12 Oct 23rd-Oct 29th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | “permissive culture” allowed the sheriff’s office to piss away moolah and attribute the millions of dollars in outlays to Melendres. A partial list of the sheriff’s office’s years-long splurge includes the following: • $62.7 million in payroll costs for patrol positions unconnected to court compliance • $32.9 million in payroll costs for non- patrol positions that were similarly unconnected • $1.5 million in office renovations for a new, unneeded facility to house the agen- cy’s Professional Standards Bureau • $1.3 million for 42 vehicles not required to comply with Snow’s orders • $490,000 in fuel costs • $450,000 for internet services • $309,400 for parking • $43,948 for a “transit van” to ferry depu- ties to and from the field • $11,805 for a golf cart so agency employees could ride back and forth between the PSB office and headquarters • $7,699 for cable TV subscriptions from Cox Communications • $3,259 on car washes • $5,077 for travel to Washington, D.C., for “National Police Week” • $1,261 to “research watercraft purchase and swift water rescue training” • And, the pièce de résistance: $4,070 for “mounted patrol training and testing and travel to purchase possible mounted unit horses” Which, given the circumstances, puts a new twist on the phrase “horse thief.” Per the report, some 84% of the Melendres charges were for personnel, but many of these positions were not required by court order or necessary for compliance. Part of Snow’s order required the sher- iff’s office “to establish staffing that permits a supervisor to oversee no more than eight deputies, but in no event should a super- visor be responsible for more than ten persons,” with an 8-to-1 ratio being the target. Snow’s order was limited to deputies on patrol, but according to a sheriff’s office communique quoted by the report, “the County and the MCSO” decided to expand the standard to “all enforcement divisions,” greatly expanding the rate of hires. The report also contends that the sher- iff’s office pulled a switcheroo when it came to the hiring of some sergeants, swapping out positions that should have been covered by the county with positions paid for with Melendres funds. The monitor believes such accounting tricks helped inflate the spending that the sher- iff’s office was blaming on Melendres. Ultimately, auditors found that as many as 87 positions at the sheriff’s office were wrongfully attributed to Melendres. Another beef of the monitor’s: The sheriff’s office did not prorate expendi- tures that might overlap between Melendres compliance and the regular work of sheriff’s deputies. “If a position is attributed to Melendres, it is considered a direct cost of Melendres, and all costs associated with that position are attributed to Melendres,” sheriff’s office officials are quoted as stating in the report. This resulted in a “systematic overstate- ment” of Melendres costs because some of those positions — even by the sheriff’s office’s own admission — were only partially related to Melendres compliance. Goods and services were similarly assigned to the Melendres column, though Melendres compliance was but one element of their use. One example: $72,119 spent on rental lease costs for a Ricoh photocopier that “supports normal busi- ness operations unrelated to Melendres.” So what? one might say. The county would have paid for this stuff one way or the other. Not necessarily. The report argues that these loosey- goosey practices allowed Maricopa County to exceed budget limits imposed by the Arizona Constitution. Complying with court orders is exempted from the spending cap, so the more charged to Melendres, the bigger the overall budget for the sheriff’s office. For Fiscal Year 2022, “the County exceeded the State constitutional expendi- ture limit by over $13 million because MCSO improperly attributed inappro- priate costs to the Melendres case and the County excluded them from the limit.” The report suggests this “pattern of misattribu- tion” may have caused the county to speed past spending limits in other years. “MCSO and Maricopa County had an incentive to allocate and overstate what should be regular operating costs to the Melendres Fund so that MCSO could bypass the State constitutional spending limit,” the report states, though it leaves open the question of whether this was “by design” or was simply the result of shoddy accounting practices. Picking nits If the idea behind all the compliance cost pearl-clutching was to free the sheriff’s office from Snow’s supervision, it’s likely to backfire. Sylvia Herrera, a community activist and member of the Community Advisory Board created by the court to assist with Melendres compliance, told Phoenix New Times that the board was the first to call for the kind of audit that Snow eventually ordered. Both the county and the sheriff’s office “should be held accountable for public overstatements” of Melendres’ costs, she said, and the lack of transparency and persistent misrepresentations by the sheriff’s office demonstrate that it “must continue to have court oversight.” Victoria Lopez — the executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, which represents the plaintiffs in the Melendres case — said there should be hell to pay. “The audit raises serious issues including possible violations of state law, which would need to be reviewed by state officials,” she told New Times via email. “Additional transparency and account- ability are necessary for the public to fully understand the depth of the Not Adding Up from p 8 >> p 15
