Melendres settlement – A federal court required sweeping reforms after Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies were found to have relied on race to pull over Latino drivers. But an audit tied to the court’s monitor says the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office billed more than $226 million t
For years, Maricopa County’s Melendres settlement has been sold as a fix for racial profiling. But in the ledgers tied to that court-ordered cleanup, the expenses listed read less like reforms and more like shopping lists.
More than $7,000 in cable TV subscriptions. An $11,000 golf cart. $1.5 million in renovations to office space in a premium Phoenix high-rise. Another $1.7 million for Tasers—despite the fact that the court had not required deputies to carry them. And at the center of the dispute is a question that hits taxpayers in the gut: when a judge orders specific steps to protect constitutional rights. can the cost be inflated—or diverted—without consequence?.
The numbers come from an audit ordered by the court and conducted by auditors hired by the monitor. The audit focused on $226 million that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office charged to the class-action settlement over a 10-year period. It did not examine legal and monitoring costs or the two most recent department budgets.
A federal judge’s finding dates back to 2013. when then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found to have violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers. The ruling required sweeping reforms including documenting all traffic stops to detect patterns of racial bias. employing additional investigators to probe reports of deputy misconduct. and appointing a monitor to oversee the settlement.
Since Sheriff Jerry Sheridan took office last year, he and Republicans on the county’s Board of Supervisors have argued that the reforms have become too costly. They have called for ending the settlement even as reviews of traffic stops continue to show racial disparities affecting Latino residents.
Maricopa County—home to more than half of Arizona’s population—has approved $353 million in spending related to the settlement since 2013. Yet the audit and a review of the public ledger by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica found that millions of dollars went to expenses that auditors said had little or nothing to do with the settlement.
Auditors said nearly 72% of sheriff’s office spending charged to the settlement was misattributed or misappropriated. They said full costs of some services and salaries were assigned to the settlement even when the work was completely unrelated—or only partially related—to the court’s orders. The audit said only $63 million was appropriately charged to the settlement.
In its findings. released late last year. the two-member auditing team—led by an individual with decades of experience in public finance—warned that overstating the cost of reforms undermines the court’s credibility. The auditors wrote that “This mischaracterization misleads the public on the cost of reform efforts and calls into question MCSO’s credibility. transparency. and truthfulness of its reporting.”.
Among the specific expenses detailed in the financial ledgers were purchases and costs that do not line up cleanly with what the court required.
The audit pointed to more than $310,000 for travel and professional development. It lists $1,261 for travel in 2020 to research buying a boat and swift-water rescue training. It includes $4,070 to train and test whether to buy a horse for the mounted unit in 2021. It also records $5. 077 in 2023 for attending National Police Week in Washington. D.C.—a cost the department billed to the racial profiling settlement. The audit concluded that at least some of these expenses had nothing to do with the settlement.
When the sheriff’s office moved to purchase body camera gear and related technology, auditors again found billing choices that they said exceeded the court’s requirements.
In 2013, the judge required deputies and sergeants who conduct traffic stops to use body cameras. The audit said the number of employees required to wear cameras ranged from 434 in fiscal year 2023 to 513 in fiscal year 2021. Yet the department purchased 950 cameras from Axon, a Scottsdale company, for $8.6 million. Auditors said about $2.9 million of that spending “exceeded the Court’s requirements.”.
The sheriff’s office also purchased Tasers from Axon bundled with the body cameras and charged them to the settlement. The court had not required deputies to carry Tasers. The department argued buying the cameras separately would have been more costly. Still. auditors said the cost for Tasers—roughly $1.7 million—should have been charged to the department’s general fund instead of the settlement.
Even the infrastructure for body camera docking stations became part of the dispute. To operate docking stations, the department purchased high-speed internet. In monthly invoices from fiscal years 2020 to 2024, auditors found charges included cable television subscriptions unrelated to the settlement, totaling $7,670.
And then there is the Professional Standards Bureau, the internal disciplinary body created to prevent interference in deputy discipline.
Since 2016, Snow required the sheriff’s office to house the Professional Standards Bureau separately from the downtown Phoenix headquarters. The order was intended to encourage residents to report deputy misconduct after Snow found department leadership had routinely interfered in discipline of deputies—an arrangement that became especially personal given that Sheridan had been Arpaio’s chief deputy at the time.
