I was dismayed to see Ms. Dickey’s rebuttal to criticism of her attendance at Sheriff Arpaio’s training program.

As much as she says that her intentions were noble, she must remember the adage that if you hang with dogs, you will get fleas. What irritated me even more was the fact that The Times has given her almost 25 percent of the page above the fold, with her own caption and picture even, to state her case while the rest of us ordinary folk must answer rebuttals in 300 words or less. This smacks of preferential treatment.

Carrying on with the irritation, she also uses the title of “Town Council member.” Does this mean that her rant was also the feelings of our town government or just the newspaper? If this is the Town Council’s stance that this was a side show, they should fess up to it and let the voters decide if they agree. The same with the paper and its subscribers.

Sheriff Arpaio has been the only one in this state to do something immediately after Newtown, perhaps in the country. If we waited for the federal government that she fawns over to do something, we’d all be old and grey as they are too busy concerning themselves with re-election. Perhaps her group could picket the White House on Benghazi?

The sheriff did the right thing regardless of publicity. That works both ways; it shows the taxpayer that something’s being done and also warns the nut jobs out there that there is a prescience that will counter them every time. Keep it up, Joe.

(Editor’s Note: The newspaper has a long-standing policy of allowing elected officials, commissioners and other key government leaders to publish columns on a periodic basis, if they choose. Such columns represent the individual views of the authors only. The newspaper identified Ms. Dickey as a ‘Town Council member’ since that is her elected position.)