For those unfamiliar with the latest happenings at the Maricopa County Sheriff's office, things seem to be getting rather uncomfortable for Sheriff Arpaio. The first series of revelations related to the SCA (the sleazy fund he used to slime Dan Saban) and the second came out yesterday on ABC 15 news. Both of these land squarely at the doorstep of Arpaio's number 2, David Hendershott. This was detailed in the 1100+ page Babeu report (prepared by Pinal County sheriff Paul Babeu of "build the dang fence" fame) which was referred to the U.S. Attorney's office.
First, the Babeu report, locals have already heard about it (apologies if this has already been covered). It has even caused Arpaio to take "responsibility".
Then, yesterday comes the revelation from ABC 15 that the MCSO;SVU refused to work several cases out of El Mirage circa 2007. According to ABC 15,
According to police reports we’ve obtained, victims were denied justice when Maricopa County sex crimes detectives never even bothered to investigate dozens of cases. Of those cases, we found the following:
The children who were victimized were never interviewed.
Witnesses were never questioned.
Evidence was never collected.
Child sex offenders were never arrested.
This is a story about young victims who may still be in danger. According to MCSO’s own internal investigation, as many as 400 sex crimes cases countywide may have been botched.
and according to ABC 15,
Reading through police reviews of the specific cases in question is difficult and the details are disturbing.
Case after case involves children, some as young as 3, who said they were molested and simply ignored.
They lived in El Mirage at a time when the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had a contract to handle the city’s sex crimes cases.
When there was an Internal Affairs investigation into the MCSO:SVU's failure to investigate these cases, the investigation into Sgt. Seagraves (the head of the unit) was spiked by Hendershott and somehow Seagraves got promoted in the MCSO. ABC 15 got many of the details from the Babeu report.
So, either way Arpaio was massively incompetent or running an absolutely corrupt organization.