Drug Cartel Infiltration of MCSO: Four of Seven Officers Cleared of Criminal Wrongdoing; Face Internal Investigation
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| Four employees have been cleared, but drug cartels have still infiltrated the office of America's self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff." |
The four unidentified employees have returned to work, and now face an internal investigation.
No other officers are being investigated, MCSO spokesman Jeff Sprong tells New Times.
The four officers cleared of criminal wrongdoing do not include three MCSO employees arrested last month over alleged ties to a Mexican cartel.
The three officers, Deputy Alfredo Navarette and detention officers Sylvia Najera and Marcella Hernandez, were arrested on May 24, after a nearly year-long investigation into their connections to drug- and human-smuggling cartels.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says that in May of last year, his office received a tip that the
officers may be connected to the cartels.
"We came up with the information, and we
clean up our own house," America's self-proclaimed "toughest" sheriff
grumbled at a press conference the day of the arrests. "We confirmed our
concerns today when [Navarette] admitted to going to our command center
and getting information to give to the cartels."
But Navarette,
an MCSO deputy since 2000, wasn't just tipping off the cartels about
Arpaio's anti-human-smuggling campaigns, he was smuggling humans
himself.
When MCSO deputies stormed the west Valley home of
Navarette, there were two illegal immigrants in his house
(as well as 10 pounds of heroin). According to Arpaio they'd been
smuggled into the country illegally and were waiting for the deputy to
transport them to California.
Navarette, an Immigration and
Customs Enforcement-trained member of Arpaio's anti-human-smuggling task
force, was not on human-smuggling detail for the year he was under
investigation, Arpaio says, and recently was suspended for unrelated
procedural violations.
Hernandez also admitted to having ties to
the cartels, and that she is currently eight months pregnant with the
baby of Lorenzo Arce-Torres, a known cartel "kingpin" based in Phoenix.
When she was arrested, deputies found more than $16,000 in her purse.
Unlike Navarette and Hernandez, Najera, an MCSO detention officer since 2004, refused to cooperate with investigators.
When asked
why the public should continue to trust him to be sheriff when the
cartels have managed to infiltrate his agency, Arpaio scolded reporters
with the following (while inexplicably referring to himself in the third
person):
"This sheriff, when something comes to his attention, he doesn't sit back, he takes action," which is debatable/a lie.
Navarette
was booked on 24 counts of drug- and human smuggling-related crimes,
including assisting in a criminal syndicate, operating a drophouse, and
human smuggling. Hernandez was booked on six counts, including narcotic
drug transport, conspiracy narcotics transportation, and illegal control
of an enterprise. Najera was booked on four counts, including money
laundering and participating in a criminal syndicate.
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