Arizona’s largest sheriff’s department has stalled in its efforts to comply with court-ordered reforms related to a long-running racial profiling lawsuit and settlement, a watchdog investigation has found.
The watchdog group’s investigation, launched last year and announced this month, alleges a “disturbing pattern” of violations of department policies and court orders that undermine efforts to investigate misconduct and eliminate racial profiling at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The findings echo allegations from a decade ago that led to contempt charges against leaders of the sheriff’s office.
The Monitor’s investigation follows an analysis by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that found continued racial disparities in traffic stops by sheriff’s offices that continue to impede compliance with court orders. The latest accusations are directed by the department’s Office of Professional Standards, which investigates reports of misconduct.
U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow, who is overseeing the settlement, appointed Robert Warshaw in 2014 as a monitor to track compliance with the mandated reforms. Warshaw said, among other things, the sheriff’s office leadership tried to pressure the department’s commander to reopen private investigations into two sheriffs who had been disciplined and placed on the Brady List, a public database of officer misconduct. The watchdog group also alleged that top leadership tried to intervene in disciplinary proceedings to protect employees accused of wrongdoing. Because of his commander’s resistance, he was placed on administrative leave, investigated by an outside agency, and temporarily transferred outside the department, the report alleges.
“What our monitoring team uncovered here is an attempt to create an internal culture in which favoritism and retribution are tools of control in order to influence outcomes, instill fear in change-makers, and confer favor and status on those who succumb to misdirections,” the report said.
As a result, monitors determined that the sheriff’s office had gone backwards in complying with reforms mandated by the Melendrez v. Arpaio class action lawsuit settlement. The lawsuit accused law enforcement of using traffic stops to arrest people on immigration charges and racially profiling Latinos in the process. At the time, the court found that then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others obstructed the investigation when a member of the public reported the misconduct. A court charged Arpaio with criminal contempt in 2016 for continuing to arrest immigrants in violation of court orders, but he was eventually pardoned by President Donald Trump.
The constitutional violations began in 2007 during the Arpaio administration. Current Sheriff Jerry Sheridan inherited the settlement money when he took office in January 2025. Sheridan rose through the ranks and became Arpaio’s second-in-command in 2010. He was charged with civil contempt in 2016 for denying knowledge of a court order suspending immigration arrests despite evidence to the contrary presented in court. Sheridan claims he has always been honest. During the campaign and after taking office, he distanced himself from his former boss and expressed his determination to see the reforms through to the end.
The sheriff’s office filed a 78-page response to the investigation in court, denying any violation of court orders or department policy and labeling the investigation “speculative” and “inappropriate.” The sheriff’s office said the incidents in question demonstrate that internal checks strengthened by court orders were working properly and that supervisors have penalized the department for following those orders and policies. The department also argued that the sheriff’s decision to place the commander on administrative leave and refer him to an outside investigation was justified and required by the court order.
Upon taking office, Mr. Sheridan’s newly appointed staff asked the director for advice on reviewing completed and pending investigations to understand whether they might change the outcome, but ultimately chose not to take further action, the department said.
“Because the complaint alleged criminal misconduct (evidence tampering) against the current PSB commander, referring this matter to an outside agency was the only way to avoid a conflict of interest,” the sheriff’s office said in a court filing.
In a separate statement to reporters, Sheridan questioned whether the watchdog’s investigation strayed into “areas involving management discretion, human resources management, and internal policy discrepancies that would be better addressed by agency leadership.”
The sheriff’s office also questioned the timing of the investigation’s release, two weeks before oral arguments on whether to end court oversight. Lawyers for the sheriff’s office are preparing to argue that the law enforcement agency has met all of the settlement’s requirements regarding racial profiling and should be released from the settlement. The sheriff’s office said in a response filed in court that the warden’s “discussion of these issues is all about providing an inflammatory soundbite” in support of the plaintiff’s opposition to Maricopa County’s motion to suspend supervision.
Since 2013, Snow has issued four court orders against the department containing 368 requirements. Overseer Warshaw tracks compliance with Snow’s orders and reports quarterly on the department’s progress.
The Office of Professional Standards remains the center of court oversight and is primarily stuck investigating misconduct. The failure to clear the backlog is one of the main reasons the Sheriff’s Office has not fully complied with orders to certify its police functions.
Capt. Gregory Lugo has led the department since February 2021. He helped reduce the backlog of fraud investigations from more than 2,100 as of November 2022 to 371 as of May. However, in April 2025, Sheridan placed Lugo on leave and the warden’s investigation began.
At the same time, the sheriff’s office referred criminal charges against Lugo to the Arizona Department of Public Safety. According to the monitor’s report, state agencies concluded their investigation without finding any evidence of wrongdoing. Another investigator hired by the court to review the Department of Public Safety’s investigation found the charges against Lugo to be baseless and also cleared him of wrongdoing.
The criminal complaint was filed by a police sergeant whom Lugo demoted in 2020, against whom Lugo had also filed charges of insubordination. The sergeant appealed the charges, which were initially upheld but overturned after Mr Sheridan took office.
“The monitoring team concluded that the stated reason for Captain Lugo’s transfer was a pretext, but rather retaliation for his failure to intervene in the investigation in violation of a court order,” the report said.
The monitoring team also focused on the case of a deputy who was fired for reporting to a Sheriff’s Office station while working off-duty. The deputy appealed. Deputy Commander Sheridan questioned the deputy commander’s dismissal and asked Mr. Lugo for a review of that decision, but Mr. Lugo said the deputy commander was fired for time sheet violations totaling “several thousand dollars.”
Sheridan and another member of the command staff also asked about the possibility of weakening disciplinary policies to avoid firing a sergeant arrested for drunk driving, the observer said. Commanders argued that the sergeant should not have been fired because he self-reported the arrest. Lugo warned that the changes were unlikely to be approved by monitors or the lawyers involved in the settlement.
The inspector general’s investigation into the Office of Professional Standards resulted in less compliance by the sheriff’s office with the settlement. The department’s compliance rate, a measure of its progress, declined in three out of four court orders. The biggest decline was in orders primarily focused on internal oversight and discipline, where implementation rates fell from 95% to 70%. Compliance with orders to close the backlog of pending investigations fell from 88% to 68%.
As the sheriff’s office disputes the charges, it maintains it continues to fully comply with requirements related to surveillance interrogations, calling the change in compliance “punitive and strict supervision.”
According to the county, implementing the reforms cost taxpayers $350 million. On June 22, the county Board of Supervisors approved an additional $36 million in compliance costs for the next fiscal year. However, the court questioned these costs. Last October, the watchdog group released an audit that found the sheriff’s office had miscounted or inflated about 72% of settlement-related costs.
As part of the settlement, the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents all Latino drivers in Maricopa County, called for holding the sheriff’s office leadership accountable for alleged violations of court orders, saying the watchdog’s latest investigation proves that police themselves cannot be trusted without court oversight.
“For public law enforcement agencies like MCSO to maintain their legitimacy with the communities they serve, they cannot operate with impunity,” the ACLU said in its response to the Observer’s survey.
Snow is scheduled to hear oral arguments Friday on the motion filed by the Maricopa County attorney. They argue that the court’s oversight of the sheriff’s office should be completely and immediately ended, that court reform is now beyond the scope of original litigation, and that the sheriff’s office is no longer racially discriminatory.
