opinion

Will contempt case put Arpaio in the pink (underwear)?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio invented pink underwear for inmates.

Should he now be sporting a pair?

Should Arpaio, at the very least, receive a pink slip from county voters?

Even if you are among Arpaio's most ardent supporters, and he has many of them, you can't like what you've heard about the testimony in the civil contempt hearing going on in federal court before Judge Murray Snow.

Snow is the judge who found Arpaio's immigration enforcement procedures unconstitutional and ordered them to stop. An appeals court agrees.

The sheriff already has admitted to not following Snow's order. That should be troublesome enough for law-abiding Arpaio supporters. The sheriff of Maricopa County is supposed to enforce the laws. He's supposed to follow court orders. He doesn't get to make the law or ignore court orders, even those with which he disagrees.

That's not how our legal system works.

Arpaio's popularity appears to have gone to his head. He came to believe his own press releases. Instead of acting like a sheriff in real life, he acts as if he only played one on TV.

The hearing before Snow could change that.

In court Tuesday Sgt. Brett Palmer, a supervisor with Arpaio's former human-smuggling unit, testified that Arpaio personally instructed him to continue enforcing federal immigration law after Judge Snow had ordered them to stop.

Palmer described a conversation with Arpaio in which the sheriff wanted him to hold some individuals who were being detained, something Palmer believed he had no legal right to do.

Palmer said, "The sheriff took a very authoritative stance with me. (He) told me I was not to release these individuals. I was to hold them, pending his arrival. I told the sheriff immediately that was an unlawful order and I was not going to follow it."

That's not good.

Arpaio will get to have his say. He and his attorneys will try to put a positive spin on things. They'll try to soften Snow's view of the situation. They'll try, as the old saying goes, to put Arpaio back in the pink.

But in this case, that might mean underwear.