MCSO report shows traffic stops for Latinos are longer, result in more arrests
A 2008 class-action lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office lasted through former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s term and now, through successor Paul Penzone’s.
The Arizona American Civil Liberties Union was part of filing the suit, currently called Melendres v Penzone. The Department of Justice entered the case in 2015.
Penzone announced his retirement earlier this month and indicated frustration with managing the office under oversight that began during Arpaio’s term.
As part of the settlement, a judge ordered federal oversight of the MCSO. That means studies, trainings, and quarterly public meetings.
The latest one was Thursday night, held by an independent monitoring team at Frank Elementary School in Guadalupe.
“Latino motorists were targeted and racially discriminated against, here in Maricopa County,” said Christine Wee, an ACLU attorney involved in the case.
According to data that the County Sheriff’s Office collects, that still happens.
Penzone wasn’t present at the meeting; Ann Scheel, MCSO’s chief of administration, spoke on the office’s behalf.
Scheel said that MCSO is in compliance with 90% of what the court has mandated in the first two orders that came out of the suit.
Nancy Glass with the Department of Justice echoed Scheel’s words, agreeing that the Sheriff’s Office is in compliance with many orders resulting from the lawsuit.
“However, of those that remain, those are some of the core and important issues in this case,” said Glass, “and MCSO does remain out of compliance in those areas.”
'Stops involving Latino drivers were more likely to be longer'
According to Scheel, the yearly traffic studies the office conducts look at five key points: citations, searches, stop time, arrests and seizures.
“Stops involving Latino drivers were more likely to be longer and to result in an arrest or search than stops involving white drivers,” said Wee, referring to data from the most recent study.
Glass also noted that MCSO’s analyses show “deputies facing a white person and a Latino driver in the same position, doing as close as we can find to the same thing, are treated differently.”
Scheel said that some incidents may not be caused by explicit bias, warranting investigations into whether they could be caused by implicit bias or factors that are outside of MCSO’s control.
"For example, there may be a traffic law that impacts a certain community more than other communities,” said Scheel. “That’s something we don’t have any control over. The Legislature would have to change that law.”
Glass responded that the Department of Justice believes the office should focus on the reasons behind disparities that it can control, such as what kinds of areas supervisors send officers to conduct stops.
“We want to make sure that the decisions MCSO makes about where it enforces and what it enforces are focused on public safety,” said Glass.
Lengthy waits to close investigations into complaints
Glass also highlighted another key area where the Sheriff’s Office remains out of line: investigations into complaints take roughly five months longer than the Department of Justice recommends.
“MCSO has been taking too long to close its investigations and that has created a large backlog of unresolved cases,” Glass said.
Community Advisory Board member Raul Piña noted that there may be many community members who are especially vulnerable in these situations “due to their mixed status family, their own current immigration status, or as a DACA recipient.”
“While the presence of ICE in MCSO jails is not addressed in the Melendres case,” said Piña. “We see the link between longer traffic stops, ICE interviews at MCSO jails, and the pipelines leading to private detention centers. And ultimately, deportation and family separation. When you add a backlog of investigations into complaints against the agency, we have a scenario that harms too many of our residents in Maricopa County.”
Community members speak
Community members who gave comments at the meeting said that harm is real and runs deep.
Guadalupe resident Andrew Sanchez stepped up to the microphone first.
“There is a cancer in the sheriff’s department that has not been addressed,” he told the room. “We still have members in the sheriff’s department that are overseeing the same situations that occurred — when the raids were happening, when underreporting was going on, when the community members were being ignored — that are still working in those higher levels of law enforcement.”
Jewel Valenzuela, an elementary school teacher who taught at Frank Elementary for 17 years, said she wasn’t originally planning to speak but felt compelled to.
She described the fear that she saw in the community during what Sanchez earlier referred to as the “reign of terror” in Guadalupe, where roughly half the residents are members of the Yaqui tribe and the other half identify as Hispanic.
“I had parents that had to call me to see if it was safe for them to come to school,” Valenzuela recalled. “Children shaking when they see police. As a teacher, I gave families rides home through the back roads.”
Valenzuela, who identified herself as Yaqui, said her love for her people and community kept her in Guadalupe.
“If they want to build community, there’s ways to do it,” she said. “But they’re not doing it. And it’s disgusting that you put in something (a complaint) and they don’t even respond to it.”
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