Occupy Wall Street Meets Nazizona - Happy Halloween From Joe Arpaio's Favorite Fascist - Threatens on Video to Kill Illegals - Then Detains Immigrants at Gunpoint While Dressed in Military Combat Uniform - No Intervention From the Obama Justice Department? Not Fast But I'm Furious!

Updated on November 1st, 2011  

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

 - Hunter S. Thompson 

Leave it to Arizona's Occupy Phoenix to morph into some creepy psychotic freak show just in time for Halloween.

The camouflaged border blimp in this video is J.T. Ready, who is well known as a neo-fascist ally of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In 2007, Ready was honored by the Phoenix New Times' Best of Phoenix issue with the dubious distinction of being the Best Big Fat White Supremacist.  He has since "left" the national socialist movement and has remade himself as an anti-immigration activist who was once a duly elected Republican precinct committeeman in the Arizona Republican Party. You will notice that the person recording the video initially mistakes Ready for a border patrol officer.

One prominent anti-OWS website cited Ready's appearance as evidence of the protest movement venality, while another website documents the bewildering response of the more progressive Occupy Phoenix protestors to the presence of avowed racists, dressed like soldiers, with loaded military rifles.  In reality, Ready is not at the Occupy Phoenix rally to protect or support the protestors.  He is there for two reasons.  First, he is there because there are television cameras there and, like Arpaio, he is a shameless media whore.  Second, he is there to intimidate Hispanics from participating in the Occupy Phoenix protest.

I would love to show you a video documenting the association between Ready and Arpaio but it was removed from YouTube by a bogus copyright complaint from Harry L. Hughes III, one of Ready's national socialist playmates.

Here's a video of someone - perhaps the same person that posted the original video - confronting Hughes for having his video pulled from YouTube because it contained a copy of a photo Hughes took of Ready with Joe Arpaio.  In this video Hughes embraces the accusation that he is a racist:

In 2002, Joe Arpaio arrested actor Nick Tarr on Halloween for impersonating a law enforcement officer.  Tarr was dressed in an outdated Arizona Department of Public Safety shirt and a pair of Arpaio's pink boxer shorts. Yet Arpaio has no problem allowing these anti-immigration activists to run around in camouflaged desert fatigues with a State flag patch on their shoulders while carrying loaded AR-15s.  

These are some realistic and very scary "Halloween" costumes.  Particularly for the undocumented immigrants J.T. Ready's group is detaining, although I'm sure they appreciated having water poured into their mouths for them.

These photos were taken by Harry L. Hughes III in July of last year and are still posted on his blogfrom which they are linked under the "fair use" protection of U.S. copyright law. The photos are not hosted on my blog but are visible because they are linked to from their original location on Mr. Hughes' blog.  If the photos were deleted by Mr. Hughes, or the link changed, they would cease to be visible on this blog.

Mr. Hughes is on notice that if he makes the same kind of bogus copyright infringement claim that he used to censor the video on YouTube, he can expect me to file a DMCA Counter notification of "fair use." Theoretically, Mr. Hughes will then have two weeks to file a copyright infringement lawsuit or watch as the images are restored and I file a lawsuit against him.

J.T. Ready and his buddies rely on these uniforms to confuse and intimidate the Hispanics they
round up on their immigration patrols who Ready has said on video they are prepared to kill:

Here's J.T. Ready in another scary "Halloween" costume:

In this 2009 video J.T. Ready is doing his best Eric Cartman imitation as he rails against Jews while protesting a Hispanic day labor center in California:

I find it amazing that for the last three years  self-identified Nazi's  have been running around the Arizona desert impersonating the U.S. Military and detaining undocumented immigrants without any Federal intervention whatsoever.  In fact, the photographs on Hughes' website reflect that the U.S. Border Patrol cooperates with Ready's group by taking  it's prisoners into custody without arresting Ready or his followers.

This is exactly the kind of activity that the U.S. Code's criminal civil rights laws were designed to punish and yet Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder and President Obama have failed to even open an investigation into Ready's group for Federal civil rights violations.  This is in spite of the fact that video of Ready's threat to kill illegal aliens has been on YouYube for well over a year, and has been cited in a number of mainstream news outlets including a Gawker article last summer and a Tucson Citizen article in November.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government's erstwhile investigation of Joe Arpaio for racial profiling has languished for over 1,000 days, and there is no sign that there will be any result in the near future, if ever.  The failure to investigate Ready, and the failure to finalize the investigation of Arpaio, can only be explained as reflecting a cynical desire to avoid disturbing the illegal immigration hornet's nest during an election year.

Back to the Arizona OWS video. It is legal in Arizona to carry firearms openly. This includes both handguns and military-style rifles. However, it is not legal to threaten people with firearms. Under Arizona's justification statute, a reasonable person who feels that he/she or another person is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury is allowed to use deadly force in self defense. Arguably, the statute is a nullity since it has yet to be established that there are any reasonable people left in Arizona.  

Typically, a shooter who is not about to fire a sling carried rifle would have the rifle on his shoulder hanging upside down from the sling. You will notice in the video that J.T. Ready is carrying his AR-15 in the low-ready position. It appears that he is using a tactical sling  which is used by police SWAT teams and combat troops.  This is a shortened sling that clips to a tactical vest and keeps the weapon at a low ready position when the gun is not in immediate use.  Typically, a shooter that is using a tactical sling anticipates the imminent use of his weapon in close quarters combat.  I would view Ready's use of a tactical sling to carry his AR-15 in the low-ready position  as a threat that he is about to use his weapon and am amazed that the Phoenix PD allowed him to carry the rifle in this manner. If his muzzle were tipped up just a few inches a reasonable person might be justified in shooting him with impunity under Arziona law.

