Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said at a press conference on Thursday that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had “frankly… stonewalled” the federal investigation of his office. DOJ sued Arpaio’s office for a pattern and practice of civil rights abuses against Latino residents.
“If you don’t acknowledge the existence of a problem, it’s hard to embrace the need for reform,” Perez said. “This is a remarkable outlier community in terms of the inability to forge consensus.”
Perez also dismissed a 17-page plan released by Arpaio’s office on Wednesday titled “Integrity, Accountability, Community” that sketched out Arpaio’s plan for reform.
“We see these 17 pages as largely an admission of the problem,” Perez said. “As our complaint states, MCSO’s failure to ensure integrity and accountability has led to a crisis of confidence within the community. While it is noteworthy and perhaps heartening that a number of these changes appear to be taken from the 128 page proposed settlement agreement that we provided back in February, this too little, too late document cobbled together beyond the 11th hour, is no substitute for meaningful reform.”
