This time, Paul Babeu, has been caught with his corrosive hand in the hoarding and misuse of military equipment from a stockpile costing taxpayers— you and me— over $7 million.
Equipment unlawfully distributed to public and private nonlaw-enforcement recipients in self-promoting giveaways— a practice the federal Defense Logistics Agency declares unlawful, along with Babeu’s plans to sell equipment to help cover his budget deficit.
Having totally politicized the Sheriff’s Office, Babeu now arrogantly announces his next move— politicize the county attorney’s office.
Teaming up with Michael “Lando” Voyles, an obscure candidate for county attorney, the so-called “Law and Order” accomplices seek to impose ideological control over the county’s administration of justice.
Forget about equal justice under the law. These conspirators seek to dictate who gets arrested and who gets convicted, by applying a perverse Babeu and Lando brand of extremist ideology.
Meantime, one must ask where is the moral leadership of community leaders who publicly pound their chest as they proclaim ownership of real American values but avoid confronting the incomparable huckster besmirching those values?
Where are the opponents to popularized drug cartel fearmongering versus professional law investigation?
We’ve entered the season when the public has the opportunity to exert moral leadership in the unmasking of Babeu’s enablers and apologists. It’s called campaign time. Candidate meet and greet. Community candidate receptions. Neighborhood forums.
These are opportunities for county voters to demand unequivocal answers from candidates to uncover members of “Team Babeu” running for county government offices in alliance with the disgraced sheriff.
This is the time to demand that all candidates publicly reject support for the most corrupt sheriff in the history of Pinal County.
Babeu, you correctly gauged that Arizona voters were abandoning your congressional candidacy and political self-survival instincts drove you to leave that losing contest.
Your continuing presence in the sheriff’s office is contaminating vital law enforcement and investigative services, as tragically demonstrated by your contemptible attempt at gaining political advantage from the recent loss of an entire family residing in Tempe.
Your political dishonesty and obsession with fear-mongering is destroying respect and trust crucial to public safety.
It is long past time for you to exit.
Withdraw from this race and let a better man rebuild the demoralized and compromised sheriff’s office. Let an uncompromised sheriff begin the long process of restoring public trust to nonpoliticized and unbiased law enforcement that investigates before it pontificates.
To continue your candidacy is to confirm your public be-damned commitment to personal gratification, thus sealing your fate as the most hedonistic and corrupt public official in Pinal County’s history. Our county cannot afford the shame and cost of defending an indicted sheriff, as seems likely to happen.
I urge county voters to coalesce around a sheriff’s candidate with demonstrable commitment to professional, not political, law enforcement. That candidate is out there. Let’s find him and elect him.
