Federal oversight of MCSO is tyrannical, chairman of county board of supervisors says

PHOENIX — Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas Galvin says it’s high time taxpayers stop paying Robert Warshaw for federal oversight services.

“The board of supervisors, we appropriate money to the sheriff’s office. We control the purse strings,” Galvin told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Tuesday. “From our perspective, and from what we can see, your tax dollars are not being spent wisely.”

The federal monitoring is due to a 2013 verdict in a racial profiling lawsuit from when Joe Arpaio was in office and has cost the county around $352 million over the last 15 years.

Galvin said paying for Warshaw, the court-appointed monitor, costs Maricopa County taxpayers $2 million a year.

He also accused Warshaw of deliberately shifting goalposts to keep MCSO trapped in a cycle of endless reforms, allowing him to collect millions annually.

“The problem is that Robert Warshaw keeps moving the compliance goal posts for every single sheriff. … We’re now in our fourth sheriff, Jerry Sheridan, who’s doing everything he can, but every single time I’ve seen the sheriff’s office try to do what they can to comply with judicial orders, the orders keep changing,” he added.

Thomas Galvin speaks out against Robert Warshaw, MCSO federal oversight

Galvin said the federal oversight is burdensome and pulls officers away from their main job: keeping the community safe.

“Every single time a sheriff’s deputy has to do a traffic stop, they have to come back downtown, fill out paperwork,” he said.

“It really upsets me … that sheriff’s deputies have to be pulled off the streets. Instead of looking for bad guys, instead of stopping drugs, instead of preventing murders from happening or any crimes from happening, they’re at the desk filling out paperwork because some guy, a bureaucrat, told them that they have to do it.”

Galvin called it obscene.

“He doesn’t even live here in Arizona, much less in Maricopa County. And we’re a lot less safer because this has been going on for 15 years,” Galvin said.

He also voiced umbrage with Warshaw’s behavior.

“I have seen the monitor first hand not exactly be truthful with the audience when he does these quarterly community meetings,” Galvin said. “Also, I have seen how he has treated the sheriff’s office, how he’s treated our deputies, our detention officers and our dispatchers, and I just think it’s a shame.”

Galvin calls federal oversight an ‘assault on federalism,’ a sign of ‘quiet tyranny’

The chairman emphasized that this isn’t a bipartisan issue.

“I see this as an assault on federalism, which is an important issue for us as Americans because we love our Constitution and this is how the founding fathers set up our country,” Galvin said.

“I also see it as a quiet tyranny on public safety. Sheriff (Jerry) Sheridan has done everything that’s been asked of him by the monitor and by the federal judge.”

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