Buffoon now on Fox TV

Acting the Buffoon, Arpaio now on Fox TV

PHOENIX (By David Carr, NYT) January 6, 2009 — With his reputation for being tough on crime and his way with a good quote, Joseph M. Arpaio, the sheriff and jailer of Maricopa County in Arizona would seem to be a reality show waiting to happen.

The wait is over. In the last two weeks, the Fox Reality Channel has broadcast “Smile ...You’re Under Arrest,” a prank-fueled effort to bring nonviolent offenders with outstanding warrants in or near Phoenix to justice.

Television producers, with Mr. Arpaio’s enthusiastic assent, sent out notices to scofflaws suggesting that they had won a contest and need only show up to claim a $300 prize. Once there, they are hoodwinked into participating in fake fashion shows or movie shoots before uniformed deputies come out from behind the curtain and slap bracelets on them.

“I don’t care how you do it,” Mr. Arpaio, who likes to be known as “America’s toughest sheriff,” says on camera in the first episode. “I just want to put these guys in jail.”

The alliance between law enforcement and reality television is a durable one, with “Cops” serving as a long-running proof that law-abiding citizens love watching nonlaw-abiding citizens being brought to justice. And if they are drunk and shirtless, well, so much the better.

“It’s ‘Punk’d’ meets ‘Cops’,” says Scott Satin, who conceived “Smile...You’re Under Arrest” and serves as its executive producer. “There have been a lot of hidden camera shows, but we wanted to take it one step further.”

Entertaining? Sure, but it’s worth looking at who’s doing the punking.

Even though this is his first crack at a reality show, Mr. Arpaio is already a staple of television in Arizona. Among other stunts, he set up tent cities as jails, organized immigration sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods, staged training operations in Honduras and last year, his office arrested journalists who had written negatively about his tenure.

He has also been at war with various municipalities in his jurisdiction, but has been re-elected five times by a wide margin since 1993. And while many of the people of Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix, clearly love him, they have paid a very dear price.

According to a report issued on Dec. 2 by the Goldwater Institute — which, as the name implies, is hardly a hotbed of liberal mollycoddling — the county has paid out over $30 million in the last five years to settle legal claims from prisoners.

Some of the payouts have gone to families of prisoners who died in custody, including three of the biggest settlements, which involved complaints of excessive force on behalf of inmates who had not been convicted of anything at the time of their deaths.

Maricopa County has many times more federal prison condition lawsuits than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined. In September of last year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care revoked its accreditation of the jails Sheriff Arpaio runs on the grounds of failure to provide adequate health care for inmates.

In October, a federal judge ruled that Sheriff Arpaio’s department had violated the Constitution by depriving inmates of medical care, fed them unhealthy food and housed them in unsanitary conditions.

The Goldwater report suggested that the picture beyond corrections was equally grim, citing the department’s tendency to “clear” cases without any resolution or arrest, and suggested that resources were being diverted to efforts to find illegal immigrants through sweeps that other departments characterized as dangerous.

As a result of the raids, Phoenix’s mayor, Phil Gordon, wrote a letter to the United States Department of Justice accusing Mr. Arpaio of “a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”

This guy is hilarious, no?

Somebody thinks so. “Smile... You’re Under Arrest” was initially conceived as a pilot for Fox Broadcasting. Executives took a pass and Fox Reality, an offshoot of the network, picked up the pilot. Three episodes are being broadcast with an option for more if they’re successful.

The first installment focuses on a hapless guy who is warmed up by a busty hostess before the ostensible designer of Average Guy Clothing talks him into working as a model of prison garb on the catwalk, which is actually a plank that leads to his arrest.

The setup is incredibly elaborate and silly, with an entire nightclub taken over as a set and then decorated with actors and off-duty deputies in plain clothes. Mr. Satin said that everyone taken in by the ruse had willingly signed a release to be part of the show.

“Sheriff Arpaio has been wonderful to work with and totally open with everything we wanted to do,” said Mr. Satin. “He said, ‘If you want to help me catch some of these people, be my guest’. He let us do our thing.”

The Goldwater report suggests that the trade-off for the letting the sheriff do his thing may not benefit his constituents. Although his department was “adept at self-promotion and is an unquestionably ‘tough’ law-enforcement agency, under its watch violent crime rates recently have soared, both in absolute terms and relative to other jurisdictions.”

Homicides in the county were up 167 percent in the three-year period ending in 2007 and the report stated that the budget for the department, excluding corrections, had doubled since 2001.

“We have 40,000 unserved felony warrants — murderers and rapists — and instead of serving those warrants, we have this buffoon who spends his time popping out from behind curtains for a reality television show,” said Michael C. Manning, a Phoenix lawyer who has sued the department on behalf of clients repeatedly and successfully in wrongful death suits. “He continues to demean our community by chasing publicity and acting the buffoon.”

One might assume that with the change in administration in Washington, Sheriff Arpaio’s record might come in for some scrutiny, but Arizona’s governor, Janet Napolitano, an official who has backed Mr. Arpaio in the past, is Barack Obama’s choice to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Back in 1997, according to reporting done by Phoenix New Times, United States Attorney General Janet Reno lodged a complaint against the sheriff over the conditions in his jails, and a settlement was reached. Sheriff Arpaio spun it as a victory, and Ms. Napolitano, who was about to run for Arizona’s attorney general, joined Mr. Arpaio at his press conference and offered support, suggesting that the agreement was based on “technicalities.”

Both The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix New Times newspapers have traced the improbable arc of Mr. Arpaio’s tenure, but The New Times has been in conflict with the sheriff from the first day he was elected. That grudge match took a breathtaking turn in 2007 when its two founders, James Larkin and Michael Lacey, were arrested in the dead of night and accused of revealing the secrets of a grand jury. After an uproar, the men were released and the charges were dropped.

Bob Boden, senior vice president at the Fox Reality Channel, said the controversy and charges that have dogged Sheriff Arpaio’s tenure are not the network’s concern.

“He is not the face of our network nor do we necessarily support anything and everything he believes in terms of law enforcement,” he said. “This is an entertainment vehicle and we take no position on any of the politics involving the sheriff.”

Of course the show is entertainment, but these televised goofing-on-bad-guys stunts have gone wrong before. On NBC’s “Dateline,” in the series of reports called “To Catch a Predator,” a suspect who had not been convicted of anything missed the joke and killed himself.

The disregard for the rights of people who are accused of something illegal is all too common. Mr. Arpaio’s jails are full of people awaiting trail who cannot make bail; by his own accounting, 117 people have died in his custody, including many with serious mental health problems.

But the Tasers and pepper spray that are very much a part of the toolbelt of “America’s toughest sheriff” don’t get a lot of airtime on “Smile.”

“Joe Arpaio is passionate about locking people up who are wanted criminals. He adds a terrific style and a sense of humor to the show,” said Mr. Boden.

Given the decertification of his correctional facilities and the charges in the Goldwater report and press accounts, Mr. Arpaio would seem to have his hands full, but he seemed fully engaged in his star turn on Fox Reality.

“Take ’em down! Take ’em down!” he says into a microphone backstage at the nightclub.