Judge moves sheriff meetings online after someone flipped the bird

Some people have no manners, and that’s why we can’t have nice things. Or, in one particular case, why we can’t have in-person meetings with the Maricopa County Sheriff and the independent monitor tasked with overseeing the agency.

For more than a decade, whoever has worn the sheriff’s badge has been required to meet quarterly with community members to discuss the agency’s progress in implementing a host of reforms required by the federal racial profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. At the meetings, the sheriff and the independent monitor share compliance updates, community members vent their frustrations, and they all return to do it again in three months.

That won’t be happening anymore, though. On Wednesday, federal judge G. Murray Snow said he’d be moving future meetings to Zoom because he saw several people flipping the bird toward the monitor, Robert Warshaw, during the last meeting in October.

During a Jan. 30 hearing in the case, which Maricopa County is trying to finally put to bed, Snow said that he “saw a lot of people who were flipping off the monitor and doing other things during the course of the meeting. I saw that with my own eyes. I didn’t interrupt the meeting because I didn’t want to make a show.” At Wednesday’s community meeting, he further explained the move to a virtual setting.

“I don’t want to prevent anybody from saying what they want to say, but in a court of law, they can say it respectfully, even if it reflects sharp disagreements,” Snow said. He won’t put up with people “flipping off the monitor” or calling the sheriff a “Nazi” or “fascist,” he added.

That some community members would feel so bold is especially notable, given that the last meeting was held at the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse, with Murray himself presiding over it from the bench. Murray moved the meeting to federal court because previous meetings, usually held at schools or community centers, had gotten out of hand.

The July 2025 meeting went off the rails after supporters of current Sheriff Jerry Sheridan showed up in droves to voice their displeasure over an estimated $350 million in taxpayer dollars that the county claims it has spent on compliance efforts related to the case. (The monitor ran its own analysis, determining that the sheriff’s office overstated those costs by $163 million.) The pro-sheriff attendees clashed with the largely Latino residents who usually attend the meetings. Heckling was rampant and two attendees got pushy with each other. A pro-sheriff supporter told a critic to “go back to Mexico.”

Snow had planned to attend that meeting but decided against it after Warshaw told him that some attendees were armed. In response, Snow decided to drastically change the meeting’s format, moving it to the federal courthouse. 

A change in setting

The October meeting was markedly different, with Snow presiding from on high and lecturing attendees like unruly high school students, starting things off with a stern and detailed history of the Melendres case. The courtroom was packed with mostly pro-sheriff attendees, while many of the Latino community members who usually attend — and who were subject to the racial profiling that led to the case in the first place — filled an overflow room in the basement.

Still, when it was Warshaw’s time to speak to the crowded room, Snow said he saw several attendees flip off Warshaw while he spoke. During the Jan. 30 hearing, Snow called the behavior “not appropriate” and said it “disturbed me.”

Thus, going forward, the meetings will be conducted virtually. On Wednesday, Snow told the attendees that he planned to move the next meeting to Zoom. Some parties would still attend in person at the courthouse: The ACLU, which is representing the plaintiffs; the sheriff’s office and its counsel; Warshaw and his team, Snow and the Community Advisory Board, which is made up of community members who liaise between the sheriff’s office and residents. Everyone else would be behind a computer screen. 

Snow said the court has 350 Zoom licenses to broadcast the meeting widely, although specific steps to allow public participation without it turning into an open mic night are still in the works. “We’re not going to open the lines to hear 350 people at once, but I’m going to explore that and see if it works better,” Snow said. “In terms of having a respectful meeting.” 

Snow hopes this change will keep the meeting focused on the sheriff’s office’s progress toward compliance with his orders, he said Wednesday. (Most notably, the agency still hasn’t cleared its backlog of complaints made to its Professional Standards Bureau, despite claims by the sheriff’s office and county politicians that the agency is in full compliance.) As in the last meeting, advisory board members will collect community questions for the sheriff and monitor to address and at the next meeting. Only a few questions were asked during the October meeting, in part because of Snow’s extended history lesson.

The end result is less access to the sheriff for community members, albeit also less histrionics. Some met Snow’s decision with understanding shrugs. Advisory board member Raul Piña told Phoenix New Times in a text that it “pains me” to support the virtual community meeting, but that the “safety concerns are too significant to ignore.” Walking out of the courtroom, longtime activist Sal Reza had similar thoughts. 

“Personally, I don’t like it,” he told New Times. “But those guys were flipping off the monitor last time. To him, that’s like disrespecting the court. It’s not something that I prefer, but you cannot go against the federal judge.”