An audit of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has found almost three-quarters of the spending it attributed to complying with a settlement to reduce racial profiling had little to do with that purpose.
The settlement is the result of a legal case known as Melendres v. Arpaio; in that case, the judge found the sheriff’s office under Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers and ordered changes to the department. That included bringing on a monitor to make sure those changes were happening.
Recently, Maricopa County officials, including current Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, have asked to end that settlement. One of the factors they cite is the cost of complying with it. But as Rafael Carranza reports, much of that spending is not related to compliance.
Carranza is an investigative reporter at Arizona Luminaria and has looked into this; he joined The Show to talk more about it.
Full conversation
RAFAEL CARRANZA: Good morning, Mark.
BRODIE: So, what kinds of spending is the sheriff’s office saying that it is doing that is related to complying with Melendres that actually isn’t?
CARRANZA: The majority of the spending that we are talking about here is for personnel. So we’re talking about employees that the department has had to hire as a result of these settlement agreements. Mostly, it involved the creation of two new divisions that had to be completely staffed with employees, as well as hiring additional investigators to look into misconduct claims against deputies.
And so the personnel costs are the highest proportion, but there are a number of other items. For example, there are expenses here for body cameras and Tasers. There are expenses for renovations. There are expenses for travel. So it really kind of varies, but the one thing in common is that they were all billed as part of the settlement agreement.
BRODIE: Well, is some of that attributable to the settlement? Like you mentioned that there are personnel costs, they had to staff two new divisions. Clearly, it would seem that some personnel costs would go toward that settlement, but maybe just not all of them?
CARRANZA: That is correct. The audit identified that approximately $63 million of the $226 million that they analyzed from 2014 to 2024 had some very clear connection to the judge’s requirements over the course of four court orders that the judge has issued over the past decade.
But the remainder were either misattributed, meaning that they were not related to the court orders, or perhaps that some of the work was partially attributed to Melendres, but then the sheriff’s office charged the full costs of that service or that employee to the settlement when the work that they did was only partial.
BRODIE: Ah, OK. Is there an advantage to the sheriff’s office of billing more stuff to the settlement? Like, is there a reason why maybe they were doing it?
CARRANZA: Well, that’s kind of the big question that I think auditors were trying to get to the bottom of, and I think we asked the sheriff’s office as well. And I think that the sheriff has spoken a number of times in public about how they’re required by law to pay for these court reforms.
But they were able to add expenses to this. For example, one very clear example that I can point to is body cameras. The judge required deputies to purchase body cameras to document the traffic stops that are at the very heart of this lawsuit. But the sheriff’s office then also ended up getting Tasers that were bundled into this body camera system. Now, the Tasers are not required under the court orders, and so that’s an example where the audit found that even though the body cameras were required, the sheriff kind of went above and then charged the Tasers, which were not.
BRODIE: What, if anything, has the sheriff or his department said about this?
CARRANZA: Well, the sheriff’s office and the county supervisors as well have been very clear about their desire to wrap up this settlement, which has been going on since 2013 when the first court order came out. And by now, the supervisors have approved over $350 million for the settlement — a huge amount that they see as can be used going towards other things as well.
But when it comes to the audit itself, they have declined to challenge the findings of the audit. I think the supervisors in particular have alleged that the original lawsuit was over racial profiling and the traffic stops, and they feel that looking into the county’s finances goes beyond the scope of that initial lawsuit. And so they’re refusing to kind of engage talking about the numbers, even though supervisors have referred to those dollar figures as a reason why it has to end.
But it definitely becomes — it’s still kind of a big item of dispute. And as the case is still going on, it still continues, there’s still a lot of kind of steps ahead before the compliance efforts end. And so I think that the price will only continue to be kind of one of those salient issues in this debate.
BRODIE: Well, so as I mentioned, the sheriff and a number of county supervisors have asked the judge to basically end the monitoring and the oversight of the sheriff’s department.
Is this audit something that the judge might look at and say, "You guys are complaining about the costs, but not all of this cost is actually related to what you say it is?"
CARRANZA: Yeah, and the judge has said as much in court as well before attorneys for the county supervisors and for the sheriff. And essentially, his view on that is that the county officials in general can’t speak about these costs and use that as kind of an excuse to end oversight without also having to justify those expenses.
And so he’s talked about how he has the right to try to have them justify those costs, which the county has so far refused to engage. But he has not made any steps in that direction. But certainly, I think based off of his statements in court and some of the court filings, he certainly feels that he has that authority to do so.
BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we’ll keep an eye on this going forward. That is Rafael Carranza, an investigative reporter with Arizona Luminaria. Rafael, thanks so much.
CARRANZA: Thank you for having me.
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