PHOENIX (AP) – Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio disbanded a SWAT team that focused on handling dangerous jail inmates at a time when the elite unit was in high demand due to a spike in assaults by inmates on guards, records show.
Arpaio folded the Special Response Team in September as part of $8 million in budget cuts to cover skyrocketing legal costs from a racial-profiling case against the sheriff’s office.
The job of confronting inmate disturbances, threats of violence and refusals by prisoners to leave their cells has since shifted to jail officers who have other duties and limited expertise in such situations.
Records obtained by The Associated Press from an officer who works in one of the jails provide a sense of the dangerous conditions inside Maricopa County lockups when Arpaio eliminated the team.
Assaults by inmates on officers have doubled over the past 10 years, increasing from 111 in 2006 to 224 last year. There were 134 assaults on guards through July of this year, more than all of 2011. Officers were bitten, hit by dinner trays, punched in the face and head-butted.