MARICOPA COUNTY — A court-ordered audit found that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office misattributed or misappropriated nearly 72% of the $226 million it charged to a class-action racial-profiling settlement over a ten-year period. Auditors hired by the court-appointed monitor determined that only $63 million of that spending was appropriately billed to the settlement in Melendres v. Arpaio.

The audit examined a decade of expenses tied to court-ordered reforms following U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow's 2013 ruling, which found that deputies under then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio had relied on race to pull over Latino drivers during immigration actions, violating their rights to equal protection and against unreasonable seizures. The court required the department to document all traffic stops to detect patterns of racial bias, employ additional investigators to probe deputy misconduct, and accept a monitor to oversee the settlement.

The auditing team said: "This mischaracterization misleads the public on the cost of reform efforts and calls into question MCSO's credibility, transparency, and truthfulness of its reporting." The two-member team consisted of William Ansbrow and Eric Melancon, who are barred by Snow from speaking publicly about their work.

The sheriff's financial ledgers show more than $310,000 for travel and professional development charged to the settlement. The department billed $1,261 in 2020 to research buying a boat and swift-water rescue training for deputies who work in the desert, $4,070 in 2021 to train and test whether to buy a horse for the mounted unit, and $5,077 to attend National Police Week in Washington, D.C., in 2023.

The sheriff's office purchased 950 body cameras from Axon at a cost of $8.6 million, although the number of employees required to wear them ranged from 434 in fiscal year 2023 to 513 in fiscal year 2021. Approximately $2.9 million of that spending exceeded the court's requirements.

Maricopa County has approved $353 million in spending related to the settlement since 2013. In the past two years, the Board of Supervisors approved Sheriff Jerry Sheridan's budget request, billing an additional $72 million to the settlement. Sheridan dismissed the audit findings, and his attorneys joined a pending motion from county lawyers to end court oversight.

Republican supervisors Thomas Galvin and Kate Brophy McGee said in a November statement: "Digging into county finances and trying to minimize the cost of Melendres compliance is not just an insult to taxpayers, it's beyond the federal court's jurisdiction. Nothing about our budgeting or accounting practices violates federal or state law. This is why we decline to participate in further arguments over compliance costs."

County Supervisor Steve Gallardo has opposed ending court oversight. Gallardo said: "We should be having benchmarks in terms of, how do we get in full compliance. I mean, that should be our overall goals: How do we get in full compliance with the Melendres case?"

The sheriff's office is above 90% compliance with the two major court orders, but Snow has not cleared it in two areas: racial disparities in traffic stops and a backlog of uninvestigated misconduct claims against deputies. Reviews of the department's traffic stops continue to show racial disparities affecting Latino residents.