Joe Arpaio the Maricopa County Sheriff and the top aide in his office must appear before a judge in federal court. The Judge believes the two have trivialized and mischaracterized the key findings of the judge in a decision on racial profiling issued in 2013 against his sheriff’s office.
The office of the sheriff will be required to give answers on Monday to Murray Snow a U.S. District Judge about a training session held on October 18. In the session, Snow says Jerry Sheridan a Chief Deputy appears to make a suggestion that the regular deputies were not obliged to make every effort to remedy the constitutional violations of the agency.
Snow, ten months ago, concluded that the Maricopa Sheriff’s office had racially profiled in a systematic way Hispanics in its regular traffic and immigration patrols while unreasonably prolonging the detention of people at traffic stops. The sheriff has denied vigorously the allegations of racial profiling and appealed the judge’s ruling.
A training session video from October shows Sheridan giving a summary that is misleading of the court case to his deputies and then complaining the judge put the sheriff’s office under restraints similar to the ones the embattled New Orleans Police Department were under.
The top aide for Arpaio also spoke to deputies regarding the requirement by the judge that officers had to document ethnicity, race and sex of those in vehicles based upon the perceptions of the officer.
Sheridan commented that there could be reasons someone was not able to determine racial identities of people inside a vehicle and offered the reasons why that could be impractical.
Because he did that, it appears to the court, wrote Snow that he had been suggesting to deputies that they did not have to use the best possible effort in complying with the order of the court.
