Judge orders IDs, hard drives seized from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office

PHOENIX — U.S. Marshals seized about 1,400 identification cards and 50 hard drives from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on Friday.

The IDs were supposed to be turned over to the U.S. District Court in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s racial profiling case but MCSO failed to do so.

A court-appointed monitor alerted U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow during an emergency hearing that the IDs had not been given to the court and were scheduled for destruction. The IDs are part of a misconduct investigation into
allegations that deputies regularly pocketed items during busts.

Arpaio attorney John Masterson said the court had no evidence that the IDs were
kept improperly by Arpaio’s office. MCSO declined to comment.

The court asked for the hard drives in a spinoff case concerning allegations that Arpaio hired a private investigator to secretly investigate Snow. Arpaio accused Snow of making comments about getting the sheriff out of office.

Prior to revealing the investigation in April, Arpaio apologized to Snow, saying that he had respect for the court and that, “It hurts me, after 55 years, to be in this position.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.