Judge sends marshals to seize evidence from Sheriff Joe Arpaio

U.S. marshals raided the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on Friday in search of evidence after a court-appointed special monitor said the agency had withheld hundreds of documents a federal judge had ordered to be turned over months ago.

Nearly 1,500 identification cards seized by sheriff's deputies had been marked for destruction in direct violation of U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow's February order that the cards be turned over, the monitor said in a hearing Friday.

Further, the monitor said, sheriff's officials had been instructed not to volunteer information to the monitors that the evidence existed.

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The information comes weeks after e-mails between sheriff's detectives revealed the existence of 50 hard drives related to a confidential informant hired to provide information to Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Snow, all of which Snow had also ordered to be turned over.

To date, court-appointed monitors had received only one hard drive. In an emergency hearing Friday, Snow ordered U.S. marshals to seize the rest. It was unclear what evidence, if any, was seized.

The monitors had already had the chance to view the IDs — driver's licenses, passports and identification cards — and said many apparently belonged to people of Hispanic descent.

Arpaio's defense attorney, John Masterson, argued that the undisclosed evidence was irrelevant.

"I'll tell you this," Snow said, exasperated. "They may not be relevant, but they may also be very relevant."

Snow added that Arpaio's office had been ordered to release all IDs regardless of relevancy, but that it had been "far from forthcoming."

The order is the latest development in a convoluted 7-year-old racial-profiling lawsuit against Arpaio, in which Snow ruled that deputies had singled out Latinos during traffic operations. Months later, he ordered a sweeping overhaul of the agency to stamp out the unconstitutional practices.

The order included employing an independent monitoring team to oversee the agency's compliance.

But the case has continued to sprout legal offshoots throughout the two years since Snow's ruling, even as the county funnels millions into the embattled agency for court-ordered reforms.

Arpaio and his top aides already have been accused of contempt of court for failing to abide by three of Snow's directives. Arpaio and Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan have admitted to civil contempt, but ongoing hearings may persuade Snow to refer the office for criminal proceedings.

One of the contempt allegations stemmed from a former deputy named Ramon "Charley" Armendariz, who took his life last year after a series of confrontations with police.

Investigators found a stash of driver's licenses, passports, license plates and torn-up citations in Armendariz's home, indicating improper storage policies at best and, at worst, illegal seizures.

The investigation also revealed that he and perhaps other deputies had been recording their own traffic stops, prompting Snow to order sheriff's officials to quietly collect the recordings.

But any attempt at a covert internal investigation was squandered with an e-mail blast to command staff, giving Snow potential cause to find Arpaio in contempt of court.

In preparation for the April contempt-of-court hearing, Snow in February ordered Arpaio to produce "copies of identification documents seized by MCSO personnel from apparent members of the Plaintiff Class."

In the past week, it became apparent to monitor Robert Warshaw that sheriff's officials had flouted that directive.

Early in the week, Warshaw's team was told that there were two new cases related to ID findings — one containing 40 IDs and another regarding 20, Warshaw told Snow in federal court Friday.

But the team soon heard about a possible 1,500 additional IDs that had not been disclosed, prompting the monitors to pursue more "invasive questions."

Warshaw added that the team learned there had been a meeting last Friday among Arpaio's professional-standards bureau staff, Sheridan and counsel to prepare for the monitors' site visit.

"The 1,500 IDs did come up," Warshaw said, "and we learned that there was an instruction given: that the existence not be volunteered or given to the monitor."

Warshaw said the IDs would have been destroyed if monitors had not intervened.

Following the same vein, Warshaw launched into an update on the hard drives they were supposed to receive from the Sheriff's Office.

The hard drives originated from a Seattle computer programmer named Dennis Montgomery, who was hired as a confidential informant for Arpaio's office.

Montgomery reportedly promised he could prove the federal government was colluding against Arpaio, who admitted in court that the data dump turned out to be "junk." Snow ordered all documentation turned over anyway.

E-mails released this month suggest Montgomery had provided 50 to 60 hard drives in exchange for at least $120,000.

This information, paired with the department's apparent attempt to withhold the IDs, prompted Snow's Friday order.

"Somebody has to be held responsible sometime. ... And it's going to be now," Snow told Masterson.

Defense attorneys said the IDs were to be used for training purposes on how to spot a fake ID. The training sessions never materialized.

Masterson did not object to federal agents retrieving the documents.

In an e-mailed statement, sheriff's spokesman Chris Hegstrom said it would not be appropriate to comment.

"However, the truth will come out during the hearing process," he said.

In an interview after the hearing, Masterson said the defendants would turn the records over to the court but said it's "pure speculation" that they had anything to do with the issues in dispute.

"In essence it's an optimistic fabrication by the plaintiffs, so I don't see that there's an issue with respect to these documents," he said.

Dan Pochoda, a plaintiffs' attorney from the Arizona American Civil Liberties Union, said the court's Friday order spoke to the unreliability of the Sheriff's Office to follow legal protocol.

Most people in such a position, he said, "generally heed court orders, which have been in a wholesale manner ignored by these defendants."