After three years and an historic lawsuit, Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to stonewall federal efforts to end discriminatory practices at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief said in a letter to the Arizona law enforcement official.
The letter, sent Tuesday, details the department’s frustration with the sheriff’s discovery request for more than 100 documents, including information on individuals who claimed the office retaliated against them and on officers who were critical of the leadership.
Thomas Perez (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)
Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, wrote to Arpaio and his attorney, Joseph J. Popolizio, Tuesday, saying “MCSO spent roughly two years stonewalling the investigation, and refusing to cooperate.”
“As much as you now claim that your client’s cooperation was voluntary, the fact is the MCSO’s ‘cooperation’ only came as a result of a lawsuit and the reality that your legal position was untenable,” the letter states.
This letter comes after Perez’s division released a 22-page report in December, detailing the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office pattern of misconduct, including racial profiling of Latinos, unlawful retaliation and discriminatory prison practices. The investigation began in 2008, but the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of filing suit against the sheriff’s office in 2010 after a lack of cooperation. Perez wrote in the letter Tuesday that in the nearly 60 police investigations conducted by the Special Litigation Section since 1994, this investigation was the first time the department sued a law enforcement agency for access to records.
Since the report became public, Arpaio appeared on Fox News and other news shows, calling the investigation a ruse by the Obama administration to win the Hispanic vote in 2012.
“This investigation is about public safety, not politics, notwithstanding Sheriff Arpaio’s continuing claims to the contrary,” Perez wrote.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has 60 days from the report’s release to sit down with the Justice Department to discuss a resolution.
