According to Tucson TV station KGUN, a Salt Lake City-based group called Americans Against Immigration Amnesty is trying to get Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik recalled. (They'll need to collect the signatures of 100,000 of Pima County's 487,000 registered voters.) The recall effort is ostensibly a reaction to Dupnik's comments connecting the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to "vitriol" in the media, but the name of the group suggests it's a timely attempt to punish Dupnik for something else: his outspoken opposition last year to Arizona immigration law SB 1070.
Neither of these, it goes without saying, is particularly relevant to Dupnik's ability to keep the peace. Compare Dupnik to the Arizona sheriff AAIA would probably prefer he model himself on: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who appears to think a sheriff gets elected to chase undocumented immigrants and TV cameras. Arpaio's approach to public safety has led to the alleged misspending of up to $80 million of Maricopa County taxpayers' money over the last five years -- and, of course, a 58 percent spike in violent crime in the county since 2002, especially telling given that Arizona's statewide violent-crime rate has dropped by 12 percent. Dupnik, by contrast, turned around a corrupt department when he inherited it in 1980, and according to Arizona Department of Public Safety reports, violent crime has dropped 15 percent in Pima County since 2002.
Obviously, the Dupnik recall effort has nothing to do with public safety, and everything to do with politics -- and in fairness, for a sheriff, who's an elected officer, politics is part of the job. But the fact that a sheriff's job performance is so irrelevant to his political presence should be worrisome. It's probably a good thing that crime rates have been declining for so long that people are no longer primarily concerned with the ability of their law enforcement officers to keep them safe -- but, as we've seen in Maricopa County, that trend won't continue if officers start thinking they don't have to keep an eye on public safety as long as they talk a tough game.
-- Dara Lind
