9 Nov 2Nd–Nov 8th, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | cONTeNTs | feeDBacK | OPiNiON | NeWs | feaTuRe | NighT+Day | culTuRe | film | cafe | music | ‘We Have a Problem’ Guadalupe residents: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office still ignoring racial profiling. BY TJ L’HEUREUX S uspicion and frustration still linger in Guadalupe, a community that has been a target of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s systematic racial profiling. Residents aired their concerns during a recent town hall. On Oct. 19, a monitoring team selected to oversee court-ordered changes at the long- troubled sheriff’s office hosted a meeting at a local elementary school. The small town, with a largely Latino and Yaqui population, sits between Phoenix and Tempe. A dozen or so sheriff’s office officials also attended, although they mostly gathered at the back of the school auditorium. It’s been a decade, costing the county nearly $250 million, since a federal judge ordered the agency to change its policies and stop violating the civil rights of brown and Black people. Guadalupe contracts with the sheriff’s office to provide law enforcement for the town. The meeting in Guadalupe marked a return to the Valley for Robert Warshaw, who was selected to lead the monitoring team in 2014, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. “I’ve read in the newspapers that we haven’t been here for three years. That’s probably true,” said Warshaw, whose law firm is based in North Carolina. “The reali- ties of COVID made it difficult for us to get here.” He cited “prohibitions for people to travel,” despite domestic air travel restric- tions in the U.S. being lifted in 2021. Warshaw assured the audience that the monitoring team continued to work virtu- ally, adding that his team “constantly” interacts with the sheriff’s office and parties involved in the case. But some Guadalupe residents, such as Lisa White, who runs a nonprofit that advocates for children and parents dealing with the criminal justice system, are skep- tical of the team. She noted that for the month of July, Warshaw billed the county at a rate of $300 an hour. The monthly bill for the county came to more than $210,000. “(Warshaw) didn’t talk about how much he is making,” White told Phoenix New Times. The meeting lasted two hours. Several parties involved in the case spoke, including representatives of Warshaw’s team, the ACLU, the U.S. Department of Justice and the community advisory board established for the case. Residents had 30 minutes to provide feedback at the end of the meeting. White didn’t have the chance to speak but said she wanted to know which community members had been contacted to help plan the mandated cultural compe- tency training for sheriff’s office officials. “If you’re really trying to break down racial profiling, you need to come to the people and get their input,” she said. “You need to get to know the community as a whole. Did they do that?” The court oversight grew out of a traffic stop in September 2007 when sheriff’s deputies arrested Ortega Melendres in Cave Creek. Three months later, he sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the case, Melendres v. Arpaio, challenged the sheriff’s office’s practice of targeting and stopping vehicles with Latino people inside based on their race and ethnicity in order to investigate their immigration status. U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow has issued three orders for the sher- iff’s office to change policies for its policing and handling misconduct complaints. Even after Sheriff Paul Penzone replaced Arpaio in 2016, the office has not fully met the court orders, including to stop racially profiling Black and Latino drivers. Jewel Valenzuela, an elementary school teacher for 17 years, spoke at the Oct. 19 meeting about the trauma Guadalupe has experienced at the hands of the sheriff’s office. (Photo by TJ L’Heureux) | NEWS | | NEWS | >> p 11
