PHOENIX (AP) - Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyers say a request for approximately $7 million in legal fees and costs for lawyers who won a racial profiling suit is astonishingly excessive.
The lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case have said their fee request is reasonable because the case involved nearly six years of work.
Arpaio’s lawyers dispute that and say the amount sought should be drastically reduced. Their response says the lawyers’ hourly rates are too high and that there’s been massive and inefficient overstaffing and duplication of efforts.
U.S. District Judge Murray Snow ruled that Arpaio’s office systematically singled out Latinos in its traffic enforcement and special immigration patrols.
The sheriff’s office is appealing Snow’s ruling and his appointment of a monitor to ensure the agency isn’t making unconstitutional arrests
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