Clearing the backlog: What’s MCSO doing to meet compliance amid federal lawsuit?

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office remains under a court-appointed monitor following a federal lawsuit over allegations of racial profiling. It has cost taxpayers nearly $315 million so far.

In recent years, the focus has been on a continued backlog of more than a thousand internal investigations and cases against MCSO employees.

Arizona’s Family Investigates found that the judge overseeing the case, G. Murray Snow, was critical of the company hired to help.

All sides were back in court Friday, and Judge Snow made it clear he wants to see the backlog cleared.

He noted that nearly half of these internal investigations predate 2020. The judge also questioned how effectively outsourcing some of these investigations has been.

The case dates back to 2007 and then Sheriff Joe Arpaio. His “custom, policy and practice of racially profiling Latinos” led to a lawsuit and, ultimately, the court-appointed monitor.

Arizona’s Family Investigates has reported on that monitor, Robert Warshaw, and the now $32 million he’s cost taxpayers.

At a community forum Thursday evening, Sheriff Russ Skinner said the backlog was down from 2,100 cases to just under 1400. But more than 600 of them are four or more years old. That also doesn’t account for the new cases; there are about 300 of them.

Arizona’s Family Investigates asked Christine Wee, an attorney with the ACLU of Arizona, who represents the plaintiffs in the case, what message it sends the community that these cases haven’t been done promptly.

“The message that they send is that these cases are not prioritized. That they haven’t been prioritized for a very long time,” Wee responded.

She said she’s noticed a change since Russ Skinner was appointed sheriff, replacing Paul Penzone, who stepped down in January. The judge held Penzone in contempt for the backlog.

“They are taking steps in the right direction and the number of cases, and the backlog has been reduced,” Wee explained.

The sheriff’s office also hired an outside company, Jensen Hughes, to help with some less serious cases.

Arizona’s Family Investigates found the contract, which states the county has paid them nearly $2 million since 2021.

MCSO said the company had been assigned 151 cases in that time; to date, they’ve completed 130.

At a hearing in May, Judge Snow said, “Jensen Hughes is pretty expensive for a pretty darn low level of production.”

Arizona’s Family Investigates directly addressed the sheriff’s concerns by asking if he believed they were doing a good job.

“I’ll tell you we’ve actually had several companies, Jenson Hughes being one of them,” Skinner said. “There were some issues with a couple of investigators at the time that didn’t understand the complexities and the quality and level that didn’t meet the compliance threshold. They’ve since been addressed,” he explained.

He said they need all the resources they can get.

“We’ll always need an outside investigator because again there are going to be cases that are conflicted out,” Sheriff Skinner explained.

The judge made clear Friday that he wants a timeline for clearing this backlog and appears likely to put benchmarks in place. It means MCSO would need to clear a certain number of backlogged cases monthly.

The county’s goal of clearing the backlog is March 2026.

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