As the debate over last Friday’s presidential pardon of Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, AZ continues to roil the nation, WitnessLA turned for comment to a law enforcement figure who frequently found himself at war with the self-styled “toughest sheriff” in America.
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who served as chief of the Mesa, AZ police department between 2006-2009, possesses a trove of hard-won personal knowledge about how Arpaio works—perhaps more than nearly any other law enforcement figure in the nation. A 28-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, Gascón rose to become second in command of the LAPD under Bill Bratton, overseeing 8,000 patrol officers, before he became the chief cop in Mesa, a city more populous than Atlanta, Kansas City or Miami. Although it’s been nearly ten years since Gascón, who fled Castro’s Cuba with his family at the age of 13, clashed with ‘Sheriff Joe,’ his memories and observations represent a vivid reminder of the activities that led to Arpaio’s conviction.
[For more of this story, written by Celeste Fremon, go to http://witnessla.com/san-franc...ios-reign-of-terror/]
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