Taxpayers see legal tab reach $100M on Arpaio: Arizona

10/30/2021- 12:22 p.m.

Nearly five years after Joe Arpaio was voted out as sheriff of Arizona’s most populous county, taxpayers have covered one of the last major bills from the thousands of lawsuits the lawman’s headline-grabbing tactics inspired — and the overall tab has hit $100 million.

Officials in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, agreed last week to pay $3.1 million to cover the county’s portion of a settlement with a restaurant owner who alleged Arpaio defamed him and violated his rights when raiding his businesses.

The payout boosted the cost stemming from the Republican sheriff’s six terms to $100 million for attorney fees, settlements and other costs the county has paid from lawsuits over things such as jail deaths, failed investigations of the sheriff’s political enemies and immigration raids of businesses.

That doesn’t include the $178 million and counting taxpayers that have shelled out in a 2007 racial profiling case stemming from Arpaio’s signature traffic patrols targeting immigrants, though about 75% of that spending has occurred during his successor’s watch as he works to comply with court-ordered overhauls of the sheriff’s office.

Michael Manning, an attorney who won settlements over deaths in Arpaio’s jails and on behalf of county employees investigated by the sheriff, said it was shameful that voters kept reelecting Arpaio as his legal bills piled up.

“They just didn’t care as long as they got the entertainment value,” Manning said. “And it just went on and on.”

Eventually, voter tolerance for Arpaio and his tactics waned. His crushing 2016 defeat to a Democratic challenger was attributed to his troubles in court, taxpayer-funded legal bills and his penchant for self-promotion.

Advocates for immigrants have long warned Arpaio should be viewed as a cautionary tale for the long-term financial obligations that communities take on when they let local police officers handle immigration enforcement.

Arpaio was first known nationally for jailing people in tents amid Phoenix’s triple-digit summer heat, making them wear pink underwear and using them on chain gangs. His influence in Republican circles grew when he launched immigration crackdowns, something long seen as the duty of federal authorities.

Those crackdowns continued until his immigration powers were finally stripped away by the federal government and courts by 2014.

Arpaio’s election defeat came after he was found in civil contempt for ignoring a judge’s order in the profiling case, leading to a 2017 criminal contempt conviction that was later pardoned by then-President Donald Trump.

The 89-year-old Arpaio, who lost a 2020 bid to win back his job and is now running for mayor in Fountain Hills, Ariz., said he’s proud of the way he ran one of the largest county jail systems in the U.S.

He said jail operators are often the target of a large number of lawsuits, and given that he served 24 years as sheriff, “$100 million is not unreasonable.”

He defended his immigration crackdowns, saying he had a duty to enforce new state laws that prohibited the smuggling of immigrants and the use of phony IDs in getting jobs. Arpaio contends some spending in the profiling case for things like equipment and additional employees was needed anyway to modernize the agency.