Sheriff Joe is sueing for slander : AZ IMC

Arpaio wants to sue because newspaper just won't play nice

Although the U.S. Constitution clearly states that Congress shall make no law abridging press freedom, it is silent on whether a sheriff can intimidate a newspaper in the name of decency.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to find out. His government-paid attorney drafted a letter to the West Valley View newspaper threatening legal action over an undignified headline.

The harsh headline read: "Sheriff as dangerous as a child predator."

"It was meant to be harsh," said Jim Painter, the managing editor, "but it was not libelous."

The headline ran with an opinion column that said Arpaio was endangering the Avondale community by not telling the paper about a pair of attempted kidnappings.

For more than a year, Arpaio has feuded with the paper, complaining about unflattering or incomplete coverage.

Arpaio restricted the West Valley View's access to press releases, making reporters schedule times to view them in his downtown Phoenix office rather than simply sending them by e-mail as he does with just about every other media outlet in Arizona. Nearly constantly.

The newspaper took the case to court, and a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that Arpaio needed to send press releases to the newspaper. The judge couldn't make Arpaio e-mail the releases but said Arpaio's refusal to do so was unprofessional and "petty."

A Maricopa County Sheriff's Office spokesman said the news releases on the attempted abductions were at headquarters for all to look at. But the West Valley View's news editor wrote a column criticizing the sheriff for not alerting the newspaper to the incidents. The paper slapped the provocative headline on it and ran it on the Oct. 3 Opinions page

Arpaio then put his county-appointed attorney, Dennis Wilenchik, to work. Wilenchik, according to his contract, charges taxpayers $185 an hour.

The trouble is that there isn't anything legally wrong with the column or headline. Under the case law that defines libel, an elected official can be criticized. Opinions are protected speech. What a country.

Wilenchik's stern Oct. 24 letter asked the paper to retract the child-predator comparison and "publish the truth" about Arpaio's efforts to protect children.

But sprinkled in amidst the legal language was a new tactic. Wilenchik appealed to the newspaper's manners.

"Have you no decency at all?" the letter asked the newspaper's editors.

Wilenchik, in a phone interview, said it troubles him that political disagreements these days devolve quickly into personal attacks. "I was writing them the letter trying to bring (the newspaper) into some folds of decency," he said.

Asked to elaborate, Wilenchik said he misspoke.

"I didn't file it to make them more decent," he said. "I filed to let them know that there are bounds of decency."

Wilenchik called the headline "dangerous" because it attacked Arpaio personally.

"That's why you have to stop that malicious, dangerous behavior," he said.

Wilenchik, who said he hasn't decided whether to bill the county for his time, said Arpaio has not yet decided whether to sue the West Valley View.

But should the sheriff sue, he would be standing up for the rights of elected officials to demand civil and polite discourse through force and intimidation.

Just as the Founding Fathers envisioned.

Story below of Tempe Gov't with $50,000 to help the homeless. Will they help Anti-Government Libertarian Mike Ross?....By the way,with all this $$$,why doesn't Tempe Gov't offer FREE Wi-Fi Internet,like to rest of the USA?

Tempe to aid chronically homeless
Program sends 2 caseworkers to find them, offer help

William Hermann
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 27, 2006 12:00 AM

There once was a time when homeless people sleeping in alleys and parks was mostly a downtown Phoenix phenomenon, but those days are long over.

Tempe, like many other Valley cities, has hundreds of chronically homeless people who beg for money in parking lots, camp in parks and scour the alleys looking for something to sell.

The Tempe City Council recently officially recognized this and authorized spending $50,000 on what has been dubbed the Homeless Program Outreach Effort. advertisement

The funds will pay for two part-time outreach specialists who will cruise the city in a van provided by the Tempe Community Council.

"Our caseworkers will go to the parks and alleyways where the homeless live and develop a relationship with them," said Theresa James, the city's coordinator for the homeless.

"The caseworkers will try to work through the barriers keeping these people from living decent lives, particularly mental health and substance-abuse problems."

James said nobody really knows exactly how many chronically homeless people are in Tempe.

