Joe has long been self styled as America’s toughest Sheriff. The first of two trials has begun after a five year prep. It has been certified as a class action on behalf of mainly latinos who allege discrimination. Joe might be politely described as a piece of work.
The effect and implications of these trials will reach much further than the celebrity trials the media obsess over.

Here are a few recent pieces and you can learn more about Joe from the wiki link at bottom.

PHOENIX — Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s anti-illegal immigration patrols took center stage Thursday in federal court as a group of Latinos set out to prove that his deputies racially profiled them as part of a systemic policy of discrimination.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs who filed a civil lawsuit against Arpaio’s department said in opening statements that the evidence will show that Arpaio and his deputies discriminated against Hispanics.

The lawsuit echoes some of the racial profiling accusations in the DOJ case. That suit said Arpaio’s office retaliated against its critics, punished Latino jail inmates with limited English skills for speaking Spanish and failed to adequately investigate a large number of sex-crimes cases. No trial date in that case has been set.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...rc=nl_politics


As the trial began Thursday at downtown Phoenix's federal courthouse, U.S. District Judge Murray Snow added another wrinkle, informing both sides that he planned to make a decision based on the facts as they stand today, not as they were when he took over the case in 2009.

Before the first day's hearing ended, both factors came into play in the trial that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's attorneys have described as a landmark case.
The "bench" trial is expected to take place over six days during the next two weeks. Each side has been limited to 20 hours for their presentations before Snow decides whether Arpaio's department has engaged in racial profiling.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...#ixzz21ATmMyPi

A few days before the trial began, Arpaio held a news conference to declare that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake. The sheriff reached that conclusion after his volunteer posse of investigators traveled to Hawaii to demand a copy of the president's birth certificate. Arpaio said his intent in launching the probe wasn’t to undermine Obama but “to clear the president of the United States.” Never mind that so-called birther claims that Obama was born outside the U.S. and so is ineligible to be president have already been kicked out of court, and refuted by state officials in Hawaii.

And a few days before Arpaio revealed his bombshell findings, the silver-haired sheriff managed to find himself in a feud with comedian George Lopez, after Lopez unleashed an expletive-laced rant against Arpaio during his one-man show on HBO. The sheriff later challenged Lopez to “get some guts” and meet him face to face. Was the sheriff suggesting the two settle it lucha libre-style?
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,2484623.story

PHOENIX — Letters purporting to offer information about illegal immigrants are among a vast array of evidence to be introduced in the class-action civil rights trial against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office that began on Thursday in Federal District Court here.

There is much at stake for the civil rights movement. Two of its leading organizations — the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund — are representing the plaintiffs, and condemning Sheriff Arpaio and his practices is just one of their goals. More broadly, the idea is to highlight the pitfalls of allowing local police officials to play a role in enforcing federal immigration laws.

This trial, and a broader lawsuit filed against Sheriff Arpaio by the Justice Department in May, both focus on potential violations of civil rights. The six plaintiffs named in this litigation, filed nearly five years ago, represent Latinos who were stopped by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies since 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/us...n-phoenix.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio