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Who says America isn't a police state?
In most Arizona cities the police departments get about 40 percent of the budget. And most of that goes to salaries to pay the cops. I never knew what percent of the county budget went to the police until today. The Maricopa County Sheriff Office's budget is $270 million, which is the biggest budget in Maricopa County. That number is from an article that follows. The Maricopa County budget for 2011 is $2,264,280,816 or about $2.2 billion dollars. That means the Sheriff's office gets about 12 percent of the total Maricopa County budget. I got the $2.2 billion number from this Maricopa County document The $270 million number came from an article in the Thursday, May 12, 2011 issue of the Arizona Republic title "Activists urge board to discipline Arpaio" with a sub title of "Supervisors assailed for not monitoring sheriff". Joe Arpaio critics demand his resignation by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michelle Ye Hee Lee - May. 11, 2011 10:00 PM The Arizona Republic Several dozen community activists peppered the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors with criticism Wednesday, demanding that county officials take action against Sheriff Joe Arpaio for misspending and mismanagement within his agency. During a news conference afterward, the activists again called on Arpaio to resign, arguing that the longtime sheriff is unfit to serve. The group included immigrant-rights advocates, county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox and state Rep. Ruben Gallego. As Arpaio's critics spoke to supervisors inside a county auditorium, a handful of his supporters came to show support but left fairly quickly. His opponents are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to place the Sheriff's Office into receivership, a rarely used legal process to place an organization under independent control. Receiverships are typically enforced by the courts. Arpaio's critics maintained that he was either incompetent or complicit in misspending and mismanagement that have plagued his agency, repeatedly referring to the misspending of $99.5 million in taxpayer money, and mismanagement by top Arpaio aides that was uncovered by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu's investigation. Some activists also reprimanded supervisors for their lack of oversight of the Sheriff's Office, the county's largest agency with a budget of about $270 million. "Arpaio has arrested and jailed journalists . . . political opponents . . . and he's even had the audacity to arrest and go after judges," activist Chad Snow said, adding that Arpaio has blamed "rogue" employees for the problems. But, he said, Arpaio should be held equally accountable. Wilcox said activists this week would send a letter to U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke and other federal officials, including President Barack Obama, asking them to place the agency into receivership and expedite investigations into the Sheriff's Office. "You need to intervene immediately," Wilcox said. "We've been living with this for the last 2 1/2 years. Dennis Burke, we appeal to you: Move" forward with indictments, she said. "Eric Holder, we appeal to you: Give Dennis the resources to move. And President Obama, we appeal to you: Help Arizona get back to normalcy." Arpaio said Wednesday that he would not step down and has previously said he was unaware of any of the problems within his agency. "They would love for me to resign, and that's not going to happen," Arpaio said. "I don't care what they're talking about. (The misspending is) strictly a bookkeeping, computer-type glitch." Among Arpaio's backers was Brandy Baron, who said she voted for him "to do the job he's doing. I have no problem with what he's doing, and he's taking care of the management problems." But protesters maintained that Arpaio and certain members of the Board of Supervisors were not doing enough to address the problems and instead are attempting to gloss over serious problems for political purposes. All of the supervisors are up for re-election in 2012 and in recent months, the five-member board has been divided over how aggressive it should be in publicly talking about the problems within Arpaio's agency. The meeting was marked by heated outbursts led by one activist, Randy Parraz, who at one point was chased back to his chair by a security officer for shouting while Chairman Andy Kunasek spoke. Other activists were less aggressive but were pointed in their criticism of the five supervisors. "On your watch, $100 million has gone missing," resident Jameson Johnson told supervisors. "Only in Maricopa County could something like this happen without people being hauled out in handcuffs. Shame on you. The financial mismanagement of this county is unforgivable." The critics used as ammunition the recent revelation by county budget officials that the Sheriff's Office has misspent $99.5 million over eight years. Arpaio's staff has acknowledged the money was misspent. The money must be paid back, though it's still unclear how and when that will happen. Parraz, co-founder of the activist group Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, again pressed Kunasek to hold a public meeting on the misspent money. Kunasek said he would not hold a meeting because the issue already had been publicly discussed. But he said that the issue would be discussed by staff during a future board meeting, and that activists could air their concerns at that point. |