Arpaio contempt hearing: Plaintiffs cast MCSO as agency gone rogue on Friday

Contempt hearings for Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his aides continued Friday with attorneys delving into a murky operation involving a Seattle informant named Dennis Montgomery, who was paid tens of thousands of dollars for his work with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

It was the continuation of a contentious examination that began Thursday, when civil-contempt proceedings against Arpaio and his top aides officially resumed. For nearly two days, plaintiffs’ attorneys confronted Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan about a range of controversies stemming from a long-running racial-profiling case.

The attorneys examined a handful of incidents with Sheridan, hoping to establish a pattern.

One day Arpaio’s office was withholding documents; another they were ignoring a court order. Next, they were enabling an informant who was purporting to investigate a federal judge. While each issue was troubling on its face, plaintiffs stacked the evidence in an effort to paint a broader picture of an agency gone rogue.

“All the evidence is going to show that, once again, Sheriff Arpaio and his agency have not been forthcoming with the plaintiffs or the court, have not fulfilled their obligations to turn over evidence, and that, again, their internal accountability system, such as it is, is completely inadequate,” plaintiffs’ attorney Cecillia Wang said after Friday’s hearings.

Focus on 'Seattle operation'

Wang opened Friday with questions about Montgomery, who told officials in the Sheriff's Office that the CIA was illegally harvesting information from the public, including thousands of Maricopa County residents. He later presented sheriff’s officials with documents purporting to prove the federal judge presiding over the racial-profiling lawsuit against Arpaio was in contact with the U.S. Department of Justice, which had filed a simultaneous racial-profiling lawsuit against the agency.

Wang, representing the American Civil Liberties Unions' Immigrants' Rights Project, asked Sheridan what Arpaio expected out of Montgomery, and how money earmarked for other law-enforcement activities was spent on the Montgomery investigation.

Sheriff’s officials have repeatedly said they did not instruct Montgomery to investigate U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow. But Wang presented evidence Friday morning that Montgomery was still in contact with deputies after he presented such information about the judge to them.

Sheridan defended the agency’s decision to hire Montgomery, and deflected suggestions Montgomery was paid to discredit Snow.

Sheridan said Montgomery was initially seen as a potential whistle blower -- in the same vein as Edward Snowden, who came to international attention for leaking documents about domestic intelligence gathering by the National Security Agency.

Montgomery purported that he had collected the information when he was a contractor for the CIA and NSA, and that each night he would come home and store the data, knowing that he would one day reveal what he knew. Sheridan said Montgomery reported that he shopped his wares to other agencies to try to get whistleblower status before contacting the Sheriff's Office.

"But when he came to Sheriff Arpaio with 150,000 residents, that their rights had been violated, the sheriff was the one who finally had the guts ... to spend some money and investigate this issue," Sheridan said.

Initially, some of his information checked out, Sheridan said. Montgomery had provided the numbers of bank accounts that were actually linked to Maricopa County residents. But when sheriff’s officials pressed Montgomery to verify the rest of his information, Sheridan said, the informant started producing a different type of material.

Pressing for verification

It started with a claim that the sheriff’s and Sheridan’s cellphones had been tapped, and later evolved into insinuations of a conspiracy between Snow and the federal government.

“He has no source of income, so he is frantic about keeping us on the hook so to speak,” Sheridan said. “… He comes up with this thing about the DOJ phone call to Judge Snow’s chambers, something like that, thinking that we’re in Judge Snow’s court, maybe this would be very sexy for us to know this. Thinking that we’ll bite on it. And we don’t.”

Wang asked Sheridan about the use of drug-enforcement grant money to pay the "Seattle operation" tab. The grant had to be refunded because it was considered an improper use of money. Wang additionally highlighted the fact that other sheriff's officials questioned why Montgomery was draining the office's anti-racketeering funds when they could have been used for other investigations.

Sheridan said those in charge of monitoring Montgomery would flip-flop on whether he was credible.

By Sheridan's estimate, the office spent $250,000 funding the Montgomery investigation. He repeatedly testified that the Sheriff's Office was only interested in Montgomery's claims of impropriety by the federal government, not in an investigation into a federal judge.

ID cards seized by U.S. marshals

Wang capped the morning's examination by delving into the discovery that nearly 1,500 identification cards taken from people stopped by deputies had not been disclosed to the court as ordered months earlier. Snow in February ordered all identification cards from the plaintiffs’ class — Hispanic drivers — to be handed over to the court.

In July, a court-appointed monitor of the agency revealed to Snow the existence of the additional IDs. The monitor said they had been intentionally withheld by sheriff’s officials. The monitor also told Snow that sheriff’s officials had been specifically instructed not to inform the monitor's team of their existence.

Snow subsequently ordered U.S. marshals to seize the IDs.

Sheridan testified that sheriff’s officials planned to disclose the documents as soon as they had a clear picture of where they came from. He said he was initially unsure whether they would qualify for disclosure under the judge’s orders.

Sheridan said they had been collected from a destruction bin. They also had been gathered over the course of several years. Sheridan said he thought it would be wise to consult with defense attorney Michele Iafrate on how to proceed.

Iafrate, Sheridan said, advised that at that time it would be premature to disclose the IDs to the monitoring team unless they were directly asked. So, when monitors then did ask at a subsequent meeting whether any more IDs had been discovered, the legal guidance prompted Sheriff’s Office Captain Steve Bailey to tell them no.

Late Friday, defense attorney John Masterson allowed Sheridan to elaborate on some of the claims he made earlier with Wang.

He spotlighted the agency’s internal investigations, which plaintiffs’ attorneys have criticized for being overly lenient on deputies, and highlighted allegations of deputies “pocketing” items from suspects, which prompted dozens of administrative and criminal investigations — but no criminal charges.

“They had 63,000 man hours they utilized in the investigation … they used 50 detectives on one investigation,” he said in a brief interview after the hearing. “I think all the (internal investigations) have been thorough.”

Hearings will resume Tuesday.

Plaintiffs have listed at least eight witnesses they plan to call from the Sheriff’s Office, including Arpaio. Defense attorneys say their strategy will depend on what evidence plaintiffs present in court.