Up until the day of the recent tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, America only had heard about one Arizona Sheriff, namely Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County. He was and is known for his no-nonsense approach to law enforcement. Over many years, he has pursued those who committed crimes and then treated the convicts in a way that only raised objections from bleeding heart liberals, the ACLU and left-leaning groups. He has been re-elected many times since 1992 with overwhelming margins and has to be therefore considered very popular with a majority of people living in his county which includes the City of Phoenix. He has been attacked over the years by his detractors and is almost daily threatened by those that do not agree with his conservative philosophy and law-enforcement practices. Some of the threats have been extremely serious but Sheriff Arpiao has taken them all in stride. He claims, he is just doing his job in accordance with existing laws.
Enter the Sheriff from Pima County, Clarence Dupnik. This county lies to the south of Mariposa County and includes among other places the City of Tucson. He has been a live-long Democrat and has on occasion stated his objections to laws dealing with criminals and the entire issue of illegal immigrants. As an example, he has voiced his opposition to the 2010 Arizona State Law SB 1070 which deals with stronger checks on potential illegals. In fact, he has stated that he would NOT enforce this particular law. When the tragic shooting rampage happened on Saturday, January 8 by a crazy individual, Sheriff Dupnik gave his first public interview several hours later. While he had very little of substance to say about what exactly happened, how many people had died and so on, he started ranting about what he thought caused this criminal to commit this incredulous crime. To the Sheriff, it was the “hateful vitriol” coming from conservative radio shows and other right-wing people who spewed hateful things on a daily basis. This press conference was an embarrassment to the entire country, period! Had it not been connected to such tragic and dreadful incident, his performance before the media would have been worthy of ‘Saturday Night Live’.
This now was followed by all liberals and left-wing extremists in America making equally ludicrous statements and the continued speculation as to how to deal with this right-wing element in America committing these hate inciting speeches. This is in and of itself not surprising if one remembers that the liberals in the media blamed President George W. Bush for everything that went wrong around the world for nearly a decade. But back to the Sheriff from Pima County. He continued for several days talking to a variety of television interviewers freely expressing his personal opinions that the ‘right’ was to blame for this crime. He admitted that his allegations were strictly his opinion and he had no evidence backing up his statements. What can we conclude from the above? One thing is becoming very clear: If you are conservative you are automatically a potential hater and when are expressing your opinion you are spreading vitriolic hate implying, the left-wing liberals do not do such things!
While Sheriff Arpaio is enforcing the laws on the books, Sheriff Dupnik is objecting to some which he does not like and says so publicly, it’s called selective law-enforcement. While Sheriff Dupnik received praise and thanks from President Obama during a telephone call last week, Sheriff Arpaio is currently investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department for alleged violations of civil rights of illegal aliens in Arizona.
Nothing explains better what is really going in America these days. It is truly amazing that, instead of concentrating on the person who committed this heinous crime and to persecute him to the full extent of the law, Sheriff Dupnik with his ‘out of order’ personal rants is giving the defense of this criminal potential reasons as to why he did it. It is a very sad commentary about America in 2011 and sickening to think that this is acceptable to many people living here.