Arizona’s largest sheriff’s department is losing ground in its effort to comply with court-ordered reforms related to a long-running racial profiling lawsuit and settlement, an observer has found.
An investigation launched last year by the observer team and published this month alleges a “disturbing pattern” of violations of department policy and court orders that have undermined efforts to investigate misconduct and root out racial profiling within 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 persistent racial disparities during traffic stops carried out by the sheriff’s office, which continues to oppose the execution of court decisions. The accusations this time focus on 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 as monitor in 2014 to monitor compliance with the 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 Observer also claimed that top management 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 office, the report claims.
“What the monitoring team found here is an attempt to create an internal culture in which favoring and retaliation are tools of control: to influence outcomes; to instill fear in changemakers; and to grant favors and position to those who bend to misguided directions,” the report said.
As a result, the Monitor has determined that the Sheriff’s Office has regressed in its compliance with reforms mandated in a regulation of the Melendres v. Arpaio class action. The suit accused law enforcement of using traffic stops to arrest people on immigration charges, thereby racially profiling Latinos. At the time, the court held that when the public reported misconduct, then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others intervened in investigations. The court held Arpaio in criminal contempt in 2016 for continuing to make immigration-related arrests in violation of court orders, although he was ultimately pardoned by President Donald Trump.
Constitutional violations began in 2007 under Arpaio. Current Sheriff Jerry Sheridan inherited the settlement when he took office in January 2025. Sheridan rose through 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 ordering him to stop making immigration-related arrests, despite evidence to the contrary presented in court. Sheridan says he has always been honest. He distanced himself from his former boss during his campaign and after taking office, saying he was committed to carrying out reforms.
Learn more
The sheriff’s office filed a 78 page response to the court investigation, denying any violation of court orders or department policy and calling the investigation “speculative” and “inappropriate.” The sheriff’s office said the incidents in question proved that internal controls reinforced by court orders were working properly and that the monitor penalized 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 sought advice from the office’s commander on reviewing completed or appealed investigations to understand whether they could potentially change the outcome, but ultimately chose not to take further action, the office said.
“Given that the complaint alleged misconduct of a criminal nature (tampering with evidence) 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 Observer’s investigation had extended into “areas involving managerial discretion, personnel administration and internal policy disagreements that are best handled 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 law enforcement met all of the agreement’s racial profiling requirements and should be released from the deal. The monitor “discussing these issues had everything to do with providing inflammatory phrases” to help the plaintiff oppose Maricopa County’s motion to end the surveillance, the sheriff’s office said in its response filed in court.
Snow has issued four court orders since 2013 with 368 requirements for the department. Warshaw, the monitor, monitors compliance with Snow’s orders and reports on the department’s progress each quarter.
The Office of Professional Standards remains a focal point of court oversight, largely because of the backlog in investigating misconduct. Its failure to clear the backlog is one of the main reasons the sheriff’s office has not fully complied with orders intended to prove it was capable of policing itself.
Captain Gregory Lugo has led the office since February 2021. He helped reduce the backlog from more than 2,100 misconduct investigations in November 2022 to 371 in May. But in April 2025, Sheridan placed Lugo on leave, sparking a Monitor investigation.
At the same time, the sheriff’s office filed a criminal complaint against Lugo with 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 investigation concluded that 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 had also filed insubordination charges against him. The sergeant appealed the charges, which were initially upheld but overturned after Sheridan took office.
“The monitoring team concluded that the reason given for the transfer of Captain Lugo was a pretext,” and that it was instead a retaliatory measure for not accepting interference in investigations, in violation of court orders, the report said.
The observer team also highlighted the case of a deputy who was fired for showing up at the sheriff’s office while performing off-duty work. The MP appealed. Sheridan’s second-in-command questioned the deputy’s firing and asked Lugo to reconsider, but Lugo said the deputy was fired for timesheet violations totaling “thousands of dollars.”
The Observer said Sheridan and another member of the command staff also investigated a possible weakening of the disciplinary policy to avoid firing a sergeant arrested for drunken driving. Command staff argued that the sergeant should not have been fired because he self-reported his arrest. Lugo cautioned that the change would likely not be approved by the comptroller or lawyers involved in the settlement.
The Comptroller’s investigation into the Office of Professional Standards resulted in a decline in the Sheriff’s Office’s compliance with the regulations. Compliance rates, which measure the department’s progress, declined in three of four court orders. The largest declines were for an ordinance focused primarily on internal control and discipline, whose implementation rates fell from 95% to 70%. Compliance rates for an order to end the backlog of ongoing investigations fell from 88% to 68%.
Because the sheriff’s office disputes the accusations, it says it continues to fully comply with requirements related to the comptroller’s investigation and called the change in its compliance rates “punitive and draconian oversight.”
The cost to taxpayers of implementing the reforms reached $350 million, according to the county. On June 22, the county Board of Supervisors approved an additional $36 million for compliance spending over the next fiscal year. But the court questioned these costs. The Observer published an audit last October that determined the sheriff’s office misattributed or inflated about 72 percent of its settlement-related expenses.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents all Latino drivers in Maricopa County in the settlement, said the Observer’s latest investigation proves the department cannot be trusted to police itself without court oversight and called for leaders of the Sheriff’s Office to be held accountable for alleged violations of court orders.
“A public law enforcement agency like the MCSO cannot be allowed to operate with impunity if it wants to have any legitimacy with the communities it serves,” the ACLU said in its response to the Observer’s investigation.
Snow will hear oral arguments Friday on the motion filed by Maricopa County attorneys. They argue that judicial oversight of the Sheriff’s Office should cease completely and immediately, saying that judicial reforms have now gone beyond the original scope of the lawsuit and that the Sheriff’s Office no longer engages in racial profiling.
