The U.S. Department of Justice filed an unprecedented lawsuit Thursday against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for refusing to provide full access to records and facilities for a civil-rights investigation. 
  
 The federal lawsuit 
  
 Arpaio, Pearce respond 
  
 The suit alleges the Sheriff's Office is in violation of federal civil-rights laws by refusing for 17 months to fully cooperate with an investigation into police practices and jail operations. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, names Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his office and Maricopa County. 
  
 The Justice Department wants extensive records related to booking procedures, language and interpretation services, arrests, and access to staff and jails. 
  
 County officials said Arpaio is jeopardizing future federal funding, which requires government agencies to comply with civil-rights laws. Six percent of the county's $2 billion budget comes from federal funding, and a loss would be "catastrophic," county officials said. 
  
 The federal investigation dates to 2008 and seeks to determine whether the Sheriff's Office discriminates on the basis of national origin. Arpaio denies any discrimination and said he was surprised by the lawsuit. He has 21 days to respond. 
  
 The civil-rights probe is unrelated to a separate abuse-of-power criminal investigation against the Sheriff's Office by the Justice Department, which is connected to long-running disputes with county government and the judiciary and has led to months of grand-jury testimony. 
  
 Attorneys for the Sheriff's Office repeatedly have said they were cooperating with the civil-rights probe but set conditions on the breadth of documents they would release and when. Last week, a sheriff's attorney said in a letter to the Justice Department that he had not agreed to their deadlines. 
  
 On Thursday, federal officials made good on their threat to sue. Justice Department officials could not point to a case within the past 30 years in which they had to sue a law-enforcement department to provide access to information. 
  
 Dennis Burke, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said that Arpaio's behavior is "self-serving" and pointed out that the Sheriff's Office is legally obligated to provide access to records and facilities because the office receives federal money. 
  
 "This is about accountability, and the Sheriff Office's lack of it," Burke told The Republic. "They're trying to design their own self-serving, contorted rules, and they expect unprecedented special treatment different than any other law-enforcement agency across the country - or in history. They want to voluntarily comply with what they want to comply with - despite repeated requests over 17 months." 
  
 Attorney Robert Driscoll, who has been negotiating with the Justice Department on Arpaio's behalf, denounced the lawsuit as an attempt to undermine Arpaio's immigration enforcement. 
  
 Arpaio released a statement saying President Barack Obama's administration "intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it." 
  
 But, according to the lawsuit, officials in the Justice Department's civil-rights unit first started looking at allegations of civil-rights violations by the Sheriff's Office in June 2008, during the George W. Bush era. The probe was not revealed publicly until March 2009. 
  
 Arpaio, however, contends the inquiry is part of a conspiracy connecting the White House, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and local advocacy groups. 
  
 The discussions 
  
 The complaint details the back-and-forth discussions between the Sheriff's Office and the Justice Department, culminating in Driscoll's letter last week. In that letter, he agreed to cooperate but not to the extent requested by the investigators. 
  
 Driscoll had met with Justice Department officials just days earlier. In a memo of that meeting, a chief in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division detailed the records that must be produced and asked to tour six jails and interview staff about a range of issues, including intake and booking procedures, and language and interpretation services. Investigators also requested documents related to arrests dating to January 2008. 
  
 The attorney asked the Justice Department to be more specific about what it wanted and indicated he would not make a Sept. 10 deadline. 
  
 Burke said Driscoll's response triggered the lawsuit. "The letter contradicts what they said in the meeting," he said. 
  
 According to legal experts, the lawsuit seeking records will be difficult for Arpaio to win. 
  
 Paul Bender, an Arizona State University law professor and former deputy solicitor for the Justice Department, said such disputes "are usually resolved in favor of the person looking for the documents. You're entitled to get anything that might be relevant." 
  
 But Bender said civil-rights offenses are difficult to prove. "You have to show intent," he said, and that is why investigators want to look at a wide range of documents and policies. "This investigation goes to the heart of people's complaints against Sheriff Joe, that he discriminates in his traffic stops and jail practices." 
  
 Jose de Jesus Rivera, a former U.S. attorney for Arizona, agreed. "It's pretty clear cut that they're entitled to those records," he said. "It's not like they're rushing to judgment. They've given them a year and a half to comply." 
  
 Paul Charlton, another former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, agreed: "When people are fighting you for documents you have a right to, there's reason to believe those documents show evidence of consciousness of guilt. There's no other reason not to turn them over." 
  
 Reaction was swift from some Hispanic leaders, including County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who called on Arpaio to cooperate fully with the Justice Department. 
  
 "This is ridiculous and irresponsible, so give over your documents, give them access to your facilities, and give interviews with your staff and comply," Wilcox said. 
  
 An attorney for the county Board of Supervisors proposed Thursday afternoon in a letter to the Justice Department that the Sheriff's Office and the federal government resolve the matter through mediation. The attorney, Tom Irvine, asked the Justice Department to enter mediation next week, before the dispute goes to court. 
  
 Arpaio's refusal 
  
 Arpaio first refused to cooperate with federal officials back in July 2009, three months after the probe became public. 
  
