15 Oct 23rd-Oct 29th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | problems raised in the report.” A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who would investigate violations of state law, declined to comment when asked what, if anything, she might do about the report’s allegations. Sheridan, though, is nitpicking. “We have found discrepancies within the Monitor’s budget analyst report, which we are continuing to review and will address in the future,” he said in a statement issued Thursday. “However, if we accept their report’s stated total expense of $62 million, it is unclear why the costs paid to the Monitor Team — totaling $34 million to-date (more than half of the reported expense) — and the legal expenses incurred over the past decade were excluded. These two significant and undisputed expenses were not included in the report.” Sheridan seems to focus exclusively on the cost of non-Melendres-related posi- tions, ignoring the other costs and his agency’s neglect in not prorating certain expenses. While he is correct that legal expenses are not included in the report — a point acknowledged both by Judge Snow and the monitor’s report — he forgets a salient fact: The sheriff’s office lost the suit in federal court, making it liable for the plaintiffs’ legal expenses. According to data provided by the county, from 2008 through the budget for Fiscal Year 2026, total legal costs for the Melendres case top $24.6 million, with the plaintiffs accounting for around $13.6 million of the total and the defense — i.e., the county — accounting for more than $11 million. Sheridan’s total for expenses paid for the monitor’s services for 12 years seems a fairly accurate estimate, but that figure would be far smaller if Sheridan’s agency had complied with Snow’s order from jump. And it’s certainly dwarfed by the sheriff’s office’s own profligacy. Graves’ ghost Melendres has become such a convenient punching bag for Republican politicos that the truth rarely gets in the way of absurd rhetoric. Congressman and gubernatorial wannabe Andy Biggs recently begged U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to “finally resolve the case and end this prolonged federal overreach,” seemingly ignoring the fact that Bondi has no such authority. Melendres is not a consent decree brought on by the Department of Justice, but a lawsuit brought in 2007 on behalf of all Latino drivers and passengers who might be stopped or detained by sheriff’s office deputies. In 2013, Snow ruled that the minions of then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio had improperly used race and ethnicity to pull over auto- mobiles for the flimsiest of reasons so they could question Latinos about their immi- gration status. Snow found that Arpaio’s agency was in violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against unrea- sonable search and seizure, as enshrined in the 4th and 14th Amendments. Later, Snow ordered a litany of reforms to be enacted by the sheriff’s office, which Arpaio and his staff defied, earning Arpaio a criminal contempt of court conviction for which he was eventually pardoned by President Donald Trump. A handful of Arpaio’s underlings — including Sheridan, his chief deputy at the time — caught civil contempt citations. Sheridan’s untruthful answers to an outside investigation of the matter landed him on the county’s Brady list of untrustworthy cops. Snow appointed Warshaw as his monitor to oversee the sheriff’s office’s enactment of Snow’s reforms. But the sheriff’s office — under multiple sheriffs — has had a history of institutional intransigence, sometimes slow-walking requests, sometimes exhib- iting outright defiance. As a result, 12 years after Snow’s findings, the sheriff’s office is still not in full compliance with all of Snow’s orders, which it must be for three years before the court’s oversight ends. Melendres’ critics have used its alleged $350 million price tag — which the monitor’s report belies — to insist that the court is out of control and its power over the sheriff’s office must end. They also cite the 18-year length of the case to argue for its cessation. But there is local precedent for Melendres, specifically with a civil rights case known as Graves v. Hill. That case was filed in 1977 over conditions in the county jails and did not end for four decades. In 2019, federal Judge Neil Wake finally declared the sheriff’s office to be in compliance with his orders in the case. As for the Melendres case, both the monitor and Snow have said that the sher- iff’s office has made considerable progress in meeting the goals Snow set for it, so it seems unlikely that Melendres will take a Graves-like 42 years to resolve. But as Maricopa County taxpayers have learned the hard way, bigotry, especially when prac- ticed by law enforcement, can be expensive. Fortunately, with a yearly budget of around $4 billion, Maricopa County can afford to address the sheriff’s office’s legacy of racism. Even by the county’s allegedly inflated accounting, spending an average of $29 million a year on Melendres out of a $4 billion annual budget represents less than 1% of the county’s yearly costs. Over the same time frame, the county’s yearly budgets total nearly $40 billion. Melendres has been a drop in the county’s colossal bucket o’ cash. Strip out all the unrelated expenses the sheriff’s office has billed to the cause of “stop being racist” — the golf carts and horse trainings and cable TV — and the fraction gets whittled down further. Though likely not enough to quiet the phony cavils of naysayers such as Galvin and Lesko. This story is part of the Arizona Watchdog Project, a yearlong reporting effort led by New Times and supported by the Trace Foundation, in partnership with Deep South Today. Not Adding Up from p 12
