There's A Cop When You Don't Need One

A few Saturdays ago, I ran into Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Love the guy, even though I think he may be certifiable. The following ran in the Scottsdale Times as my August 2008 column:

Every so often, I bump into the old lawman with the big voice. He seems older each time we meet again, his face lined more deeply with crags, his hand smaller in mine. Maybe it's age, or maybe Sheriff Joe Arpaio's legend has grown so large in the press, the physical Joe inevitably feels small by comparison.

Either way, it's a Sunday morning in the Coffee Plantation on Shea Boulevard and here comes America's self-proclaimed toughest cop, 76 years old, bearing a jowly grin and a cup of java, dressed casual, his wife Ava at his side. It's not quite 9:30 on a weekend morning. Regardless, our sheriff has plans aplenty.

That Joe Arpaio has an agenda should come as no surprise – our sheriff is nothing if not busy. It's his plan that stuns me.

No, he's not headed to a press conference. No, he's not planning another round-up of illegal immigrants in Mesa. No, it's not a dust-up with Shaquille O'Neal or a book signing or a chain gang appearance.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is taking his wife to the movies. To see Hancock starring Will Smith.

"It looks pretty good," Arpaio confides. "And we like going early in the morning. Then no one comes up to me to talk."

His wife picks up where the sheriff leaves off, which feels natural – they've been married for 51 years now. "Sunday's the one day a week where I get to have him," Ava explains. "We just got done with church."

And then after a few minutes of kibitzing, they're off. Except the old man sort of stays in my mind for days afterward. Maybe it's that I'm both fascinated by Arpaio and conflicted by him – by his policies and by his bluster, by the personable side of him I've glimpsed and the public side of him that seems like so much hot air. Or maybe it's just his choice of flick.

Hancock.

I don't think I'm spoiling much by saying that Smith's latest summer blockbuster concerns a superhero whose crime-fighting deeds make him the object of media heat and light and an abundance of public scorn. There's a few hundred lawsuits, huge tabs to pay for the damage left in our hero's wake, and razzing whenever Hancock shows up at a crime scene.

In short, the flick plays like Arpaio's autobiography written large, with the addition of the ability to fly and a few other superpowers our sheriff hasn't yet gotten around to claiming.
Hancock, like Arpaio, looms larger than life. And both men have a flair for the dramatic: Hancock after he saves the life of a do-gooder public relations man who decides to repay him with an image makeover and Arpaio with, well, you know. You've seen the headlines.

The more I think about it – Arpaio's khaki uniform and collar stars vs. Hancock's snug leather costume; Arpaio's past undercover life with the DEA versus Hancock's unknown back story, obscured by amnesia – the more the parallels arise. In the end, the comparison amounts to a question raised by the movie's plot:

What will we think about Arpaio once he's gone?

That's how Hancock makes himself over, you see – the PR flack, Embrey, advises him to go to jail, to create a void where bad guys flourish, to let Los Angeles feel his absence. What happens to the valley when Arpaio does the same, when he finally retires or, as is far less likely, loses an election and fades away?

Will we miss Sheriff Joe?

Me, I think the answer can be had in two words: Yes. Desperately.

We'll miss the man because, for every Arpaio grandstand play that disappoints, there's a basic cop philosophy that's impossible to deny. I agreed with it the first time he said it aloud, and the next hundred after that. It's what accounts for his stratospheric approval ratings, the re-election landslides, all of it.

"You should never live better in jail than you live on the street."

Then there's the other quality Arpaio shares with Hancock, their action hero side. I could explain it to you, but better to let Teddy Roosevelt do the talking. He nailed it:

"It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger."

That, too, is what I respect mightily about Arpaio: That he and his officers do it while their critics, myself included, merely talk about it. Agree, disagree, protest, sue, threaten; no matter what, Arpaio still does what he does.

Hancock, too, even if Sheriff Joe didn't think much of the film.

"It was all right," he tells me on the phone a few days later. "Just all right. I give it two and a half stars. It wasn't even R rated. Not like Rambo."

Our sheriff prefers blood with his popcorn. Or the occasional romance.

"I like some good love stories," Arpaio claims between laughs. "You know, where you cry and all that. What was that one? The Letter They Found In The Bottle?"

Somehow, I didn't see that one. Just like Sheriff Joe doesn't see any comparison between him and Hancock, incidentally. Arpaio laughs at the premise, laughs at the idea that public wrath bothers him, laughs at the thought of a legacy.

A legacy is for people who leave, you see. "Like Hancock, I'll live forever," says the old lawman and you hope he's right.