Tweedledee and Tweedledum are characters in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” series. Tweedledee and Tweedledum were identical; virtually indistinguishable. They completed each other’s sentences.
Fountain Hills has its own Tweedles – former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his chief operating administrator, former Chief Deputy Sheriff Jerry Sheridan. Both were investigated. Both were found in contempt of court by a federal judge for how they ran the Sheriff’s office.
Sheridan was specifically found to have “made multiple intentional misrepresentations of fact while under oath.” The result has been hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to address their behavior.
Voters have repeatedly rejected Arpaio’s efforts to return to elected office. Voters see through his false bravado.
Sheridan maintains a less public profile. He hopes that as time passes, voters will forget his misdeeds. Voters shouldn’t.
Court records show that Sheridan was the primary enabler and defender of Arpaio’s illegal policing practices. Sheridan was to have conducted important investigations for MCSO. Complaints of improper or illegal behavior by high-level MCSO employees went to Sheridan. There, the complaints died. The complaints were ignored or paper-shuffled to death.