AUGUST 18, 2010
Tribune exposes Romley’s fake police database campaign trick
Romley swipes funds from Arpaio‘s immigration sweeps and creates new $130k “illegal immigration“ job as payback
Democrat-supporting County Attorney Rick Romley has only been in office a little over three months and the corruption has begun in full force.
In yet another sleazy campaign move, he hoodwinked the East Valley Tribune into running a story about a fake idea. He tried to sell the idea to the Arizona Republic first, but they saw right through it and refused.
Romley's idea was setting up a joint Valleywide crime database that law enforcement would all have access to. He held a meeting on Tuesday with 70 law enforcement officers to discuss it. Sounds like a good idea, right? Only problem is the database already exists, was put together by others over the past eight years, includes 50 law enforcement and health officials Valleywide, and in fact is so advanced it is already being connected to large counties in California.
Sheriff Arpaio's office has been heavily involved with the project over the past eight years but was conveniently left out of the meeting.
Romley merely held the meeting to gain credit with the public and press in his election campaign. When the Tribune reporter found this out, he wrote a second piece exposing Romley's dishonesty.
Cmdr. Bob Rampy, who has led the AZLINK effort and does a lot of the sheriff's IT work, said, "I'm concerned he's (Romley) is coming around and taking credit for what has already been done." Rampy said he was not invited to Tuesday's meeting. "AZLINK has really been widespread.
He should've done a little more due diligence on data sharing efforts going on."
Romley also pulled a fast one by taking away funds from Sheriff Arpaio's illegal immigration sweeps and transferring them to his own office, where he created a fake new position for a supporter of his. The job title is "Special Assistant for Immigration and Border Protection," but since Romley supports amnesty and open borders, and the person he chose to fill that position, Leesa Morrison-Weisz, came from former Governer Janet Napolitano's administration, you can rest assured it will be a complete waste of taxpayers' money and there will be no actual illegal immigration enforcement.
The circumstances surrounding Morrison's appointment are typical sleazy quid pro quo. Morrison's husband, George Weisz, was working as an advisor for Democrat Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. He quit that job to become a political consultant for Romley's election campaign. Two days later, his wife was appointed to this brand-new position. How nice, you go work for Romley's campaign and your wife gets a fat new job custom-created for her two days later! It probably also helped that the Weisz's have contributed to Romley, some of the County Supervisors' campaigns, and attorneys who oppose Sheriff Arpaio.
Rick Romley is demonstrating after just a few months that he intends to run the County Attorney's Office equally as corruptly as the Supervisors are running their office. We wonder what will happen to the Shadow County Attorney's Office now that it's in the middle of these two corrupt agencies, which the Supervisors stole away from Andrew Thomas when he was County Attorney?
A m e r i c a n P o s t - G a z e t t e
Distributed by C O M M O N S E N S E , in Arizona
