Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, whose trial in a class-action civil-rights lawsuit continues this week in Phoenix, didn’t get to be America’s most notorious anti-immigrant lawman by being shy. The camera and microphone are blood and oxygen to him. Where he goes, he trails TV crews, a gallery of rabid followers, posse volunteers and, every four years, supplicating Republican presidential candidates. The tent-city jail he calls his “concentration camp” is meant to signify brash, unchallenged power. In the blistering landscape of Phoenix, he blots out the sun.
Read more in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/in-arpaios-arizona-they-fought-back.html?src=rechp