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Just as famed Maricopa CountySheriff Joe Arpaio is preparing to release results of his investigation of Barack Obama’s eligibility for Arizona’s 2012 ballot, a top-gun activist who led a successful campaign to recall a key Arpaio ally is now targeting the sheriff himself.
In the coming weeks, it will be decided whether transplanted radical attorney-activist and “community organizer” Randy Parraz can force Arpaio to resign before the sheriff’s Cold Case Posse has a chance to deliver a report in February.
Parraz, who has made his career applying Saul Alinsky-style community organizer tactics for radical leftist movements in the U.S. and Canada, has told WND that Arpaio “has to go.”
Arpaio’s response: “No way will I resign,” he told WND.
Parraz’s skills as a leftist political activist are not to be underestimated. Last year, he helped lead the recall campaign that removed long-time Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce after Pearce championed the passage of Arizona’s tough immigration bill, SB 1070.
With Pearce gone, Parraz has set his sites on Arpaio.
“Our focus right now is to hold Sheriff Arpaio accountable for what he has done – his abuse of power, the corruption, all the things he has done under his leadership,” Parraz told WND in a telephone interview. “We need to have a fresh start; we need to get him out
Parraz said “the only way we can do this is to engage the citizens in a way in which they have never been engaged before.”
He has focused his strategy on the five-person Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the governing body that directly oversees the operation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
“We are going to the Jan. 11 meeting of the Board of Supervisors to get placed on the agenda the recent Department of Justice and the report of the 400 uninvestigated sex crimes,” he explained.
A vote of three of the five supervisors or a decision by the chairman is required to get an item placed on the board’s agenda.
As WND reported, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a 22-page report charging that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has engaged in racial profiling of Hispanics and other violations of federal civil rights laws.
Parraz’s maneuver is strictly political, since the Board of Supervisors lacks the authority to force the sheriff to resign.
If at first you don’t succeed …
This is by no means Parraz’s first attempt to pressure the Board of Supervisors to demand Arpaio’s resignation.
A few weeks ago, Parraz tried his maneuver without success at the Dec. 14 board meeting. He appeared with about 100 members of his non-profit group, Citizens for a Better Arizona, to get his complaints against Arpaio placed on the agenda.
Undeterred, Parraz now intends to make a repeat appeal to the board at its Jan. 11 meeting.
“We are trying to get these items on the Board of Supervisors agenda so we can introduce a resolution to demand the resignation of Sheriff Arpaio,” Parraz said, explaining that a resignation demand could only be introduced in relation to an item already on the agenda.
“Once we are on the agenda, we can during our presentation say that because of this behavior – this wall of distrust, these constitutional violations, the racial profiling unprecedented against Latinos – we want you to join us in calling for Sheriff Arpaio’s resignation.”
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