Feds vs Sheriff Joe

The Justice Department sued the nation's self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff" on Thursday, calling Joe Arpaio's defiance of an investigation into his office's alleged discrimination against Hispanics "unprecedented."

But Arpaio called the lawsuit "a ruse" and said the federal government is just trying to score a win against the state, which has found itself at the center of the nation's argument over illegal immigration since passing a law that mirrors many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area.

"I think they know we have not been racial profiling, so what's the next step — camouflage the situation, go the courts, and make it look like I'm not cooperating," Arpaio said Thursday.

Arpaio said he provided "hundreds of thousands" of reports but hasn't turned over others because the department's request was too broad.

Kevin Ryan, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California and a law professor at the University of San Francisco, said he thought the department's characterization of Arpaio's behavior as unprecedented was overstating it.

He said the contentious relationship between the sheriff and the department is no secret.

"You really can't hold it against the sheriff and assume he's guilty because he's not rolling over for the Justice Department," he said.

But Rory Little, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law who formerly worked at the Justice Department, disagreed, called Arpaio's actions "pretty unusual" because the lawsuit says Arpaio's office signed agreements promising to cooperate with civil-rights investigations and other reviews when it accepted federal law enforcement grants.

Last year, the nearly $113 million that Maricopa County received from the federal government accounted for about 5 percent of the county's $2 billion budget. The lawsuit listed $16.5 million of funding provided Arpaio's office through several programs.

"Normally when you receive $113 million in grants you're going to cooperate and send over whatever they want to see," Little said. Otherwise, "it raises the level of suspicion pretty significantly."

Thursday's lawsuit is the latest action in a slew against Arizona by the federal government.

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