What you may not learn from watching Fox's reality show with Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a new reality show on Fox scheduled to debut: "Smile! You're Under Arrest". The grand concept is "'Cops' meets 'Punk'd'." Here are some details:
From creator Scott Satin (Who Wants to Marry My Dad?, Who Wants to be a Superhero?), the show features law officers in Phoenix setting up grandiose sting operations to lure criminals with warrants into their waiting hands, and cameras.
“It is a reverse Punk’d,” says Fox President of Alternative Entertainment Mike Darnell. “Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”
One of three set-ups just shot in Arizona features the cops luring a criminal to a movie set with the promise of making him an extra and paying him a couple hundred dollars. An elaborate film set is staged and filming begins on a faux movie. The set-up continues as the director then gets mad at the lead actor, fires him and replaces him with the law-breaking extra.
The scene escalates with the fake director introducing the mark to a supposed studio mogul and continuing to create this dream-comes-true sequence. Finally, all the participants are revealed as officers of the law, and the criminal is apprehended (before signing waivers to let the footage be used in the show).
Yes, the Sheriff Joe featured in this show is the same Maricopa County sheriff who's made a career out of arresting just about every Latino in sight, while driving law enforcement in the county right into the ground, with hundreds of crimes going uninvestigated -- all while nakedly violating federal regulations.
Moreover, he's also incurred the wrath of the ACLU by attempting to terminate a federal consent decree mandating that he maintain conditions at the county jail that meet constitutional minimums; he also was taken to court in an attempt to force him to live up to a court order to transport female prisoners to abortion appointments.
