavy price to pay to stoke Outlaw Joe's ego. The cost has become far too great, especially when there are no benefits to

keeping this Neanderthal around any longer. And that is why McCain and county Republican party honchos -- who rarely turn on their own -- have joined the ranks of those who want Joe Arpaio voted out of office. It's high time. E-mail john.dougherty, or call 602-229-8445. phoenixnewtimes.com | originally published: August 12, 2004 <http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2004-08-12/dougherty.html>