Babeu's probe also confirmed that Arpaio's office had stopped its own investigation into the problems out of concern that it would damage the reputation of a sex-crimes unit supervisor, which in turn might have hurt a lawsuit over a high-profile alleged public-corruption case that the MCSO had mishandled.
Still, the public didn't become inflamed over the sex-crimes cases until the nationwide publication of a December 4, 2011, article on them by Jacques Billeaud of the Associated Press.
At a December news conference, Joe Arpaio listens to questions about botched sex-crimes investigations under his watch.
![Levalya Beyart of El Mirage says that after her daughter reported being raped in 2007, the Sheriff's Office told her, "This [is] not a priority."](http://media.phoenixnewtimes.com/joe-arpaio-s-office-says-to-hell-with-the-children.7636314.40.jpg)
Jamie Peachey
Levalya Beyart of El Mirage says that after her daughter reported being raped in 2007, the Sheriff's Office told her, "This [is] not a priority."
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Since then, Arizona's two U.S. senators have expressed concern about the failure, and a chorus of critics have called for Arpaio to resign. The January 31 hearing before the Board of Supervisors was packed with Arpaio supporters and critics and was punctuated by a disruptive walk-out of the meeting by dozens of people disgusted with the apparent support of the sheriff by the board and County Attorney Bill Montgomery. Only the board's lone Democrat, Mary Rose Wilcox, challenged statements by Montgomery and Sheridan that downplayed the scandal.
Despite the sheriff's public acceptance of responsibility for the problem, his office decided that the best way to deflect criticism was to heap blame on lowly subordinates. Two former detectives, James Weege and Mary Ward (who left the MCSO in 2008 and now work for the Goodyear Police Department) and their former supervisor, Kim Seagraves, are among the principals named in the MCSO's internal investigation into who gets fingered.
Yet a review of how the investigative failures occurred makes it clear that Arpaio's politically motivated, headline-grabbing investigations — combined with his choice of now-ousted Chief Deputy David Hendershott as the enforcer of his will — led directly to the office's callous treatment of some of society's most vulnerable crime victims.
In 2004, Arpaio's office employed only four detectives in a sex-crimes unit assigned to investigate rapes and molestations in the MCSO's widespread jurisdiction.
The caseload was too heavy for the few detectives to perform their work properly, and the situation didn't get much better that year, when two more detectives (including Weege) were added.
Detectives Ward and Weege (whom Goodyear's police chief publicly stands behind, despite Arpaio's attempt to smear them) wrote in a nine-page letter to Sheriff Babeu in May 2011 that "it was not uncommon for detectives to [be working on] 40 to 50 cases each," in addition to new calls they received.
In 2005, Ward, who had joined the unit in 2001, was pulled out to work on an investigation into Cactus Towing, owned by Lee Watkins. The unit was told to "do the best they could" with just five detectives.
As New Times reported on November 29, 2007 ("Enemies List"), evidence showed that the Cactus Towing case was politically motivated.
Watkins had been active in Republican politics at the time, helping various candidates, including Arpaio. But in 2004, Watkins told the sheriff he was supporting W. Steven Martin instead of Arpaio in that year's campaign.
"I guess you're going to take your chances," Watkins quoted the sheriff as telling him.
A year later, on March 31, 2005, the Sheriff's Office raided the towing company, seizing computers, $25,000 in cash, and 200 boxes of records. News reports from the time show that Arpaio had assigned 10 detectives to the towing case, which involved allegations that the company had overcharged customers.
Remember: Just five detectives were working all the sex-abuse cases in Arpaio's vast jurisdiction.
The Watkins witch hunt played well in the media, giving Arpaio his desired exposure — and revenge on the businessman who had spurned him.
No charges were filed in the case, but Watkins lost so much money that he was forced to sell his towing business.
In late 2005, El Mirage brought in the Sheriff's Office to assist a police department besieged by complaints.
Records show that the MCSO's Ken Holmes and Brian Beamish were assigned to serve as acting police chief and assistant chief, respectively, to a contingent of deputies.
"[El Mirage] just needed some help in certain areas, and one of those areas had to do with sex crimes," Holmes told Babeu's investigators in January 2011. "And what we did is, we started moving many of those cases into the county system."
Soon after Arpaio's office took charge, in early 2006, detectives in his tiny sex-crimes unit were dismayed to learn that a number of open cases would be dumped on them and that they'd be on call for new El Mirage sex-abuse cases.
The detectives were refused requests for more manpower.
Arpaio had other plans for his resources. In January 2006, sex-crimes sergeants Bruce Tucker and Kim Seagraves were summoned to Chief Deputy Hendershott's office. There, they found out that they would be investigating former county School Superintendent Sandra Dowling.
The inclusion of Seagraves in the case later would affect the way Arpaio's office dealt with the sex-crimes scandal, stalling the internal probe into the matter for more than a year.
On January 25, 2006, the county's deputy budget director, Brian Hushek, told Seagraves what the county wanted: Dowling "begging on her hands and knees" to have the Board of Supervisors help her out of her legal trouble, Seagraves told Babeu's investigators.
That night, dozens of sheriff's deputies raided Dowling's home and her county offices, carting off boxes of documents that would require heavy manpower to pore over in the coming months. Arpaio's office, naturally, tipped off the news media to the raid.
