Arpaio Does It Again

On Saturday, a local training exercise for law enforcement personnel, on how to respond to an active school shooter situation was held at an empty school.  The exercise was put together by our well-known and/or infamous Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arapio, with an assist by  former action movie star Steven Seagal.  Story and video here.

I'm not going to object to LEOs being taught how to respond to this type of situation, or even to the use of washed-up celebrities to get more media coverage.  It's just that, when I saw the video on local news, I couldn't help noticing, well....

Most school shooting situations involve actual students as the shooter.  Most of those student-shooter situations involve only one weapon, usually a handgun.  Heavily-armed shooters  and adult outsiders coming into a school, as in the Newtown shootings, are relatively rare. 

Oh, and one other thing: If you Google an image search for "school shooting mugshots", what you end up with is an overwhelming field of white faces, with only occasional appearances by black, brown, or other ethnicities.

So what type of person gets cast as the shooter in Arpaio's training exercise?  That's right: A Big Black Scary Guy.  Who appeared to be about 30-40.  And who carried multiple weapons and an ammo bag.

Of course that's who Arapio cast.  He just can't help himself.  It's been his pattern for decades.  If there's a chance to make a dogwhistle about black or brown people, he takes it.

And the saddest part?  He keeps getting reelected, and reelected, and reelected.