Former El Pasoan at root of latest Arpaio investigation

An Arizona sheriff’s deputy — originally from El Paso — recently killed himself after an encounter with Phoenix police.

ABC-7 has learned that deputy is now at the center of the latest controversy involving Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

An investigation is underway of Arpaio’s office after authorities discovered former human smuggling deputy Ramon Charley Armendariz had hundreds of hours of recorded traffic stops, drugs, driver’s licenses, passports and other documents in Maricopa County evidence bags at his Phoenix home.

“He had this massive amount of evidence, things that should not have been in the personal safekeeping, or keeping, of any deputy,” said ALCU attorney Dan Pochoda.

A week later, when officers showed up to arrest Armendariz at his home, he committed suicide by hanging himself.

“They testified in court, ‘we don’t have to monitor our people for racial profiling because we trust our boys,”” said Pochoda, who led a racial profiling case against Arpaio last summer in which Armendariz was a key witness. “They didn’t give us any tapes and they clearly knew, the defendants, that some officers had their own cams and audio recording devices as well.”

According to the Hillcrest Funeral Home web site, services for Armendariz, who was from El Paso, were held in West El Paso last week.

“Any criminal case where Armendariz was the arresting or complaining officer, it will be reopened,” Pochoda said. “The defense attorneys will say this guy was tainted.”

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office attorney Tom Liddy said 250 of the estimated 900 hours of recordings found in Armendariz’s home have already been evaluated and “five or six” were found to contain “unprofessional conduct.”

ABC-7 reached out to the El Paso County Sheriff’s office to find out whether Armendariz was ever a deputy in the Borderland, before leaving for Arizona, but was told he was never employed by the Sheriff’s Office in El Paso.