Joe Arpaio just cost us $7M more

The Joe Arpaio era may be over, but Arizona taxpayers are still paying for it.

On Wednesday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay $7 million to settle yet another federal lawsuit from Arpaio’s days as sheriff.

This one was by the family of a mentally ill man who was arrested for a misdemeanor and wound up dead, having been beaten and shocked with a Taser while being booked into one of Arpaio’s jails.

In all, Maricopa County taxpayers have shelled out at least $33 million as a result of abuses in Arpaio’s jails. That doesn’t count the $70 million we have thus far paid as a result of his racial profiling of Latino drivers and subsequent refusal to obey a judge’s order to cut it out.

And now, $7 million more.

“I pray that this settlement is the end of such an utterly ugly Arpaio era,” said Michael Manning, the family’s attorney, who has handled a number of cases stemming from abuses in Arpaio’s jails.

Ernest “Marty” Atencio, 44, was arrested by Phoenix police in December 2011 after yelling at a woman and kicking the door of her apartment. The charge: misdemeanor assault.

Atencio died after a fight with Phoenix officers and sheriff ’s detention officers as he was being booked into the Fourth Avenue Jail.

Sheriff ’s officials have said he was combative.

Atencio’s family, in a $20 million federal lawsuit against the two agencies, says a Phoenix police officer attacked Atencio at the jail after he refused to take off one of his shoes, and that Arpaio’s detention officers then jumped in a “dog pile” on top of him.

A sheriff ’s official then shot Atencio near the heart with a Taser, the suit says. Atencio died five days later.

The family, in its lawsuit, says jail health-care workers failed to recognize Atencio’s signs of mental illness, denying him the treatment he needed and sending him through the booking process, where officers taunted him for not being able to follow directions.

Earlier in the day, Atencio had been seen talking to a jar of peanut butter and offering it his jacket so it wouldn’t be cold.

“Prior to Dec. 15, 2011, both Maricopa County and Sheriff Arpaio were aware of a long history of deliberate indifference to the provision of medical care to those in the county’s jails and ‘long-overdue, constitutionally required corrections that needed to be made as quickly as possible,’ ” the lawsuit said, citing a 2010 federal court ruling that found standards in the jails continued to fall short of requirements.

This $7 million payout will settle the claim against the county. Still to be resolved: Phoenix’s role in Atencio’s death.

Meanwhile, Arpaio continues to raise money for his run for U.S. Senate.