MCSO records: Officials missed chances to stop troubled deputy

Last year's arrest of former Maricopa County sheriff's Deputy Ramon Charley Armendariz exposed the disturbing habits of one esteemed nine-year veteran, but also set off a ripple effect that would implicate dozens of his colleagues and challenge an agency-wide system for investigating and flagging employees gone rogue.

The Sheriff's Office on Thursday released a partial set of the internal investigations that grew out of the discoveries at Armendariz's home, many drawing from the now-deceased deputy's trove of previously undisclosed self-recorded videos.

These and other recordings subsequently turned over to the sheriff's internal affairs division reveal troubling roadside manner from other deputies, misappropriated evidence and a chain of command's missed opportunities to reign in an abusive cop.

Armendariz's actions sprouted more than 40 internal investigations and 46 criminal investigations—also conducted by the Sheriff's Office—most of which are now closed. A court-appointed monitor overseeing the office blasted the inquiries as insufficient in a report last year, but until now, none of the original reports were made available to the public.

Critics say the reports confirm the agency's widespread failures policing their own, but sheriff's officials say new policies have remedied many of the issues showcased in the report.

For a week last year, Armendariz unraveled before friends, police, and the public at large.

An erratic-acting Armendariz first caught the attention of police on April 30, 2014, when he called 911 to report what was soon deemed a phantom intruder. Officers instead found several varieties of illegal drugs and a sawed-off shotgun, triggering his arrest.

Armendariz resigned, and days later sparked a nine-hour standoff with Phoenix police, barricading himself inside his home until he could be coaxed out and again arrested. By May 8, he was found dead in his home along with a 35-minute "goodbye" video. The former deputy was found on the floor, having apparently hung himself with a rope affixed to a pool table.

A search warrant later revealed more incriminatory evidence found in Armendariz's home: a stash of license plates from unknown vehicles, hundreds of driver's licenses, ID cards, passports, airport security clearance cards, empty wallets and wallets filled with personal belongings.

But perhaps most troubling for his employers were the thousands of hours of self-recorded video files that captured Armendariz's bullying behavior.

Shortly thereafter, sheriff's officials disclosed their findings to U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow, who presides over a class-action racial-profiling case against the agency. Because the videos should have been previously turned over as evidence in the case, Snow ordered Sheriff Joe Arpaio's aides to collect all other audio and video evidence recorded by deputies under the color of law.

The videos gathered from Armendariz and others prompted both criminal and internal investigations, but the records released Thursday only contain a portion of the internal investigations. No criminal charges arose from the review.

Most of the incidents noted in the released records resulted in only a written reprimand for the deputy involved. It remains unclear whether any of the investigations prompted any sharper penalties.

Many of the videos revealed policy violations — failing to properly advise drivers as to why they were stopped, not running a driver for warrants, or tearing up a citation without proper documentation.

Others are more concerning.

In one instance, a deputy stops what he suspects to be a drug or human smuggling vehicle based on the rationale that the license plate is partially covered — a pretextual stop for something that is not against Arizona law, creating a potential civil-rights violation.

In another, a deputy is heard making disparaging comments to his co-workers after a traffic stop, saying "f**king six, six f**kingGuatemalans, you know, gonna pop out of the (vehicle)."

Armendariz's home itself revealed alleged property mismanagement.

"Evidence found at the scene was misplaced, improperly packaged, as well as sorted improperly prior to its proper placement in the Sheriff's Office Property Warehouse," according to one of the reports.

The investigations trickled up into the agency's brass as well, pointing to potential systemic failures in the way the Sheriff's Office deals with citizen complaints and internal investigations.

One report detailed a sergeant's mismanagement of a citizen complaint about an unnamed deputy. The sergeant failed to record interviews with the complainant, nor did he photograph or document the complainant's injuries or damage to the complainant's motorcycle, according to records.

In one of the more poignant examples of Armendariz's behavior, a video captures Armendariz using a Taser twice on a handcuffed, crying suspect apparently just out from his prom.

On April 13, 2013, Armendariz and another deputy were working off-duty services for Greenway High School prom.

At some point a young man is handcuffed and placed into the back of Armendariz's patrol car, arrested for being a minor consuming alcohol, according to the report. The suspect cannot initially be seen in the video, the report notes, but it sounds as though he is crying.

Footage of the incident shows the minor kicking the window of the patrol vehicle, directing racial slurs at Armendariz, and later spitting through the vent into the front passenger side of the vehicle.

About 30 seconds after the spitting begins, Armendariz announces to the subject that he will be "getting tased now" and stuns the minor.

Armendariz then dares the suspect to "Do it again!...Open your f***ing mouth one more time! Open it to breathe!"

The suspect is heard apologizing and pleading with Armendariz, promising he won't do it again. For unknown reasons, Armendariz shocked the teen again.

"The second deployment of the Taser was nothing more than an assault," the investigator noted. "The individual appeared compliant and other options were available in regards to alternative locations for detention."

While investigators note video itself is grounds for a criminal charge against Armendariz, more revealing is the use-of-force investigation that followed, prior to the video's release: The committee review found the incident to be "in policy" with a combative subject.

The committee drew its conclusion from Armendariz's departmental report, in which he falsely claimed the suspect had kicked at him before he deployed his Taser. A sheriff's official told investigators that if a deputy did not indicate something was caught on video, the use-of-force committee would not review it.

A spokesman for the Sheriff's Office said he did not know when the rest of the internal investigations or the criminal investigations would be released.

Dan Pochoda, a plaintiffs' attorney in an ongoing racial-profiling case against the office, said he and other lawyers had started reviewing the investigations.

"Our review of the records to date confirm what has been found at trial and at other stages of this case, which is an absence of an adequate system of review of their own personnel," he said.

Pochoda said the agency adopted an "our boys would never do that" motto, and failed to establish an early warning system for improper behavior.

Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan acknowledged Thursday that the agency's supervisors were stretched thin, and the system of deputy oversight often fell short.

Sheridan said Snow's orders and the Armendariz investigations prompted officials to ratchet up their supervisor-to-officer ratio, and policy changes now ensure a checks-and-balances system.

The use-of-force committee has additionally revised its policy, Sheridan said, and now models itself after its more structured counterpart in the county jails.

"It is much more efficient," he said. "We revised the forms that have to be filled out, and now the supervisors are better and more closely reviewing the incident reports…the use-of-force form is a much closer review… all of these enhancements are now in place."

The results could be used as ammunition to prompt more oversight on the agency's internal investigations—a point of contention between the Sheriff's Office, plaintiffs and federal judge.