Joe Arpaio's office gets new deadlines in racial-profiling case

by JJ Hensley -
Mar. 19, 2010 12:18 PM
The Arizona Republic .

A racial-profiling lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office was extended with new deadlines Friday.

A federal judge laid out an updated timeline following the revelation of thousands of additional records could exist for the Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office to turn over.

U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow has previously agreed to sanctions against Arpaio's office for records the agency failed to preserve or destroyed that could be related to the lawsuit, and he said additional sanctions could be warranted, but county technology officials must first turn over thousands of e-mails to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and attorneys for the plaintiffs must review them.

Snow set a new hearing date for July 16, and also encouraged the two sides to consider talking about some sort of settlement in the meantime.

"It does seem to me that at least there is a possible grounds for settlement here that could avoid huge expense," Snow told the attorneys.

The plaintiffs in the case have accused Sheriff's deputies of targeting Hispanic residents for selective enforcement.

David Bodney, an attorney representing the plaintiffs who also represents The Arizona Republic in unrelated matters, said his side isn't asking for any money and only wants the Sheriff's Office to ensure no racial profiling takes place during the course of law-enforcement duties, some of which include Arpaio's controversial crime-suppression operations.

"It's the kind of case that should be settled," Bodney said. "Some variation on the 'best practices' theme would go a long way toward reducing the risk of racial profiling."

Arpaio's office has always contended that deputies do not target suspects based on ethnicity.

Tim Casey, an attorney for the Sheriff's Office, declined to comment after the hearing.

The other lingering issue in Snow's courtroom on Friday involved thousands of e-mails Maricopa County's technology office was archiving without the knowledge of the Sheriff's Office.

In past hearings and depositions about the records sheriff's officials deleted or destroyed- including "stat sheets" from the crime suppression operations- the Sheriff's Office has contended that only select e-mails and documents were preserved after the case was filed in December 2007, with most coming after the plaintiff's attorneys made an issue of missing documents last summer.

But earlier this month, county administrators revealed they had been archiving all emails sent from Sheriff's Office since 2008 following an order from another county attorney related to a separate lawsuit County Treasurer Charles "Hos" Hoskins filed against Maricopa County.

That news caught the Sheriff's Office by surprise.

Snow on Friday declined a request to bar anyone but the Sheriff's Office from looking at the recently discovered trove of records. A Pima County judge last week ruled that the records were the property of Maricopa County and not the Sheriff's Office. The federal government has also issued a subpoena for those records in an unrelated case.

Snow said he will allow Casey to file a motion asking county officials to show why the existence of those e-mails wasn't made clear to the Sheriff's Officials before this month.

Casey has said that confusion among deputies over which stat sheets to retain and a lack of communication about keeping e-mails led to the lost and destroyed documents. Attorneys for the plaintiffs claim the material would show the Sheriff's Office engaged in selective enforcement during the crime-suppression operations.

In February, Snow sanctioned the Sheriff's Office for destroying evidence in the case.

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