Arizona’s largest sheriff’s department is losing ground in its effort to comply with court-mandated reforms tied to a long-running racial profiling lawsuit and settlement, a monitor has found.
An investigation launched last year by the monitor’s team and published this month alleges a “disturbing pattern” of violations of department policy and court orders that undermined efforts to investigate misconduct and root out racial profiling in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The findings echo allegations from a decade ago that led to contempt charges against sheriff’s office leaders.
The monitor’s investigation follows an analysis by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that found ongoing racial disparities in traffic stops by the sheriff’s office, which continue to hold back its compliance with court orders. The accusations this time center on the department’s Professional Standards Bureau, which investigates reports of misconduct.
U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow, who is overseeing the settlement, appointed Robert Warshaw as the monitor in 2014 to track compliance with mandated reforms. Among other things, Warshaw said the sheriff’s office leadership tried to pressure the bureau’s commander to reopen closed investigations into two deputies who had been disciplined and placed on the Brady list, a public database of officer misconduct. The monitor also claimed that top leadership attempted to interfere in the disciplinary process to protect employees accused of wrongdoing. When the commander resisted, he was placed on leave, investigated by an outside agency and temporarily transferred out of the bureau, the report alleges.
“What the Monitoring Team has found here is an attempt to create an internal culture where favor and reprisal are tools of control: to impact outcomes; to instill fear in changemakers; and to grant favors and position to those who bend to misguided directions,” the report stated.
As a result, the monitor determined that the sheriff’s office has regressed in its compliance with the reforms mandated in a settlement of the Melendres v. Arpaio class-action lawsuit. The suit accused the law enforcement agency of using traffic stops to arrest people on immigration charges, racially profiling Latinos in the process. At the time, the court found that when the public did report misconduct, then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others interfered with investigations. The court held Arpaio in criminal contempt in 2016 for continuing to make immigration arrests in violation of court orders, though he was eventually pardoned by President Donald Trump.
The constitutional violations began in 2007 under Arpaio. The current sheriff, Jerry Sheridan, inherited the settlement when he took office in January 2025. Sheridan climbed the ranks of the department to become Arpaio’s second-in-command in 2010. He was found in civil contempt in 2016 for denying knowledge of a court order to stop making immigration arrests, despite evidence to the contrary presented in court. Sheridan contends he was always truthful. He distanced himself from his former boss during his campaign and after taking office, stating that he was committed to seeing through the reforms.
The sheriff’s office filed a 78-page response to the inquiry with the court, denying any violations of court orders or department policy and labeling the investigation as “speculative” and “improper.” The sheriff’s office said the incidents in question proved that internal checks strengthened by court orders were working properly, and that the monitor was penalizing the department for following those orders and policies. The department also asserted that the sheriff’s decision to place the commander on administrative leave and refer him for investigation by an outside agency was justified and also required by court orders.
Upon taking office, Sheridan’s newly appointed staff asked the bureau commander’s advice about reviewing investigations that had been completed or were under appeal to understand if they could potentially change the outcome, but ultimately chose not to take further action, the office said.
“Because the complaint alleged criminal-nature misconduct (evidence tampering) against the current PSB Commander, referring the matter to an outside agency was the only way to avoid a conflict of interest,” the sheriff’s office said in the court filing.
In a separate statement to reporters, Sheridan questioned whether the monitor’s investigation had strayed into “areas involving management discretion, personnel administration, and internal policy disagreements that are more appropriately addressed by agency leadership.”
The sheriff’s office also questioned the timing of the inquiry’s release, two weeks before oral arguments over whether to end court oversight. Lawyers for the sheriff’s office are preparing to argue that the law enforcement agency has fulfilled all of the settlement’s requirements on racial profiling and should be released from the settlement. The monitor “discussing these issues has everything to do with providing inflammatory soundbites” to aid the plaintiff’s opposition to Maricopa County’s motion to end oversight, the sheriff’s office stated in its response filed in court.
Snow has issued four court orders since 2013 with 368 requirements for the department. Warshaw, the monitor, tracks compliance with Snow’s orders and reports the department’s progress quarterly.
The Professional Standards Bureau remains a focal point of court oversight, largely over a backlog in 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. Gregory Lugo has led the bureau since February 2021. He helped reduce the backlog from over 2,100 misconduct investigations in November 2022 to 371 as of May. But in April 2025, Sheridan placed Lugo on leave, sparking the monitor’s inquiry.
At the same time, the sheriff’s office referred a criminal complaint against Lugo to the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The state agency closed the investigation without finding evidence of wrongdoing, according to the monitor’s report. A separate investigator hired by the court to review the Department of Public Safety’s investigation found the allegations against Lugo were unfounded and also cleared him of any wrongdoing.
The criminal complaint was filed by a sergeant whom Lugo demoted in 2020. Lugo also had filed insubordination charges against him. The sergeant appealed the charges, which were initially sustained but overturned after Sheridan took office.
“The Monitoring Team concluded that the stated reason for Captain Lugo’s transfer was a pretext,” and that instead it was taken in retaliation for not going along with the meddling in investigations, in violation of court orders, the report said.
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 appealed. Sheridan’s second-in-command questioned the deputy’s dismissal and asked Lugo about reviewing that decision, but Lugo said the deputy was fired for timesheet violations totaling “thousands of dollars.”
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. Command staff argued the sergeant should not have been fired because he self-reported the arrest. Lugo warned that change was not likely to be approved by the monitor or the attorneys involved in the settlement.
The monitor’s inquiry into the Professional Standards Bureau has resulted in a decline in the sheriff’s office compliance with the settlement. Compliance rates, which measure the department’s progress, decreased in three of the four court orders. The biggest drops were for an order focused mainly on internal oversight 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%.
Because the sheriff’s office disputes the accusations, it contends that it remains in full compliance with requirements related to the monitor’s inquiry and called the change in its compliance rates “punitive, draconian oversight.”
The costs to taxpayers of implementing the reforms has reached $350 million, according to the county. On June 22, the county’s Board of Supervisors approved an additional $36 million for compliance expenses in the upcoming fiscal year. But the court has questioned these costs. The monitor published an audit last October that determined the sheriff’s office misattributed or inflated about 72% of its settlement-related expenses.
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.
“A public law enforcement agency like the MCSO cannot be allowed to operate with impunity if it is to have any legitimacy with the communities it serves,” the ACLU said in its response to the monitor’s inquiry.
Snow will hear oral arguments on Friday over the motion filed by Maricopa County attorneys. 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.