To shuttle employees between headquarters and the standards bureau. the sheriff’s office bought a golf cart valued at $11. 800 in June 2019. Around that same period. the department was also paying an average of $34. 000 a year for additional parking at the bureau building to accommodate visitors and employees. according to the audit and county ledgers.
In July 2024, the audit says the bureau was moved again—its second time being relocated in less than a decade. Auditors found the bureau now occupies two floors inside a premium midtown Phoenix high-rise, citing public real estate listings. The department spent $1.5 million refurbishing the new offices, which the auditors found inappropriately charged to the settlement. Auditors also said they observed that some space was empty during a visit and noted the bureau could have been housed in “various unused publicly owned properties.”.
The audit further described a second golf cart purchase. To ferry employees from their office to headquarters, the Professional Standards Bureau bought an $11,000 golf cart. Auditors wrote that the expense was unjustified under the court-mandated audit of spending on racial profiling reforms.
Sheridan and the county have framed the settlement as an increasingly expensive compliance trap. Snow’s court orders also include creation of two divisions that enforce the judge’s requirements: the Court Implementation Division and the Bureau of Internal Oversight. The sheriff’s office hired additional investigators for the Professional Standards Bureau and is attempting to clear a backlog of 433 pending investigations.
Sheridan told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that the staffing changes were the real cost of reform. “We went from having an internal investigation division with maybe 15 people to well over 50,” he said. “You can see those costs right away.”
At a February town hall meeting, Sheridan criticized the audit and said the court required the sheriff’s office to hire 25 sergeants. His chief financial officer said those positions cost about $3 million a year.
The audit. however. concluded that sheriff’s office accounting practices misused funds by charging unrelated or partially related staffing expenses to the settlement. It said that beginning in fiscal year 2016. the department shifted the cost of sergeant positions from general county funds to the settlement.
Auditors said that of the 209 positions charged to the settlement at the start of the 2025 fiscal year. only 55 could be reasonably attributed to Snow’s orders. Auditors said 84 positions were “inappropriately attributed to Melendres. ” and that 70 were partially related and should have been prorated to reflect what share of work was tied to the settlement versus other duties.
The audit also said personnel-related costs were used in ways that further exaggerated the settlement’s price tag. It said the sheriff’s office charged $1.3 million to purchase 42 patrol vehicles for positions auditors found were inappropriately attributed to court orders. including six vehicles for employees whose jobs had no connection to the case.
In May 2022, auditors said the sheriff’s office began charging car washes to the Melendres fund for vehicles it purchased for new patrol supervisors. Deputies expensed $3,259 in car washes that auditors said were not justified under the court’s orders.
Overall, the audit determined that from 2014 to 2024, the sheriff’s office misattributed to the settlement or inappropriately expensed about $144 million in personnel costs.
Auditors warned that accounting practices that remain in place could mean taxpayers continue to be on the hook for millions more that do not connect to rooting out racial profiling.
Not everyone agrees that the dispute is about waste.
Republican supervisors Thomas Galvin and Kate Brophy McGee defended the county’s handling of its finances and argued that continuing the conflict is a mistake. In a November statement. they said. “We stand by our budgeting practices and the 209 positions we created as a direct result of the Melendres Orders. ” adding that “It would be a complete waste of taxpayer money to engage the federal courts in a back-and-forth over what is clearly an issue of local jurisdiction.”.
They also responded to the audit’s concerns by telling U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow that the reforms—and the audit’s scrutiny of county spending—had exceeded the original racial profiling complaints. The filing argued that “Hispanic residents of Maricopa County concerned with racial profiling are unaffected by how the County and MCSO allocate costs. ” and that “Nor does any member of the Class experience a constitutional violation because MCSO purchased a golf cart.”.
Snow’s 2013 ruling said deputies relied on race to pull over Latino drivers during immigration actions, violating rights to equal protection and against unreasonable seizures.
The board is now asking the federal court to end oversight.
Attorneys for the county have filed a motion to end court oversight; that motion is pending. Sheridan’s attorneys also joined the motion. Republican supervisors’ attorneys argued in court that the Melendres lawsuit has been a success and that the settlement was no longer needed.
Republicans have also described oversight as a growing financial burden. Supervisor Debbie Lesko told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica in July that it is “a huge expense to the Maricopa County taxpayers.” She said the judge changes. orders get updated. and “They move the goalposts. and so we need to resolve this.”.
