According to a monitor, Arizona’s largest sheriff’s department is losing ground in its efforts to cooperate with court-mandated changes related to a long-running cultural profiling complaint and arrangement.
A “disturbing style” of violations of office policies and court orders was the subject of an investigation launched last year by the watch’s team, and it was made public this month. This is consistent with efforts to look into misconduct and stop racial profiling in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The conclusions echo allegations from a decade ago that led to contempt charges against prosecutor’s office leaders.
The investigation by the monitor comes after a study conducted by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that found that the sheriff’s office continues to exhibit continued racial differences in traffic stops, which continue to prevent it from complying with court orders. The agency’s Professional Standards Bureau, which looks into reviews of misconduct, is the subject of these accusations.
U. S. District Judge G. Murray Snow, who is overseeing the lawsuit, appointed Robert Warshaw as the track in 2014 to monitor compliance with mandated changes. Warshaw claimed that the sheriff’s office management attempted, among other things, to press the department’s chief to reopen closed investigations into two deputies who had been disciplined and put on the Brady record, a common database of official misconduct. Additionally, the track claimed that senior management made an effort to obstruct the administrative procedure to protect employees who have been accused of wrongdoing. When the captain resisted, he was placed on keep, investigated by an outside firm and partially transferred out of the commission, the report alleges.
The Monitoring Team found an attempt to create an inner society where pursuit and punishment are tools of command, to influence outcomes, to instill fear in changemakers, and to grant favors and place to those who follow misguided orders, according to the report.
In response, the track found that the sheriff’s department had regressed in its conformity with the reforms mandated in a settlement of the class-action lawsuit Melendres v. Arpaio. The suit accused the law enforcement agency of using traffic starts to arrest people on immigration fees, culturally profiling Latinos in the process. The court at the time determined that when the general public did report wrongdoing, then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio and some stifled studies. Arpaio was later pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2016 for continuing to make immigration arrests in contravention of court orders.
The legal violations began in 2007 under Arpaio. When Jerry Sheridan took office in January 2025, he inherited the colony. Sheridan rose up the department’s divisions to be Arpaio’s second-in-command in 2010. He was found in civil contempt in 2016 for denying information of a court order to stop making immigration detention, despite evidence to the contrary presented in court. Sheridan claims that he was always accurate. He made a break from his former manager during his plan and after taking office, saying he was ready to see through the changes.
The sheriff’s office filed a 78-page response to the investigation with the court, denying any violations of court orders or department policy and labeling the investigation as” theoretical” and “improper”. The sheriff’s office claimed that the incidents in question demonstrated that the office was violating court orders and internal controls, and that the office was violating those instructions and policies. The coroner’s recommendation to place the captain on administrative leave and to have him subject to an outside organization investigation was justified and required by court orders, according to the department.
Upon taking office, Sheridan’s recently appointed staff asked the bureau commander’s advice about reviewing investigations that had been completed or were under appeal to know if they could possibly change the outcome, but finally chose not to take further action, the office said.
The sheriff’s office stated in the court filing that referring the matter to an outside agency was the only way to avoid a conflict of interest because the complaint alleged criminal-nature misconduct ( evidence tampering ) against the current PSB Commander.
Sheridan questioned whether the monitor’s investigation had strayed into “management discretion, personnel administration, and internal policy disagreements that are better addressed by agency leadership” in a separate statement to reporters.
The sheriff’s office also questioned the timing of the inquiry’s release, two weeks before oral arguments over whether to end court oversight. The sheriff’s office’s attorneys are preparing to argue that the law enforcement agency should be exonerated from the settlement if it has met all of its racial profiling requirements. The sheriff’s office responded in court in response to the lawsuit that “discussing these issues has everything to do with providing inflammatory soundbites” to support the plaintiff’s opposition to Maricopa County’s motion to end oversight.
Snow has issued four court orders since 2013 with 368 requirements for the department. The monitor, Warshaw, keeps track of Snow’s orders and makes quarterly reports on the department’s progress.
The Professional Standards Bureau is still the main focus of court oversight, largely due to the backlog of misconduct investigations. Its failure to eliminate the backlog is one of the main reasons the sheriff’s office has not fully complied with orders to prove it can police itself.
Capt. Since February 2021, Gregory Lugo has been in charge of the bureau. He helped reduce the backlog from over 2, 100 misconduct investigations in November 2022 to 371 as of May. However, Sheridan placed Lugo on leave in April 2025, causing the monitor to investigate.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety received a criminal complaint against Lugo at the same time as the sheriff’s office. The state agency closed the investigation without finding evidence of wrongdoing, according to the monitor’s report. Lugo was cleared of any wrongdoing by a separate investigator hired by the court to examine the Department of Public Safety’s investigation, and he was found to be unconstitutional by the court.
A sergeant Lugo demoted in 2020 filed the criminal complaint. Lugo also had filed insubordination charges against him. The sergeant filed an appeal against the initial allegations that were later overturned after Sheridan took office.
According to the report,” The Monitoring Team came to the conclusion that the stated justification for Captain Lugo’s transfer was a pretext” and that it was used as retaliation for not allowing the meddling in investigations, in violation of court orders,”
The monitor team also highlighted the case against a deputy who was dismissed for clocking into a sheriff’s office station when he was instead working an off-duty job. The deputy filed an appeal. The deputy was fired for” thousands of dollars” in terms of timesheet violations, but Lugo, the deputy’s second-in-command, objected and suggested that the deputy’s dismissal be reviewed.
The monitor said Sheridan and another member of the command staff also inquired about potentially weakening disciplinary policy to avoid firing a sergeant who was arrested for DUI. The sergeant claimed that because he had self-reported the arrest, he should not have been fired. Lugo cautioned that a change was unlikely to be approved by the settlement’s attorneys or the monitor.
The monitor’s inquiry into the Professional Standards Bureau has resulted in a decline in the sheriff’s office compliance with the settlement. In three of the four court orders, compliance rates, which gauge the progress of the department, decreased. The biggest decreases occurred for an order that primarily focused on internal control and discipline, where implementation rates dropped from 95 % to 70 %. Compliance rates for an order directed at ending the backlog in pending investigations dropped from 88 % to 68 %.
The sheriff’s office disputes the allegations, contending that it is still in full compliance with requirements relating to the monitor’s investigation and that the change in its compliance rates is “punitive, draconian oversight.”
The county estimates that the costs associated with implementing the reforms have reached$ 350 million. On June 22, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved an additional$ 36 million for compliance expenses in the upcoming fiscal year. However, these costs have been raised by the court. The sheriff’s office misrepresented or overstated about 72 % of its settlement-related expenses in an audit released last October, according to the monitor.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents all Latino drivers in Maricopa County as part of the settlement, said the monitor’s latest inquiry proves that the department cannot be trusted to police itself without court oversight and called for the sheriff’s office leadership to be held accountable for the alleged violations of court orders.
In its response to the monitor’s inquiry, the ACLU remarked that” a public law enforcement agency like the MCSO cannot be allowed to operate with impunity if it is seeking any legitimacy with the communities it serves.”
On Friday, Snow will hear oral arguments over the motion that Maricopa County attorneys have filed. They argue court oversight of the sheriff’s office should end completely and immediately, asserting that court reforms have now gone beyond the original scope of the lawsuit and that the sheriff’s office does not racially profile any longer.
The first article on ProPublica titled” Disturbing Pattern” of Violations at Arizona’s Largest Sheriff’s Office was denied by the Court Inquiry.
