Mesa police chief: Sheriff's affidavit flawed
by Gary Nelson - Dec. 23, 2008 07:00 PM
The Arizona Republic

A sheriff's search warrant affidavit used to justify a nighttime immigration raid on Mesa's City Hall and two other public buildings two months ago contains flawed information, Mesa Police Chief George Gascón said Tuesday.

The information about the affidavit is contained in an inch-thick report about the highly publicized October raid that the department released Tuesday.

"There is an affidavit that is inaccurate," Gascón said. "How that affidavit became inaccurate, we don't know that."

Gascón said the issue is serious because "as law-enforcement officers we have an obligation to make sure the court has the most accurate information possible."

Chief Brian Sands of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said, however, that details in the affidavit have little bearing on the key issue in the case.

"The bottom line is, this informant did bring us the basic fact that the company that was in contract with the city of Mesa was hiring illegal aliens," Sands said.

Sands also questioned why Mesa would release the report, but Gascón said it was a direct response to a Sheriff's Office request for information on the case.

Officers from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office swept into Mesa's main city office building, its downtown library and a municipal badging office on Oct. 16, looking for contract custodial workers who were believed to be using fraudulent identification to conceal their illegal presence in the country.

Three people were arrested in city buildings and 13 others were arrested later that morning at their homes.

The raid sparked Valley-wide debate and a sharp rebuke from Mayor Scott Smith, who accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of endangering public safety by staging a large-scale para-military operation without telling the city beforehand. Arpaio defended the operation as a legitimate part of his crackdown on illegal immigration.

A few days after the raid, Smith and Arpaio met, and the sheriff agreed to tell Mesa beforehand of any future immigration sweeps in the city. Smith also said in November that Mesa would tighten up its procedures for issuing ID badges to contract employees.

In the meantime, Gascón said, the Mesa Police Department responded to a request from the Sheriff's Office for more information about events leading to issuance of a search warrant for the Mesa facilities.

That warrant was based on an affidavit filed by Detective S. Monroe, the sheriff's lead investigator in the case. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe issued the warrant on Oct. 14, specifically authorizing the nighttime operation.

Monroe's affidavit relied largely on statements made to Monroe by Chuck Wilson, a former employee of the Mesa municipal security office.

Mesa police documents show that Wilson, a security system technician, was fired this year after an incident in 2007 in which an employee under his supervision created a disturbing e-mail and sent it to a female co-worker under another co-worker's name.

According to Monroe's affidavit, Wilson told Monroe he was "in charge of issuing badges for contract workers or city of Mesa employees" and that two years ago he notified his supervisor that contract employees were using forged identification papers.

A Sheriff's Office news release on Oct. 16 said that after Wilson notified Mesa Police Lt. Wade Pew of his concerns, Pew said, "This isn't Mesa police's problem. It's the cleaning company's issue."

The Mesa police report disputes those and other allegations.

"The information in the affidavit attributed to Wilson is inaccurate," an executive summary of the report says. It adds, "Mesa does not have documents from (the Sheriff's Office) that reflect what Wilson told Monroe, so Mesa does not know the source of the inaccuracies."

Specifically, the new police report says:


• "Wilson was never 'in charge' of issuing badges."


• "Wilson never issued a badge and had no role in deciding" if one would be issued.


• Wilson exaggerated or misstated his role in several of the incidents described in the affidavit in which contract employees presented suspicious or obviously fraudulent identifications at the badging office.


• Pew took immediate action on learning of some of Wilson's allegations, and the city expressed its concerns both in person and to the janitorial company, MCC Acquisition Co. LLC.

Sands said that by releasing the report now, while criminal cases relating to the raid are pending, it might undermine the credibility of witnesses.

"We're also still looking into the issue of who . . . in the city of Mesa (may) have been knowingly going along with" the use of fraudulent identifications, Sands said.

Gascón said his department issued the report because the Sheriff's Office asked for it.

"What we wanted to make sure is we provided the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office with all the information we have," Gascón said. "They made a public request for information and we certainly exercised due diligence in providing them as much information as we could. . . . This was done in pursuance to their request for information."

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