Arizona Sheriff in Trouble with Feds

Story first appeared in USA Today.

Federal authorities said Wednesday that they plan to sue the Arizona sheriff and his office over allegations of civil rights violations, including the racial profiling of Latinos. San Diego Civil Rights Lawyers are following the case.

The U.S. Justice Department has been seeking an agreement requiring the sheriff's office to train officers in how to make constitutional traffic stops, collect data on people arrested in traffic stops and reach out to Latinos to assure them that the department is there to also protect them.

The defendant has denied the racial profiling allegations and has claimed that allowing a court monitor would mean that every policy decision would have to be cleared through an observer and would nullify his authority.

Justice Department officials told a lawyer for the sheriff on April 3 that the lawman's refusal of a court-appointed monitor was a deal-breaker that would end settlement negotiations and result in a federal lawsuit.

The notice of intent to file civil action came Wednesday from the Assistant U.S. Attorney General in a letter to a the defense lawyer.

It's been more than 100 days since the sheriff's office received the department's findings report and federal authorities haven't met with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office counsel since Feb. 6 to discuss the terms of a consent agreement.

Last December, the Justice Department released a scathing report accusing the sheriff's office of racially profiling Latinos, basing immigration enforcement on racially charged citizen complaints and punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish in Arizona's most populous county.

The sheriff is also accused of having a culture of disregard for basic constitutional rights, according to a Raleigh Immigration Lawyer.

The civil rights allegations have led some critics to call for his resignation, including the National Council of La Raza, a prominent advocacy group for Latinos.

The sheriff's office also is facing criticism over more than 400 sex-crimes investigations — including dozens of alleged child molestations — that hadn't been investigated adequately or weren't examined at all over a three-year period ending in 2007.

The sheriff has apologized for the botched cases, reopened 432 sex-crimes investigations and made 19 arrests.

Separate from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009. That grand jury is examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.

The self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America has been a national political fixture who has built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime and pushing the bounds of how far local police can go to confront illegal immigration.


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