Tales of two sheriffs

     Sheriffs have been in the news.
     In Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, darling of the law and order folks for putting his inmates in pink underwear and housing them in tents in the Arizona extremes of blistering heat and freeze locker cold, played to the media by announcing he would make an announcement about an investigation into President Obama's birth certificate.
     The actual announcement was a bit of a dud. He used a discredited report, full of half-truths and outright false premises, to conclude that there was "reason to believe" that the birth certificate "might" be fraudulent. The assertions didn't hold water a year ago, but that doesn't bother a populist sheriff/politician who is savvy enough to know there will always be a hard core base of people who will never believe facts, but cling forever to what they want to believe. He had another moment in the spotlight, which was all he wanted.
     Here at home, we read the local papers as a murder case in the local court unraveled because of allegations of misconduct by members of the county sheriff's department, including the charge by the defense that a defendant had been questioned by Sheriff's investigators even after she said she wanted an attorney.
     Charges were dismissed, the case thrown out of court. A respected major, Nick Plazio, was accused of ordering an underling to continue the questioning, and the major denied it. The state's attorney produced a memo, eventually, showing that the alleged impropriety had been called to the attention of the sheriff, but that the sheriff decided to put the memo in the safe and not disclose the allegation to the defense attorney because it was then a part of an internal departmental investigation.
     The state's attorney isn't buying it, and neither, apparently, is the judge.
     So, Who Struck John? Did the major violate the rules of interrogation, or was it an example of internal turmoil in the department?
     The major says he did not give the order. So, did it come from higher up? Is the major being thrown under the bus to save face for the sheriff? It's something that happens in quasi-military organizations; ask any person who ever served in the military. Or ask any cop, or career professional firefighter. Little guys get sacrificed for the career or political aspirations of senior officers all the time.
     We may not ever know. But the top guy bears the burden when something hits the fan, unless, of course, the top guy is a popularly elected official. The only civilian oversight is at election time, which is always, it seems, several years down the road.
     Meanwhile, the consequences of a bad actor are very real, and very now.