Our View: Problem is what is left undone

Since Wednesday, Tribune readers have gained rare insight about the evolution of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office into a full-fledged agent of federal immigration enforcement.

Tribune writers Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin looked beyond dueling news conferences, indignant press statements and boisterous protests to provide a detailed examination of how Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his command staff shifted resources and changed policies to hunt for illegal immigrants. The result after three months of investigation: a five-part series ending today which documents the additional stresses that Arpaio's decisions have placed on the sheriff's office budget and the shortages that have emerged in other types of crime protection.

The most frequent response from our readers has been Arpaio is fulfilling his responsibility as the elected sheriff by taking on a critical problem that the federal government has failed to solve and that other local law enforcement agencies have largely ignored. Certainly, passage of state laws related to human smuggling and employer sanctions helped to create a platform for the sheriff's office to deal with immigration.

But Arpaio has gone far beyond to assume tasks previously managed by the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Despite Arpaio's denials, the evidence clearly shows the sheriff's office reassigned deputies, transferred detectives and drove up overtime costs to operate his human smuggling task force and "crime suppression" sweeps.

The consequences have been serious and troubling for county residents who fall under Arpaio's direct protection instead of a municipal police department. People in Guadalupe and Queen Creek have to wait too long for help to arrive when they report they have been robbed and beaten. Too many sexual assaults and other violent felonies simply weren't investigated in El Mirage until that community created its own police force. And overall crime rates appear to be rising when they have dropped in jurisdictions just next door.

Arpaio could have eased the burden on his office, but his staff couldn't even correctly obtain a sizeable portion of $1.5 million in funding that the state Legislature had set aside for his immigration operations. Now that money is no longer available as Gov. Janet Napolitano is using it to search for accused fugitives instead.

The sheriff also was elected to respect the public's civil rights as he goes about his duties. Gabrielson and Giblin have documented, sometimes as an eyewitness, how sheriff's deputies are failing to respect a basic right to travel without government harassment.

Federal immigration agencies rely on fairly minimal standards for stopping vehicles. The sheriff's smuggling unit ignores even those standards and routinely comes up with a legitimate reason for a traffic stop only after discovering a carload of illegal immigrants. Set aside whether these immigrants' rights are violated. Deputies also are stopping U.S. citizens and legal residents with the same lack of justification.

The Tribune series hasn't been an indictment of local law enforcement recognizing the public outcry over illegal immigration and taking steps to address it. But it has exposed the enforcement trade-offs of slower response times and abandoned crime investigations. It has exposed irresponsible and sloppy management of taxpayer funds. And it has exposed an arrogance or abuse of power that occurs when the ends are used to justify the means.