If J.T. Ready really wants to assert his First and Second Amendment Rights he should come to New York City and show up at Zuccotti Park dressed like this while carrying his AR-15 and see how NYPD responds.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon Takes on the "Nattering Nabobs of Negativism": From the "Would You Like Some Cheese With That Whine" Department.

Dogo Barry Graham can be counted on to call out whiny politicians who are loose with the facts and can't reason their way out of an imaginary box. The latest politico in his cross-hairs is Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon who has been busy sweeping the Phoenix Police Department's dirt under the rug. In a recent sarcasm-laden blog post, Mayor Gordon complained about the bad press he has been receiving from the local Phoenix, Arizona, media.

I am not denying that Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has good reason to be cranky about the press coverage he has been receiving. Anyone who follows the sometimes churlish but always informative Bad Phoenix Cops blog already knows how dysfunctional the Phoenix Police Department has been under Mayor Phil Gordon's watch. In addition the corruption and murder scandal engulfing the Phoenix Police Department, Mayor Phil Gordon has also:

1) been plagued by persistent questions about his chronic "girlfriend problem."

2) permitted Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris to retire -- receiving a one-time payout of $560,000 and drawing a $7,500 a month pension -- and then be rehired as a civilian Public Safety Manager earning an additional $180,000 a year on the taxpayer's dime.

3) been sued for the release of his security logs by Judicial Watch, following the denial of a public record request regarding his inexplicably large taxpayer-funded security detail (which might have been understandable at one time given the violent tendencies of one of the mayor's senior assistants).

In his November 23rd blog post, Mayor Gordon complains about bad press from the local media like a cheerleader who can't understand why the football team doesn't respect her after a Friday night under the bleachers:

At the City of Phoenix, we work to make it as easy as possible for the media: We pepper them with press releases and hold briefings on a regular basis. Still, “good news” often gets missed in favor of the sensational.

I’m not really complaining – when you’ve been Mayor for 7 years, you get used to it.

A negative story about a handful of police officers? Top of the newscast.

Contorted statistics that paint the City as an “out of control” spender, the government equivalent of a drunken sailor? Here come the cameras and mikes.

But milestones that deeply impact the lives of the “real people” who live in Encanto or Maryvale, downtown or Arcadia? They barely make a blip.

I feel like I’d better tell you the good news myself.

You’ve likely heard a lot lately about the Phoenix Police Department, mostly from cynics interested in tearing down its leadership or denigrating our officers. The truth? The PPD as an organization is doing great work. We got more evidence of this yesterday, courtesy of the CQ Press, an independent publisher that annually ranks the safest and most dangerous cities in America.

Based on CQ’s stats, we’re currently 135^th out of the 400 most dangerous cities in the country. That’s better than last year, when we were 92^nd and better than the year before, when we ranked 65^th.

It’s also better than they did in lovely places like Tucson and Salt Lake City, perfectly nice cities no one will ever mistake for Phoenix on the “thriving metropolis” scale.

My point? 135^th isn’t where we want to be, but it’s more proof that our city is making progress, even in tough economic times.

Starting a sarcastic rant about bad press by declaring "I'm not really complaining" is about as prosaic and silly as starting a speech on race relations by declaring "some of my best friends are African Americans."

Is Mayor Gordon actually bragging about the fact that Phoenix is in the top 30% of the 400 most dangerous cities in America? Apparently, this is his idea of the good news about the Phoenix Police Department that the press is ignoring. As Mayor Gordon points out, it is better than being in the top 20%, which was Phoenix's previous ranking, but telling us that we should be thankful that the previously waist-high sludge from the overflowing sewer is now at knee level is not particularly helpful and clearly nothing to cheer about.

Let me take a few moments and talk about what has been impacting the everyday lives of the "'real people' who live in Encanto or Maryvale, downtown or Arcadia." My wife and I are two of those "real people" Mayor Gordon seems so concerned about. So are are our neighbors. We live on a beautiful palm lined-street of well-kept historic homes in downtown Phoenix. The outgoing Arizona Attorney General lives on the next block west of us. We do not live in what has, in the recent past, been considered a low-income or high-crime area.

Yet, over the past month there have been two burglaries and three attempted burglaries on our block. With approximately 18 houses on the block, that amounts to 25% of the households becoming the victims of felony property crime within the last month alone (I am not including the locked bicycle that was stolen from in front of our house on a clear sunny afternoon).

Would Mayor Gordon count among the police bashing "cynics" he criticizes the young couple with two small children who live in fear after their house was broken into this month? These "real people" who live downtown are wondering why a forensic examination of their home was never conducted by the Phoenix Police Department, and why they were never contacted by burglary detectives after the initial police report was taken by a patrol officer. Even if the police were able to recover their property in the possession of a suspect, no trial could ever take place due to the lack of any forensic evidence linking the suspect to the scene of the crime. Are we really living in a City where the Police Department is either unable or unwilling to allocate the resources to do a proper investigation of a residential burglary?

My wife cannot walk alone in our neighborhood after dark. In the year that we have lived on our block there has been a steady increase in the number of drug-using chronically mentally ill transients who flood the alleys of downtown Phoenix at night after being run-out of Margaret Hance Park by the Police. The policies of Mayor Gordon and the Phoenix City Council have left our city without adequate resources to deal with the CMI homeless, and the "real people" in downtown Phoenix are left to live with the consequences of the Mayor's incompetence.

Criticism of City Hall is not cynical when City Hall has failed so miserably in governing the City of Phoenix. It is Mayor Gordon's November 23rd blog post that is cynical, not his critics in the press who are the only ones in this situation who seem to be doing their jobs by calling for competence, responsibility and accountability in the Phoenix City Government.