Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who's been fighting the placement of a monitor in his office for about two years now, said today that he's "not concerned" about the monitor selected to watch over his office.
As a result of the Melendres v. Arpaio civil-rights case, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow appointed Robert Warshaw to monitor MCSO. Warshaw's the former chief of the Rochester (New York) Police Department, and was a deputy drug czar in the Clinton Administration.
See also:
-Joe Arpaio's Monitor in Melendres Appointed by Judge G. Murray Snow
-Joe Arpaio, Serial Racist, Says No to Melendres Monitor
"I'm not concerned about a monitor," Arpaio said this afternoon. "I've been monitored by the White House, Justice Department, the ACLU, the media, and my wife."
Note that three entities listed there -- the DoJ, the ACLU, and members of the media -- have sued Arpaio in recent years as a result of their monitoring, and two have them have won, while the DoJ's case is still pending.
Arpaio's legal team has fought monitors in both the federal racial-profiling case, and in the Melendres racial-profiling case.
Arpaio and his legal team have claimed that a monitor would take his power as the elected sheriff. Arpaio attorney Tom Liddy (son of the infamous G. Gordon Liddy) played off the monitor appointment like it was no big deal, saying the monitor's power is "very limited." Although the ACLU proposed Warshaw as the monitor, Liddy claimed it wouldn't be accurate to say Warshaw's the "ACLU's guy."
Of course, Liddy said they're still appealing Judge Snow's decision, and his order.
Arpaio, meanwhile, still insisted today that his deputies don't racially profile.
This despite MCSO issuing a press release just yesterday that essentially blamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the deputies' racial profiling:
"Arpaio [says] in his letter to Attorney General Holder that it was the training and instruction given to his deputies by ICE officials during a five week long course led by ICE officials on how to enforce immigration laws that provided the basis for which deputies were later accused of racially bias policing," the press release said.
Either way, Arpaio conceded that he's going to try to get along with the monitor.
"We'll work with him and see what happens," he said.
Arpaio added that he doesn't know anything about Warshaw, but just learned about him from some news articles on "the internets."
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