We’ve compared Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the hottest girl at the prom, but at the moment he’s sounding like the dumped boyfriend who never quite realized that his girl doesn’t love him.
Arpaio was interviewed by Jorge Ramos on Univision this last weekend, when Ramos had to break the news to the Sheriff that no, actually, Latinos really aren’t so fond of him.
“For many Latinos, you are the face of racism and discrimination,” Ramos told Arpaio as the prelude to a question.
The Sheriff begged to differ. “I’m a pretty nice guy,” he insisted, “having lived in Mexico City, South America, Texas, Arizona.” And then, incredibly: “ I’ve never had any problem with Latinos. They love me!”
Props to Ramos for not just bursting out laughing here: “No, they don’t. No, they don’t.”
“How do you know they don’t like me?”
“I’ve seen many polls, I’ve spoken to many undocumented immigrants, and they say you are the worst of America.”
Watch the actual video here for the Sheriff’s (belligerently crestfallen?) reaction:
How much do we not love thee, Sheriff Arpaio? Let us count the ways:
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40,000: that’s the number of felony warrants that Arpaio neglected to serve as of April 2008; the Sheriff prefers to spend his time chasing down and terrorizing non-criminal immigrants.
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2,700: the number of lawsuits filed against Arpaio as of June 2008, charging him of racial profiling and gross abuse of office, among other things—the group Citizens for a Better Arizona has called Arpaio the “most sued Sheriff” in America.
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$100,000,000: how much the Sheriff has been accused of diverting from a taxpayer fund in order to help finance his immigrant-busting activities, which sometimes includes riding tanks and machine guns into immigrant neighborhoods.
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400: the number of sex crimes cases the Sheriff failed to investigate over a 2-year period, many of which involved children from 2 to 16 years old.
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$200,000: the amount of money the Sheriff agreed to pay to settle a recent racial profiling case; it is estimated that Maricopa County has had to shell out at least $50 million in defense funds over the years to cover its way-over-the-top Sheriff.
There’s more. View the worst of Sheriff Joe Arpaio—the many, many reasons Latinos and Arizonans have not to love him—here.