 His reasoning alternated from an allegation that the Justice Department was not clearly articulating the scope of the investigation, to Arpaio's belief that federal investigators violated their own policy when they tried to gain access to documents that sheriff's officials already had turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as part of an annual audit. 
  
 Arpaio and Driscoll also claim Justice officials already have access to thousands of documents they obtained over the course of two other ongoing civil lawsuits involving racial profiling. 
  
 But Burke and other legal experts point out that Arpaio does not get to direct the investigation and decide which documents are relevant. 
  
 The two sides stopped communicating for months, although Justice representatives promised the inquiry would go on and investigators continued to visit the Valley to speak with potential victims and witnesses. 
  
 Arpaio began to change his stance on cooperating last month, after the Justice Department first threatened to sue to force the Sheriff's Office to turn over the records. 
  
 The next day, Arpaio's attorney said the Sheriff's Office was cooperating with certain aspects of the investigation focusing on jails. But Driscoll continued to insist they had no obligation to cooperate with the federal investigation into the sheriff's street-level enforcement practices. 
  
 Arpaio said he was caught off-guard by Thursday's filing: "They have hundreds and thousands of reports," he said. "Why did this happen now?" 
  
 The Sheriff's Office has agreed to turn over 500,000 e-mails and 100,000 documents related to immigration enforcement, a spokeswoman said. 
  
 Funding is at stake 
  
 The consequences for failing to cooperate with the probe could be financially harmful, officials and attorneys said. 
  
 At stake is $113 million in future federal funding for the county, they say, which is given on the condition that officials agree they will not discriminate against residents and will cooperate with federal officials. The money funds dozens of programs, such as nutrition for women and children, energy assistance for low-income families, housing, and health care for the homeless. 
  
 Supervisors attorney Irvine said it is unclear if federal officials could rescind money they have already awarded to the county. 
  
 But future funding could be at risk because county officials regularly have to certify they are complying with federal laws. Because the Board of Supervisors is uncertain if those laws are being followed, they cannot sign for certification that allows them to apply for the funds. 
  
 "Worst case is that if the federal opinion is that Maricopa County is out of compliance with Title VI (of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), and if that were to last a year, that would eliminate all $113 million," Irvine said. "We have no certainty that environmental, highway, health, federal monies will not be severely impacted. Hopefully, that doesn't happen." 
  
 County officials also hope Arpaio will agree to work with the Justice Department to avoid legal fees. The county already has paid out more than $3.2 million in taxpayer dollars to pay for attorneys, audits and expenses related to the ongoing disputes that have embroiled county government. 
  
 Several of those battles were waged over access to sheriff's records. For example, sheriff's officials are fighting with the supervisors over access to financial and personnel records, which has cost upward of $100,000 in public funds. ||||| The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics. 
  
 The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office's defiance "unprecedented," and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminates against people with limited English skills. 
  
 Arpaio had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents it first asked for 15 months ago. 
  
 Arpaio's attorney, Robert Driscoll, declined immediate comment on the lawsuit, saying he had just received it and hadn't yet conferred with his client. 
  
 Arpaio's office had said it has fully cooperated in the jail inquiry but won't hand over additional documents into the examination of the alleged unconstitutional searches because federal authorities haven't said exactly what they were investigating. 
  
 It's the latest action against Arizona by the federal government, which earlier sued the state to stop its strict new immigration law that requires police officers to question people about their immigration status. 
  
 "The actions of the sheriff's office are unprecedented," said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department's civil rights division. "It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities." 
  
 The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix and names Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the county. 
  
 Arizona's new law _ most of which a federal judge has put on hold _ mirrors many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area, where he set up a hot line for the public to report immigration violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U.S. illegally. 
  
 Arpaio believes the inquiry is focused on his immigration sweeps, patrols where deputies flood an area of a city _ in some cases heavily Latino areas _ to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. 
  
 Critics say his deputies pull people over for minor traffic infractions because of the color of their skin so they can ask them for their proof of citizenship. 
  
 Arpaio denies allegations of racial profiling, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they've committed crimes and that it's only afterward that deputies find many of them are illegal immigrants. 
  
 The sheriff's office has said half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants. 
  
 Last year, the federal government stripped Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law. The sheriff continued his sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws. 
  
 Last year, the nearly $113 million that the county received from the federal government accounted for about 5 percent of the county's $2 billion budget. Arpaio's office said it receives $3 million to $4 million each year in federal funds. 
  
 In a separate investigation, a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining allegations that Arpaio has abused his powers with actions such as intimidating county workers by showing up at their homes at nights and on weekends. 
  
 ___ 
  
 Associated Press writer Paul Davenport contributed to this report. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?
– The feds have escalated their fight with Arizona's tough-talking Sheriff Joe. The Justice Department filed what it calls an "unprecedented" suit today against Maricopa County's Joe Arpaio because it says he won't cooperate with a civil rights investigation, refusing for more than a year to turn over records, reports the Arizona Republic. Arpaio's been accused of discriminating against Hispanics in his very public battle against illegal immigration. "It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities," an assistant attorney general tells AP. Arpaio's office says it has balked at turning over more documents because the feds won't say precisely what they're investigating. Click here to read about Arpaio's past run-ins with federal authorities.