Maricopa County Sheriff candidates Tyler Kamp, Jerry Sheridan square off in 1st debate

Corrections & Clarifications: The costs related to the Melendres case were incorrect in a prior version of this article. Since 2008, those costs totaled about $279 million, according to Maricopa County records.

Tyler Kamp and Jerry Sheridan debated for the first time on Thursday in the race to lead the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

Kamp, the Democratic candidate, previously worked as a shift commander, gang enforcement sergeant and homicide detective for the Phoenix Police Department. He is a fifth-generation resident of Maricopa County with more than two decades of law enforcement experience.

Jerry Sheridan, the Republican, was the chief deputy of the Sheriff's Office under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He served in various roles at the Sheriff's Office for 40 years, ultimately rising to second in command.

Kamp won the primary race against current Sheriff Russ Skinner. In the primary debates, Kamp sought to identify himself as an outsider who could reform the department and build upon what he called the successes of former Sheriff Paul Penzone, a Democrat who stepped down a year before the end of his term. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Skinner to complete Penzone's term.

A critic of Penzone and Skinner, Sheridan has campaigned on bringing back the so-called "tough on crime" mentality of Arpaio's tenure while trying to distinguish himself from his former boss.

Different approaches to federal judicial oversight

At Thursday night's debate, Kamp said his responsibilities as sheriff would be to provide protection and security for the community.

"I will accomplish this by increasing staffing levels, attacking the fentanyl pandemic, and graduating" from the court-ordered reforms "that have cost the county taxpayers," Kamp said, referring to the expenses associated with the ongoing Melendres civil rights lawsuit that began under Arpaio. Those costs since the case began in 2008 totaled about $279 million by the end of August, according to Maricopa County records.

The Melendres case began in 2008 when Latino drivers sued the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, alleging they were racially profiled. U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow agreed and, in 2013, mandated court oversight of the Sheriff's Office and ordered reforms to weed out racial profiling.

Both Arpaio and Sheridan were found to be in civil contempt for not following Snow's orders in the case.

Penzone inherited the lawsuit and Snow's mandates when he took office in 2017 after ousting Arpaio. During his seven years in office, he could not satisfy all of the lawsuit's requirements.

Kamp said full compliance with the Melendres orders would be the number one priority of his administration. He called the lawsuit "the best and worst thing that happened at the Sheriff's Office."

The best because it exposed abuse and corruption occurring at the sheriff's office over a decade ago, he said, and the worst because to comply with court orders, the Sheriff's Office must use resources that could otherwise be put toward the jails and the streets.

Kamp said the agency was on track to full compliance with the other, and he would build upon that progress. But Snow recently instituted a new and more severe sanctions plan to spur compliance because the Sheriff's Office has failed to adequately deal with a backlog of internal affairs complaints in a timely fashion. Doing so is a key component of compliance with Snow's orders.

"We have a choice in this election, and it's clear," Kamp said. "Do we want to continue down the path of Sheriff Penzone or return to the culture of Joe Arpaio and my opponent?"

Debate moderator Ted Simons asked Sheridan why Maricopa County voters should trust him since he was held in contempt for defying Snow's orders.

Sheridan responded with his long-time defense, which is that he was unaware of the injunction he was accused of violating. "He found that unbelievable," Sheridan said Thursday of Snow. "He didn't like that, and he was angry at me about that."

"Yes, I stood my ground for my deputies," Sheridan said of his response to Snow's orders. "That's the chief deputy's job, and I knew at the time I was going to take some hits for it."

Sheridan said he thinks voters in Maricopa County want a leader who is not afraid to do the right thing.

"And if that is disagreeing with the federal district court judge and suffering the consequences of that, well, so be it," he said.

After the debate, journalists repeatedly asked Sheridan if he would defy a federal court order in the future, and he would not answer the question.

Kamp said after the debate he would not defy the orders of a federal judge.

"It's important that we understand our roles and responsibilities," Kamp said. "We need to stay in our lane as well."

Staffing remains a concern for Maricopa County jails

Both candidates emphasized the need to boost low staffing at the Sheriff's Office, which they said was responsible for dangerous conditions and even deaths in the jails.

Kamp and Sheridan agreed that the agency would need to look at increasing pay, and Sheridan suggested returning employees to the state-run retirement program. Kamp proposed an annual increase in salaries of 4-5%.

Sheridan said recruitment depended on improving poor morale, which he attributed to a lack of leadership at the Sheriff's Office and in policing agencies across the country.

"There's a lack of somebody at the top — sheriffs and police chiefs — that don't have the back of their people and don't understand what their job is," Sheridan said. His decades of experience, working up through the ranks of the agency, make him the best candidate to meet that need, he said.

Candidates asked about building trust in Latino community

Kamp praised Penzone's use of advisory boards to build relationships with communities and improve relationships with Latinos and other groups that had lost trust in the Sheriff's Office.

"Empathy is important," Kamp said. "It's the ability to understand another person's perspective or how they feel. As sheriff, you have to have empathy toward your organization and the community serve. You have to understand what their perspective is. Once you realize that, you can provide better public safety for everyone."

Sheridan said restoring trust with the Latino community was an issue for police agencies across the country, and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office was harmed by Arpaio's actions.

"It wasn't me," Sheridan said. "I wasn't involved in any of this Melendres stuff until the very end."

Kamp pointed out that Sheridan's name "is all over" Melendres orders. Sheridan's name was printed more than 20 times in a 2016 judgment, according to a review by The Arizona Republic.

Kamp asked to address reports of sexual harassment

Simons asked Kamp about an ABC 15 report that aired in July.

That report, based on public records about Kamp's time with Phoenix police, described an internal investigation that found Kamp had sexually harassed a female officer. The report also said "Kamp was suspended for a day 2014 for improperly accessing a confidential law enforcement database without a legitimate criminal justice purpose."

Kamp asked voters to look at his full "body of work." He said he was proud of his long career in law enforcement.

Sheridan called Kamp's improper use of the database criminal.

People can stream Thursday's debate online via Arizona PBS.

This was the first of two debates planned in the sheriff's race. The second will be on Sept. 25, hosted by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission and the Arizona Media Association.

Reach the reporter at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kamp and Sheridan square off in first debate of general election