Joe Arpaio Character Analysis

Harry Anslinger employed Joe Arpaio in 1957 to be an agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and he rose through the bureau over decades. Since 1993, he has been the elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. He was eighty when I met him, and about to be elected to his sixth consecutive term. His Stetson, his shining yellow lawmaker’s badge, and his sneer have become national symbols of a particular kind of funhouse-mirror Americana, and his hefty chunk of Arizona, home to nearly four million people, is now Harry Anslinger’s last great laboratory. Sheriff Joe has built a jail that he refers to publicly as his “concentration camp,” and presidential candidates flock here during election campaigns, emerging full of praise. Anslinger said addicts were “lepers” who needed to be “quarantined,” and so Arpaio has built a leper colony for them in the desert.

“[Marcia] was an addict…Addiction can be overcome with proper help. It ain’t a jail thing.” He believes the solution was to get her into “a mental hospital—that’s probably what would have helped her. Get her whatever she needs—Xanax, morphine, to get her chemical imbalance right…Get her on the right meds. Show her some respect. Give her some working skills. Get her a GED so when she comes out she has a place, like a woman’s shelter, [can] get a job…Give her respect, that’s how it’s supposed to be.” [...] “If you’re calm and cool and know you’ve got a life ahead of you that’s going up the steps…if you know you’re going up in the world, you’re going to stay going up in the world.”

Harry Anslinger employed Joe Arpaio in 1957 to be an agent in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and he rose through the bureau over decades. Since 1993, he has been the elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. He was eighty when I met him, and about to be elected to his sixth consecutive term. His Stetson, his shining yellow lawmaker’s badge, and his sneer have become national symbols of a particular kind of funhouse-mirror Americana, and his hefty chunk of Arizona, home to nearly four million people, is now Harry Anslinger’s last great laboratory. Sheriff Joe has built a jail that he refers to publicly as his “concentration camp,” and presidential candidates flock here during election campaigns, emerging full of praise. Anslinger said addicts were “lepers” who needed to be “quarantined,” and so Arpaio has built a leper colony for them in the desert.

“[Marcia] was an addict…Addiction can be overcome with proper help. It ain’t a jail thing.” He believes the solution was to get her into “a mental hospital—that’s probably what would have helped her. Get her whatever she needs—Xanax, morphine, to get her chemical imbalance right…Get her on the right meds. Show her some respect. Give her some working skills. Get her a GED so when she comes out she has a place, like a woman’s shelter, [can] get a job…Give her respect, that’s how it’s supposed to be.” [...] “If you’re calm and cool and know you’ve got a life ahead of you that’s going up the steps…if you know you’re going up in the world, you’re going to stay going up in the world.”