PHOENIX — Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan said that despite the Department of Justice dropping its civil rights investigation into the Phoenix Police Department, it’s a little more tricky for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO).
“Ours is a little bit different because we have a court order by a judge, and the judge is the one that has the ultimate power to stop the order or continue it,” Sheridan told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Friday.
The judicial oversight MCSO is under is due to a verdict in a racial profiling lawsuit that occurred in May 2013 when Joe Arpaio was in office.
The court gave MCSO required actions in order for it to come into compliance and appointed an independent monitor to oversee the process. Then due to Arpaio repeatedly violating that order, the court issued a second supplemental court order that required additional oversight and reforms for MCSO.
“There’s well over 200 paragraphs that we have to comply with,” Sheridan said.
Effects of the judicial oversight has had on MCSO
The judicial oversight comes with compliance-related expenses that are expected to total $352 million by midsummer 2026. Maricopa County’s governing board approved $34 million for the next year on May 19.
“The big expense is personnel,” Sheridan said. “When you have 50 people working in internal affairs and it’s not enough. And you have divisions that the judge ordered that you need a captain, lieutenant, sergeants, officers, deputies, running these things. It’s very, very expensive.”
Sheridan noted that once the MCSO is out of oversight, one or two of those divisions won’t be needed.
The judicial oversight also comes with extra work for the sheriff’s office.
However, Sheridan explained that MCSO’s internal affairs is working hard as there were around 2,000 backlogged cases when they started and there are now less than 1,000.
“A lot of those are just minor,” Sheridan said. “And right now because of the court order, we have to do a huge 40 to 50 page investigation. Whereas traditionally in probably every law enforcement agency in this country, the sergeant can handle it at that level.”
How Sheriff Sheridan plans to handle the judicial oversight
Sheridan made it clear that, besides increasing personnel numbers, his goal is to satisfy the court order and get out from underneath the oversight.
In order to change the perception that the MCSO is racist, Sheridan hired Rudy Bustamante to be his chief over community relations.
“We worked together in the jail together back in the ’70s,” Sheridan said. “He went to the Phoenix PD for 22 years and he worked for ICE for 24 years and he was their community relations guy.”
Sheridan emphasized not only how diverse the MCSO is — with a third of its employees being Hispanic and another 10% being other minorities — but the fact that there have been no inconsistencies when it comes to traffic stops.
“There are no disparities in traffic stops between a white driver, Hispanic driver or a black driver,” Sheridan said.
The sheriff added that MCSO has documentation going back well over 10 years that shows that it’s not racially profiling or racially biased.
“And that really should be the key that the court focuses on and the public focuses on,” Sheridan said.
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