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Mayor Accuses Sheriff Joe of Retaliation During Traffic Stop

Maricopa County's Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been accused of retaliation against a town mayor during a traffic stop made by one his deputies. (AP)

GUADALUPE, AZ – Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Wednesday he is ready to leave Guadalupe after the town’s mayor accused his agency of racial profiling and retaliation during a traffic stop the previous night.

Mayor Rebecca Jimenez made the comments as she was being ticketed late Tuesday for driving with a broken headlight and not having proof of insurance or registration, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“How do you like working for a sheriff who racially profiles against people of color?” Jimenez asked the deputy who pulled her over, according to a report released by the sheriff.

“I didn’t think that Sheriff Joe was going to retaliate against me, but I guess that I was wrong,” she said, according to the report.

Reached by the Tribune, Jimenez said the quotes in the report weren’t completely accurate but were close.

“I just said, ‘You seem like a really nice guy. Why do you work for somebody who harasses people with brown skin?’” Jimenez said by phone.

The mayor became an outspoken critic of Arpaio last month when deputies flooded her small town for two days, trying to find and arrest suspected illegal immigrants.

The sweep netted nine such suspects, but it also put the heavily-Hispanic and American Indian community on edge and turned it into a symbol of outrage against sweeps, which the sheriff has conducted Valleywide.

It also prompted Jimenez to say she wants the sheriff to leave the town, which does not have its own police force. She and the rest of Guadalupe’s leadership have since explored ways to cancel the town’s 30-year-old contract with the sheriff’s office for police services.

“Our deputies will be the happiest deputies in the world to get out of Guadalupe,” Arpaio said in an interview. “Nobody wants it.”

Tuesday night’s traffic stop cemented those feelings, Arpaio said.

After word of the stop traveled up the chain of command, the sheriff’s patrol chief, Dave Trombi, asked the deputy who pulled Jimenez over to write a memo about the events, Arpaio said.

That memo was then released to the media along with an angry news release from the sheriff, declaring his agency had been insulted.

In the memo, Deputy John Brown wrote he spotted a vehicle a little after 9 p.m. driving down the town’s main street, Avenida del Yaqui, with a broken headlight.

When he stopped the car, Jimenez got out and walked up to Brown, asking, “Why did you pull me over?”

After a short conversation, she told him she didn’t have proof of insurance or registration and asked whether she was getting a ticket, according to the report. Brown told her yes.

That’s when she said she believed it was retaliation for her criticism of the sheriff, according to both the report and Jimenez.

“Would I have been given a warning if I had not been the mayor?” Jimenez said Wednesday. “That’s what you have to decide.”

Jimenez said she intends to pay the ticket and probably won’t fight it.

“Whatever the fee is, and I’m hoping it’s not a big one, I’ll have to pay it,” Jimenez said.

Though the contentious stop was another reason for the relationship between Guadalupe and the sheriff’s office to end, Arpaio said the breakup was far from certain.

“You never know what will happen,” he said. “But as it stands now, we don’t want to be in there.”

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