11 Nov 2Nd–Nov 8th, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | cONTeNTs | feeDBacK | OPiNiON | NeWs | feaTuRe | NighT+Day | culTuRe | film | cafe | music | Sheriff’s office still targeting Black, Latino drivers During the meeting, the monitoring team portrayed its efforts with the sheriff’s office as successful. “MCSO has made significant progress as it pertains to compliance with the require- ments of the orders,” Warshaw said. The monitoring team said the sheriff’s office is in compliance with all but 19 of the 189 orders from the court. However, many of the remaining orders are significant ones. For instance, the backlog of miscon- duct cases is still high, with the county sitting on more than 2,000 unresolved cases in June. “The issue of internal investigations and the amount of time it takes to complete an internal investigation is a very serious issue,” Warshaw said. He added that inves- tigations should not take more than a year. But the most recent report from the monitoring team, filed in August, noted that there are still racial “disparities” in traffic stops. In other words, the rates that Black and Latino people are pulled over are signif- icantly higher than for white people. The monitoring team said that shows “possible systemic racial bias” in the sheriff’s policing. Yet the monitoring team’s language in describing problems at the sheriff’s office is causing a rift between it and local residents. Raul Piña — a member of the Community Advisory Board, which the court created to provide public input and oversight — said he was angry that the term “racial profiling” was seldom used during the meeting in favor of the term “disparities.” “You can do the low-hanging fruit. You have to write a policy manual, then you have to train on the policy. Those are easier to do,” Piña told New Times. “But at the core of this thing is racial profiling. For the seven years that I’ve been working on this, nobody at MCSO, including (Sheriff Paul) Penzone, has ever said, ‘We have a racial profiling problem.’ They’ve never acknowledged it.” Piña is not the only community member befuddled and alarmed by the frequent use of the term “disparities.” “They did all the writing, but the issue was racial profiling. They don’t say racial profiling anymore,” said Salvador Reza, a longtime community organizer. “I don’t even know how to pronounce what they are saying.” In 2010, Arpaio had Reza arrested in a case that was quickly thrown out by county prosecutors. A new sheriff to take on the case Though the initial court orders were issued while Arpaio helmed the sheriff’s office, Penzone inherited the issues that plagued the agency. On Oct. 2, Penzone announced that he would step down in January and not run for reelection, devoting much of a press conference to bitterly lamenting the court’s oversight of the sheriff’s office. “I’ll be damned if I’ll do three terms under federal court oversight for a debt I never incurred and not be given the chance to serve this community in the manner that I could if you take the other hand from being tied around my back,” Penzone said. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will appoint an interim sheriff when Penzone leaves office to serve until a new one is elected in November 2024. David Myers, a Guadalupe resident and former Arizona State University professor, said that although Penzone has more common sense than Arpaio did, he did not change the hostile law enforcement style of the sheriff’s office. “They both practice a confrontational style of law enforcement rather than a cooperative style. Confrontational enforce- ment is based on evoking fear in the subjects,” Myers said. “In Guadalupe, these are the young adult male Hispanic Yaquis.” Jewel Valenzuela, an elementary school teacher for 17 years, spoke at the meeting about the trauma the community has expe- rienced at the hands of the sheriff’s office. She told stories about children shaking when they saw law enforcement officers, a tank rolling through the community’s streets and drones chasing people having mental health crises. “I stayed in this community anyway because these are our families and they are my people,” Valenzuela said. “If they (the sheriff’s office) want to build community, there are ways to do it. But they’re not doing it.” The monitoring team outlined some of its efforts to investigate law enforcement officers. The team has spent time studying policing patterns of deputies and has had interventions with 17 who were flagged for potential bias. According to the monitors, none have been flagged a second time. In addition, the monitoring team provided key statistics about biased policing complaints from Hispanic people. According to its data, 566 complaints have been filed since June 2016. Of those, 105 alleged bias. In 10 cases, the team found bias but said it did not have data to present on what kind of punishment the officers received. Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone announced Oct. 2 that he would step down in January and not run for reelection. (Photo by O’Hara Shipe) ‘We Have a Problem’ from p 9
