A federal judge took a familiar step on Tuesday by ruling that Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone was in civil contempt of his longstanding court order.
In a ruling Tuesday, Judge Murray Snow of the U.S. District Court in Phoenix ruled that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office took too long to finalize its staff misconduct investigation.
The number of cases grew to more than 2,000, and investigators took an average of nearly two years to solve them.
Snow has ordered the sheriff’s office to begin reducing the backlog of its internal investigation into all allegations of misconduct.
He’s the same judge who found former sheriff Joe Arpaio guilty of civil contempt of the order. Another Phoenix judge found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt.
The backlog was followed by the sheriff’s office after Snow discovered it was involved in systematic and extensive racial profiling of Latinos under then-sheriff Arpaio. The reforms included setting up a system for community members to report and subsequently investigate employee misconduct.
“Failure to complete the investigation in a timely manner will invalidate the investigation completely and serve neither the complainant nor MCSO staff.”
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Penzone, the current sheriff, has long maintained that the department is not fully compliant, but has taken considerable steps.
Snow announced plans to issue a contempt certification against Penzone in August for failing to follow court-mandated reforms at the agency he has led since 2017.
Penzone ousted Arpaio as Maricopa County sheriff in November 2016. He inherited responsibility for implementing the reforms required by Snow’s court order.
After discovering that the Arpaio Sheriff and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had been conducting extensive racial profiling by singling out Latino drivers at stops, Snow ordered reform.
In a high-profile and controversial campaign to crack down on illegal immigration, Arpaio ordered “saturation patrols” to stop and arrest motorists in predominantly Latinx neighborhoods in the county. Many US citizens and legal residents were involved in these patrols.
In 2008, some of these drivers sued Arpaio in a class action lawsuit known as Melendres v. Arpaio. Manuel Ortega Melendres was one of the individuals arrested despite being legally in the country.
In May 2013, nearly a year after the case went to trial in Phoenix, Snow told Arpaio that the sheriff’s office had violated drivers’ constitutional rights and had used human resources to target them. I made a judgment that I used seeds.
Snow has issued a court order ordering increased oversight of government agencies and has appointed court monitors. But in May 2016, Snow discovered that Arpaio and his staff were facing civil contempt charges in court for ignoring oversight requirements under a previous order to eradicate racial profiling. After that, I gave a second order.
Snow referred Arpaio to another federal judge in Phoenix to face criminal contempt charges. In July 2017, he was found guilty, but former President Donald Trump issued a pardon. Before Arpaio’s verdict.
Since 2008, lawsuits and court-mandated reforms have cost county taxpayers well over $200 million.
In a Tuesday order, Snow said more than 2,100 investigations were pending and it would take the MCSO an average of more than 600 days to close them. Complaint investigations take longer each year, raising questions about whether Penzone can adequately address complaints.
“Certainly, Sheriff Penzone had at least some difficulty enforcing a court order in the current environment. Nevertheless, he took all reasonable steps to comply with the order. I have not proved that I took
Story details:Maricopa County sheriff found guilty of contempt in same incident that trapped Arpaio
“The backlog only gets worse, even though Sheriff Penzone knows,” the judge added. He may welcome this court intervention as a remedy, but in any case he leaves the court with few options to comply with the court’s order. The official will be sentenced for civil contempt.”
To improve the backlog, Snow outlined additional steps the sheriff’s office must take. First, he ordered the agency to maintain a staffing of 39 investigators as part of the Division’s Office of Professional Standards, which is responsible for investigating proxy misconduct. The county is also in financial trouble because it failed to address the backlog.
Seven of those seats were vacant, some of them from at least 2018, the court order noted, according to reports from court management experts. Snow said he gave Penzone 60 more days to fill these positions.
The money will go to the Professional Standards Bureau Staffing Fund. The MCSO can use the funds to hire additional investigators or independent contractors to work on the research backlog.
“Defendants can avoid paying fines by filling PSB vacancies, hiring PSB staff to contractors, and steadily reducing their backlog. We expect to reduce at a reasonable rate – at least 20 each month,” added Snow.
As long as a backlog remains, enforcement of Tuesday’s structural order will fall under the jurisdiction of Robert Warshaw, an independent court watcher appointed by Snow. Progress is tracked in quarterly reports Warshaw submits to his Snow.
“The time for excuses has run out. Sheriff Penzone will prove to courts and clients that she is dedicated to resolving the issues that continue to plague this agency and rebuilding trust in the Latino community.” I’ve spent more than six years working on it,” said Kristin Wie. , his ACLU of Arizona Senior Staff Attorney.
“Under the leadership of Sheriff Penzone, the MCSO continues to stop Latino and Black drivers at significantly higher rates than white drivers, causing significant delays in fraud investigations. We haven’t been able to fix the slow and broken processes,” Wee said.
“It doesn’t take a disrespectful order to have Sheriff Penzone finally address these obvious issues within the department.”
Penzone said it understands the court’s decision but disagrees with it.
Penzone claimed his office is now following 92% of orders that focus on internal investigations. In a written response to questions about the judgment, Penzone said these investigations were found to be “high quality and impose appropriate discipline.”
“Since I became Sheriff, I have completed over 4,397 investigations,” Penzone wrote. “Despite our hard work and sizeable staff, the volume of cases was overwhelming and beyond the capabilities of our corporate affairs department.”
The sheriff’s office told court administration experts that it has doubled the size of its investigative arm, the Office of Professional Standards. But a report released in July by the court management expert found that the number of investigators with the greatest impact in dealing with outstanding issues remained roughly the same.
Raul Piña is a member of the Sheriff’s Office Community Advisory Board. This will help the agency rebuild trust with the community in the aftermath of racial profiling lawsuits, especially among Latinos, who make up his third of the county’s 4.5 million residents. was established to support
A traffic report released in June found traffic still stalled for Latinos in Maricopa County. likely to last longer and occur more frequentlyPiña said the backlog of complaints creates more challenges to rebuild confidence and trust, especially if racial profiling continues.
“If there is evidence of that and you file a complaint, who does it go to? What happens to it? It could take months for the complaint to be processed,” he said. . “So the backlog is huge. The MCSO needs to put in the necessary resources to fix it, or they won’t be confident in handling complaints.”
Piña also said the order backlog had increased and provided funding to address it, but the unfilled position also said the sheriff’s office lacked priority to resolve the issue. bottom.
Penzone said he was committed to resolving outstanding investigations, but challenges that have hampered the agency’s progress include COVID-19, protests, election security, the fentanyl crisis, and retention and employment. mentioned the difficulty.
“Public safety is my number one priority while continuing to comply with court requirements,” Penzone said. “We keep moving forward.”
Got news tips and story ideas for immigration in the Southwest? Contact reporters at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com or follow @RafaelCarranza on Twitter.
Got news tips for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office? Contact the reporter at jjenkins@arizonarepublic.com or at 812-243-5582. follow him on twitter @Jimmy Jenkins.
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