She said a Valley-wide count of homeless people done each January to satisfy Housing and Urban Development aid-funding requirements has said that Tempe has averaged 157 homeless people for the past several years. Officials estimate that about 6,000 chronically homeless people are in greater Phoenix.

"Counting the homeless is not accurate or easy. Most people think that 157 is a low number and maybe there's two or three times that many," James said.

Whatever the exact number in Tempe, it seems that nearly every city park has its complement of men, with a few women.

Mike Winkle, 47, said he has been homeless for about 15 years. Winkle said he divides his time between parks in Scottsdale's Indian Bend Wash and in Tempe. He recently was sitting in Tempe's Daley Park drinking a quart of beer. It was about 11 a.m.

"I've had drinking problems, problems with I'd guess you'd say my mind, and I never seem to get the medicines right for my mind, and then if I have the medicines the booze messes them up, I think," Winkle said. "I don't go to shelters 'cause they make me feel creepy."

Having people like Winkle in a park makes neighbors like Lan Begay feel pretty creepy. She lives a few blocks from Daley Park and often takes her 2-year-old daughter, Bre, there to play.

"I'm sad for them . . . the homeless people . . . but it's also scary for people like me because when you're here you don't know what one of those guys might do," Begay said.

"I see these men sleeping and sitting around, and none of them has ever bothered us. Still, it makes me uneasy they are here. I think something should be done."

That is what James and her outreach workers have in mind: Directing the chronically homeless to services that can help them.

Cathleen Phelan is one of the outreach workers, and she says helping her "clients"' means "getting them to services they might not be able to find their own way to."

To that end, Phelan and fellow caseworker Gregg Donnell recently had a long interview with a very down-and-out Vietnam veteran in Escalante Park.

"This man has been homeless for at least the last five years, living in parks in Tempe and Mesa," Phelan said.

"He has serious mental health problems but also pain issues, and he has difficulty maintaining a connection with service providers. So when he doesn't get his pain medication he self-medicates with booze and other substances. . . . He has real problems."

Phelan and Donnell recently bundled the man into their van, took him to the veterans hospital in Phoenix, and spent hours getting him help.

He was one of several men the two would help that day.

"Our mission is to find services for these folks," Phelan said. "We go out and talk to people, see what they need, then get them help."

James, the director, said will the program operate for a year and then be evaluated regarding its effectiveness.

Reach the reporter at (602) 444-7962.

The two outreach workers that have been HIRED by the City of Tempe have taken on a losing battle. Homeless persons are not given what they need, which is Section 8 housing before someone who already has a home. I sat in the HUD office in Downtown Tempe and listened to a woman who had been offered a home gripe and moan about paperwork. She claimed she couldn't take time off from her job to keep coming down there and filling out more paperwork. Why is it that someone with a home gets placed in a home before a homeless person. My fiance has been on the Section 8 list for over 5 months with the maximum points. How did this woman get in before him? She has a job- she can afford to pay her rent. He is an ex-offender and doesn't lie about it on his application. She has an apartment. He is homeless. How does someone with an apartment and job come before someone with neither? The veteran in the story that was taken to the hospital is still sleeping wherever he can. His medical symptoms have not been dealt with because no hospital cares about someone who cannot pay the bill. His diabetes is still not under control. Unless these outreach workers plan on taking every homeless person to their appointments following up is impossible. Bus tickets are only given to you if the person behind the desk likes you. In Escalante Park I have witnessed the same Hispanic women get food bags two and three times a month. They come in with their work uniforms on. They also are on food stamps. They have homes. They get a large grocery bag of food. Another plastic bag of meat, milk eggs and cakes. A homeless person gets a bag lunch once a month. This food is supposed to go to people who need it. Homeless people are told to get out of Escalante's Community Action Office to give other people a chance to get food. Well those other Hispanic ladies sit there for two to three hours and grab everything they see. I have seen women take 4 gallons of milk just for themselves.Nevermind the homeless person who get's nothing. The City of Tempe has had the funds to build a shelter since the late 1990's. It is 2006 where is the shelter and where did the money go? Seems to me these Outreach Workers need to work on getting their bosses to stop purjering themselves on their shelter/day shelter rhetoric and coordinate doing the jobs they have been getting paid to do for over ten years. Maybe we should replace them with homeless people.