Sheridan dismissed the audit’s findings and defended his department’s spending practices. The sheriff’s office did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica’s questions about the spending.
The ACLU of Arizona, which joined the lawsuit in 2008, opposes ending oversight until the sheriff’s office is in full compliance with Snow’s orders. At the same time, it signaled willingness to reduce monitoring of a few requirements that the department has complied with for at least three years.
Snow, meanwhile, has shown caution about turning costs into a public messaging weapon. At a January hearing. the judge said he was reluctant to allow the county to “use cost orders both as a sword and a shield and make statements to the public which may. in fact. be completely inaccurate.” Snow said he did not intend to police supervisors’ speech. but he could require the county to justify costs.
In the end, the county and sheriff’s office attorneys asked Snow for an opportunity to challenge the findings, which Snow approved. But the parties soon dropped the challenge, citing the “unnecessary” cost of examining department spending.
Public finance experts interviewed through the reporting argued that county boards have an obligation to taxpayers to ensure they can account for how each dollar is spent. Zach Mohr. an associate professor at the University of Kansas who teaches public budgeting. accounting and financial management. reviewed the audit and said that if the board disagrees with the findings. “the way to solve that would be to get another audit.”.
The audit also landed on a political fault line inside the Board of Supervisors.
Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the five-member Board of Supervisors, has opposed ending court oversight. He said the focus should remain on eliminating biased policing.
Snow has not cleared the department in two key areas: racial disparities in traffic stops and a backlog of uninvestigated misconduct claims against deputies.
Gallardo told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica in April that his view is simple: “We should be having benchmarks in terms of. how do we get in full compliance.” He added. “Others are going to say. ‘Well. they keep moving the goalpost.’ Well. let’s continue to move forward.” Gallardo said the “overall goals” should be: “How do we get in full compliance with the Melendres case?”.
On one side. the county argues that it is done with oversight and that class members were never harmed by the way funds were allocated. On the other. the audit suggests the money trail itself undermines trust—showing costs tied to the settlement that auditors say were unrelated or only partially related to court-required reforms.
Through the reporting, one sequence stands out: early on, supervisors probed spending more as the department built the infrastructure for reforms, while later years featured far fewer public questions about how settlement money was used.
In 2016. for instance. then-Sheridan—at the time the department’s second-in-command—responded to a question about the court’s requirement to purchase body cameras for deputies. He said the body camera push was the sheriff’s office’s idea. describing them as “cutting-edge” and “flexible. ” adding that “They travel with the deputies everywhere.” That statement was made before the accounting dispute grew into a court-wide credibility fight.
The board’s oversight approach also carried echoes from the past. Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. who served on the board from 1993 to 2014. told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that she objected to Arpaio’s spending and focus on immigration enforcement—an approach she said led to racial profiling. lawsuits. and the settlement that continues today.
Wilcox also recalled prior allegations of misspending by the sheriff’s office. In 2011, she said a county audit found the department used $100 million from jail funds to pay patrol deputies. Sheridan at the time chalked it up to a bookkeeping error, calling it a “systems issue.”
She said the board approved an oversight resolution in 2011 and adopted rules aimed at preventing that kind of problem from happening again. Wilcox recalled telling The Arizona Republic then: “Hopefully. this is a chapter in Maricopa County’s history that we close and we never see such an abuse of funds again.”.
Now. with a motion to end oversight pending. the dispute over what the settlement money should have paid for sits in the middle of a larger conflict over compliance—one that involves not just bookkeeping. but the core question that set the case in motion in 2013: whether traffic stops and deputy discipline can be changed in a way that protects Latino residents.
And for the people watching those stops—whether they feel a department is truly being held to the same standards a judge demanded—the fight over cable bills. Tasers. golf carts. and body camera counts is not a side issue. It is the evidence they see of whether reform is being measured honestly. or priced into something the public never asked for.
Maricopa County Melendres v. Arpaio racial profiling sheriff Jerry Sheridan Joe Arpaio G. Murray Snow court oversight body cameras Axon Tasers Professional Standards Bureau Board of Supervisors Thomas Galvin Kate Brophy McGee Steve Gallardo Debbie Lesko ACLU of Arizona Arizona Luminaria ProPublica