Free Republic

PHOENIX (AP) — Paul Penzone took office four years ago as metro Phoenix's new sheriff promising to turn the page on the problems created by his headline-grabbing predecessor, Joe Arpaio — ousted in part after he was found in contempt of court for disobeying a judge's order in a racial profiling case. Now Penzone faces calls for a contempt hearing in the same profiling lawsuit, this time for not complying with a court-ordered overhaul of his agency's much-criticized internal affairs operation, which has a backlog of 2,000 cases. Each one takes 500 days on average to complete... ...the sheriff’s office...

George Soros contributed at least $2 million to the campaign of Paul Penzone when he challenged Sheriff Joe Arpaio two years ago. Maricopa County and the Phoenix metroplex are large areas… but this was still an election for a county sheriff. You have to wonder why the notorious billionaire would invest so much in Penzone’s campaign. But to answer that question, you only need look as far as Penzone’s Chief of Staff and Special Counsel, Stephanie Fleischman Cherny.

Maricopa County’s new sheriff announced Tuesday that he’s shutting down a complex of jail tents that helped make his predecessor, Joe Arpaio, a national law enforcement figure. Paul Penzone said at a news conference that the nearly 24-year-old Tent City complex will be closing in 45 to 60 days. Arpaio opened the complex in August 1993 as a way of easing jail overcrowding. The barbed-wire-surrounded compound was part of a broader campaign by Arpaio to enact get-tough measures in his jails, such as banning cigarettes, creating inmate chain gangs and dressing them in old-time striped prison uniforms. Closing Tent City...

An average of 400 “criminal illegal immigrants” are being released every 10 days by the newly elected sheriff in Arizona’s most populous county, federal law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch, many of them violent offenders. It’s part of Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone’s new policy to protect illegal aliens, even those who have committed serious state crimes, from deportation. Under a longtime partnership between the county and the feds, the Phoenix field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was notified when “aliens unlawfully present with additional Arizona charges” were released from the Maricopa County Jail, which is one of...

PHOENIX - Federal immigration officials are ripping Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone’s new policy on releasing undocumented immigrants from his jails, labeling it an "immediate, dangerous change." "MCSO has implemented a policy which will undoubtedly result in dangerous criminal aliens being released to the street to re-victimize the innocent citizens of that community," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe said Saturday in a prepared statement. "Additionally, the new policy puts ICE officers at a higher risk as more fugitive operations teams will need to arrest criminal aliens outside of the secure confines of the county jail." Penzone...

I look forward to working with the ACLU. I look forward to working with the DOJ on the monitors and getting everybody on the same page so this community can be in a better place."

I listened to your campaign ad in which you accused Sheriff Arpaio of being more concerned with politics than with protecting the citizens of Maricopa County. You also sounded like you were proud to the “D: after your name, and insinuated that it did not make a difference. Based upon the fact that the people with the “D” after their names are the ones that have hounded the Sheriff for three years, doing everything possible to find evidence of illegal activities, and finding none, it would seem that you should take partial responsibility for the fact that the Sheriff HAD...