Investigative Classics is a weekly feature on noteworthy examples of the reporting craft.
In a deeply partisan nation, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a Manichean stick figure for many Americans – the anti-immigration Arizonan you either love or hate.
His actions and legacy are, of course, far more complex. Although the 85-year-old Arpaio seems set to leave the national stage after President Trump pardoned him last month, the debates and divisions he symbolized endure.
Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of Arizona’s East Valley Tribune explored Arpaio in a series of articles that won them the 2009 Pulitzer for local reporting. Much of their reporting cast Arpaio in a harsh light, raising questions about the legality of his approach and whether his focus on illegal immigrants allowed other crimes to mushroom. But they also addressed “the economic and security threats posed by illegal immigration.”
One fascinating article explored the “evolution” of Arpaio’s thinking regarding illegal immigration:
When Arpaio entered the debate over illegal immigration, he filled a void for those frustrated with local police departments’ unwillingness to take on the problem, said Mike O’Neil, a pollster and president of O’Neil Associates Market Research in Tempe.
“People want something done about immigration, and there was a perception that nobody was doing anything. The sheriff stepped into that and I think the first reaction of people was, 'Well, at last somebody’s doing something,’” O’Neil said.
By then, Arpaio already was the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America” who housed jail inmates in outdoor tents, put them on chain gangs, issued them pink underwear and hung a lighted “Vacancy” sign above his jail. He was the proud, throwback lawman who wore a miniature Colt .45 tie pin.
He set about becoming the toughest on immigration, too. Arpaio instructed deputies to arrest everyone involved in illegal immigration — the top people and the six guys in a pickup, alike.
Just three years ago, that philosophy was much different. Then, Arpaio likened human smuggling to drug smuggling. “We don’t go after the addicts on the street. We go after the peddlers. Same philosophy,” he told the AP in July 2005.
Also that month, Arpaio’s deputies investigated a triple-murder case in Queen Creek that involved a family of illegal immigrants. Rodrigo Cervantes Zavala was suspected of killing his children’s grandparents and an uncle, then fleeing to Mexico with his children, 3-year-old Jennifer and 1-year-old Bryan.
“We want those kids back in the U.S.,” Arpaio told the Tribune then. “I want them back with their mother.”
