Here are the facts in profiling suit vs. MCSO
By Jerry Sheridan
Sun Jan 12, 2014 6:05 PM
azcentral.com
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If the media would stop trying to defame Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies as convicted racists, they could ask key questions about a federal judge’s ruling in a racial-profiling case.
Republic file photo
The Arizona Republic editorial “Arpaio’s abuses adding up” (Opinions, Jan. 3) was nothing more than misinformation and distortions. You and others in the media have used the federal judge’s findings in the Melendres lawsuit to defame Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies as convicted racists.
Enough already. The facts are:
A staff member from then-U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl’s office introduced our office to a new immigration program Immigration and Customs Enforcement had developed called 287(g).
The sheriff agreed to help ICE, sending detention officers and deputies to intensive training given by the federal government, cross-certifying them as federal ICE agents in 2007.
Our participation in 287(g) was authorized by the federal government from 2007 until 2010. In that time, we arrested and/or detained 56,307 illegal aliens. Then in 2010, rather abruptly, the Obama administration canceled our participation.
Nine lawsuits were filed against Sheriff’s Office employees during the years we enforced federal and state immigration laws. One of those was the Melendres class-action lawsuit.
Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres was contacted during a traffic stop by a 287(g)-certified deputy. A federal ICE agent told the deputy to detain Melendres, and then transport him to their office, where ICE would decide whether to detain or release. ICE released him. Melendres and the American Civil Liberties Union sued.
After a lengthy trial, the court determined two constitutional violations: a Fourth Amendment violation when deputies delayed Hispanic drivers longer (on average 14 seconds) than non-Hispanics and a 14th Amendment violation when deputies used their federal 287(g) training to determine if someone was in the country illegally.
These “bad deeds” are the basis for court-ordered sanctions against the Sheriff’s Office, which will cost Maricopa County taxpayers about $22 million over the next year and a half and cost Arpaio a lot of bad press. Your opinions columnist Robert Robb even has said Judge Murray Snow’s ruling was a “breathtaking act of judicial overreach,” “ridiculously prescriptive” and an abuse of judicial power.
Your editorial says Sheriff Arpaio is the “most expensive sheriff.”
Compare the lawsuits filed and actual judgments against the MCSO to any other major sheriff’s office, and you will see that Sheriff Arpaio is a fiscally responsible steward, who has come in under budget for all but one year of his 21 years in office, even returning money back to county coffers in the amount of $42.8 million since 2003.
We are appealing the Melendres ruling and will take it to the U.S. Supreme Court, a move likely necessary given the current state of our Appeals Court.
Here is the question you should be asking: What if the court got it wrong, as we believe it did? Who is going to pay the taxpayers back? The federal government? Not likely.
Jerry Sheridan is chief deputy at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
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