PHOENIX – The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday released a report alleging that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office misled the public by massively inflating the costs of court-ordered reforms, falsely attributing unrelated expenses to a long-running civil rights case. According to the report, 72 percent of the costs billed to the county were entirely unrelated to Ortega Melendres v. Sheridan, a class action lawsuit that found the sheriff’s office engaged in racially discriminatory policing and immigration enforcement.
The ACLU said the court-ordered independent audit revealed widespread misuse of county funds and deceptive reporting practices. The report stated, “While records show the Sheriff’s Office has billed the County for $226 million for costs supposedly related to Ortega Melendres, the report reveals that over $16 million of that cost is improperly attributed to Ortega Melendres and that much of it was entirely unrelated to the case.” The purchases falsely charged to the case included golf carts, horses, tasers and jet fuel.
Victoria Lopez, executive director for the ACLU of Arizona, said, “Sheriff Sheridan has spent the last year assuring constituents that his leadership differs from his former boss, Joe Arpaio. But misleading the public about MCSO’s behavior is more of the same.”
Lopez told the ACLU that the sheriff’s office has been diverting taxpayer dollars to unrelated expenses and using inflated figures to claim that it is “too expensive” to stop violating the Constitution.
“The agency’s misrepresentation of the costs in this case is not an accident. It’s a product of conscious decisions made and sustained within MCSO,” Lopez added. “This report shows the truth: it’s not reform that’s expensive, it’s MCSO’s misconduct.”
The ACLU said the report also found that MCSO routinely billed the full salaries of employees who did minimal work on Ortega Melendres compliance, suggesting possible violations of state budgeting laws.
“This mischaracterization,” the report stated, “misleads the public on the cost of reform efforts, and calls into question MCSO’s credibility, transparency, and truthfulness of its reporting to the public, the Parties, and the Court.”
According to the ACLU, MCSO has repeatedly used its inflated cost figures to turn the public against federal court orders designed to hold the agency accountable for constitutional violations.
“The Sheriff’s Office and complicit County politicians cooked the books in Ortega Melendres to create a fake cost boogeyman that might get them off the hook for completing critical reforms in this case,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project.
“Reforms in Ortega Melendres started with MCSO dragging its heels on compliance instead of just fixing the constitutional problems,” Borchetta said.
She added, “All the while, the community has been paying the price for their misconduct, both financially and through real human harm.” Borchetta said the ACLU hopes the report will prompt MCSO and the county to recommit to completing the necessary reforms rather than continuing the misconduct that delays progress.
For years, the sheriff’s office and local officials have cited inflated costs without substantiation. In September 2024, the court ordered the agency to produce documentation to support its claims. The ACLU said the receipts MCSO first provided showed that most of the spending was categorized as “MCSO operational costs.”
When pressed for more detail, MCSO failed to produce itemized receipts, prompting the judge to order an independent audit.
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