Money Shot

Six years later, Napolitano did run for governor. Arpaio didn't, but he proved to be a factor in the election. Arpaio endorsed his old press-conference buddy over her Republican opponent, allowing Napolitano to beat Matt Salmon with just 1 percent of the vote.

In the years since, corrections auditors, county inspectors, and inmates all confirm that conditions in the jails have only gotten worse, as New Times' John Dickerson reported last week. County inspectors found vermin and cockroaches in jail kitchens. The Justice Department's own statistics show that Arpaio's jails are the most chronically overcrowded in the nation. Meanwhile, Justice hasn't audited Arpaio for compliance. (Justice Department officials say they're unable to discuss the particulars of the case because it's simply too old.)

The Justice Department investigation was one of many times that Arpaio has managed to battle his away out of trouble. Whether it's by stonewalling, or obstruction, or political gamesmanship — no matter who's come after him, the sheriff has always managed to skate.

The investigation into the death of Scott Norberg is a perfect example. Norberg, who had struggled with drug addiction, was arrested after attempting to slug a cop. He was in Arpaio's jail just 15 hours before he was handcuffed by guards, kicked, stomped on, and then strapped into a restraint chair. There, guards held a towel over his head, literally suffocating him. Medical records later revealed that he had been shot with a stun gun at least 14 times and beaten so badly that his larynx cracked.

The county was forced to settle with Norberg's family for $8.25 million. Astonishingly, says Norberg's attorney, Mike Manning, Arpaio promoted the guards who did the beating.

Arpaio's critics say Norberg's death was far from an isolated incident. But there's one reason the case continues to be talked about when so many other inmate deaths have fallen into obscurity: Scott Norberg's family had enough money to hire a good attorney. Manning's investigation showed that important records had been destroyed — including the X-ray of the cracked larynx. He also obtained the videotape that showed Norberg pleading for his life.

Even then, Arpaio managed to thwart a criminal investigation.

The sheriff's internal affairs investigators, Manning says, failed to give deputies the proper warnings before interviewing them. That invalidated the evidence they had obtained. Even worse, internal affairs and criminal investigators sat in on the same interviews, which Manning says is strictly forbidden by most police agency policies.

"There is no doubt, no other explanation, than that they intentionally botched the investigation," Manning says. "This kind of stuff was too stupid — too stupid even for them."

Even so, then-County Attorney Rick Romley was anxious to prosecute jail employees. "Rick's office was horrified at how the evidence was developing," Manning recalls. "They were looking at least at manslaughter — and you also had destruction of evidence, the fact that they'd intentionally botched the investigation."

But Arpaio had a trump card.

After Norberg's death, Romley had instructed his staff not to give jail employees legal advice. He didn't want his criminal investigation compromised by conflict-of-interest claims.

But as Romley's investigation was heating up, he received a letter from his former employee Jack MacIntyre, who informed his old boss that, working for Romley in the aftermath of the jailhouse death, he had disobeyed Romley's orders. MacIntyre had given legal advice to some deputies.

Worth emphasizing is that MacIntyre had left Romley's office to work for Arpaio.

MacIntyre's confession left Romley with a real conflict. He couldn't prosecute people in the Sheriff's Office, be they Arpaio or his deputies, when one of his own staffers had served as their legal counsel.

The top prosecutor was forced to recuse his office.

"There had been numerous attempts to get me to stop the investigation, but none of them worked until Jack MacIntyre was able to effectively get me off the case," Romley says today. "To say that I was upset would be putting it mildly."

Romley handed the case over to Arizona's then-Attorney General Janet Napolitano, the same politician who, as U.S. Attorney, had downplayed the Justice Department lawsuit.

Napolitano closed the case without prosecution.

Although Arpaio's office has always managed to avoid prosecution, someone always has to pay. And, in many cases, it's been taxpayers.

As New Times first reported last week, Arpaio has cost Maricopa County a staggering $41.4 million in legal fees, insurance premiums, and payouts to jail-abuse victims. Arpaio's track record is so bad that the county has been forced to switch to an insurance policy with a $5 million deductible. Insurance won't cover a cent of any suit that settles for less than that.

Even beyond the pricey lawsuits, evidence suggests that the sheriff's books are a mess. Every limited audit done of the Sheriff's Office during Arpaio's tenure, whether by the state or by the county's in-house division, has found problems.

The problems have never risen to the level of criminality, as the sheriff's supporters are quick to point out. Indeed, many of the sheriff's financial missteps seem petty. But considering that the audits have covered only small areas of Arpaio's budget, they raise the question of what a larger audit might reveal.