Pima County sheriff no stranger to controversy as criticism in Nancy Guthrie case ramps up
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who is facing increased scrutiny as the hunt for the missing Nancy Guthrie nears the two-week mark, has been under the public microscope before.
New reports and court records show the sheriff has been embroiled in controversy several times over the past decade.
In the weeks leading up his 2024 re-election, which he won by a margin of 481 votes, Nanos placed opponent Heather Lappin, a lieutenant at the Pima County Jail, on administrative leave, ordering her not to discuss the reasoning for his decision, Green Valley News reported.
He did the same to Sgt. Aaron Cross, an outspoken opponent of his and the head of the Pima County Deputies Organization.
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Cross reportedly campaigned against Nanos, holding a sign on a street corner that said "Deputies Don't Want Nanos" just before he was placed on leave. Nanos claimed Cross campaigned against him while wearing official clothing issued by the Pima County Sheriff's Department (PCSD) in breach of department rules, which Cross denied.
In a federal lawsuit, filed against Nanos, Capt. Juan Navarro and the PCSD, Cross claims "Nanos intentionally or recklessly allowed an employment action against Plaintiff Cross that deprived Plaintiff Cross of the ability to contribute to conversations related to matters of public concern, and failed to consider or understand the First Amendment right to freedom of speech on matters of public concern."
In August, Lappin also filed a lawsuit against Nanos, claiming that after she decided to run for office, "Sheriff Nanos and PCSD leadership waged a retaliatory campaign against Lieutenant Lappin's career in order to undermine her candidacy."
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The suit says Lappin volunteered to cover portions of a "general instructor" school for another lieutenant who had a scheduling conflict. She had taught the general instructor school seven times previously, covering the same lieutenant several of those times.
But the school officially required a master instructor to teach, which Lappin was not. The lawsuit says despite covering the course before and despite a superior knowing about the arrangement, Lappin was disciplined for her actions for the first time after she declared interest in running against Nanos. The suit says Nanos personally signed the disciplinary action, a move described as "atypical."
She was then unexpectedly assigned to the Pima County Adult Detention Center and said she received no explanation for the move.
"The Training Center coverage issue was the start of a broader effort by Sheriff Nanos and PCSD leadership to damage Lieutenant Lappin's reputation and undermine her campaign," the lawsuit says.
"Within weeks of filing her Statement of Interest, Captain Anderson had revoked Lieutenant Lappin's teaching authority and command transferred her from the Training Center to the Jail. Although labeled a lateral move, this punitive transfer functioned as a demotion in responsibility, stature, and opportunity."
The suit also says that after Lappin posted an image of Cross' protest on her campaign website, she was promptly placed on leave.
Finally, she accused Nanos in the lawsuit of sending out a press release just weeks before the election notifying the public that Cross was on leave for "political campaigning while representing [himself] as a department member under the color of authority" and that "[i]t is known that Sergeant Cross is collaborating with Lieutenant Heather Lappin on her campaign," and that Lieutenant Lappin was "questioned" about Sergeant Cross' activities.
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According to the lawsuit, the release also accused her of "collud[ing] with a journalist to facilitate payment to an inmate in exchange for a news story" while she worked at the detention center, which Lappin denied.
"In total, Lieutenant Lappin has been referred to internal affairs five times since declaring her candidacy in 2023," the lawsuit says. "Before her candidacy, she had one internal affairs referral during approximately eighteen years of service with PCSD."
Both Cross' and Lappin's cases are ongoing.
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Shortly after Nanos' slim 2024 victory, the Pima County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted for an independent investigation into whether Nanos was responsible for criminal wrongdoing during the election. That case was referred to the Arizona attorney general's office, but no charges were ever brought.
In 2022, a female PCSD deputy was allegedly sexually assaulted by a supervisor at a holiday party. The supervisor, Ricardo Garcia, was found not guilty of sexual assault in December 2024 but was found guilty of two counts of attempted sexual assault and two counts of sexual abuse. Garcia was sentenced to one year in jail and three years of probation.
In 2023, the Pima County Deputy’s Organization claimed Nanos did not probe how the department's leadership handled the investigation into the incident, which led to another referral for an independent investigation by the Arizona attorney general's office.
Once again, the office found no criminal wrongdoing but did note that the department may have broken several of its own rules.
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After the attorney general's office released its report, the Pima County Board of Supervisors formally voted for Nanos to clarify to the public the state of the internal investigation.
In 2015, Nanos was the appointed chief of PCSD. He had taken over the position after former Sheriff Clarence Dupnik retired and was running for election to the seat in 2016. But, that same year, the FBI began investigating the department for misuse of civil asset forfeiture funds.
In many cases, funds confiscated by police from criminals can be kept and spent on approved items like more equipment for law enforcement.
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In October of that year, Chief Deputy Chris Radtke was indicted on federal charges and accused of wrongly using hundreds of thousands of dollars of the forfeited assets. The department also reportedly spent $20,000 building a commercial kitchen to open a café that was run by Radtke's niece. Radtke took a plea deal, agreeing to plead guilty to three misdemeanor counts of theft of government property. He did not go to prison.
Nanos was never charged.
During that investigation, Nanos gave a fiery interview to KGUN during which he sharply rebuked the FBI.
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"When it comes to an FBI investigation, I was taken aback by that as much as anybody," he said. "Here's an agency who for years has been known to deny or acknowledge anything about any kind of investigation. They're famous for that."
Nanos complained that the FBI confirmed to a reporter that the department was under investigation despite what he viewed as its proclivity for secrecy. He said he had been contacted by former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Tucson Andy Black and had a "benign" conversation with him.
"Am I upset at the FBI? Absolutely," he said in the interview. "They get by with saying 'no comment.' Who does that today? They think they're fine with that. And when this thing's all resolved and the case is all over, I challenge Mr. Black to stand up by himself and say, 'We looked at this investigation, and we completely find this investigation to be total BS.' Because that's what it is. But you won't hear that because they won't confirm or deny."
He later quipped that if the FBI was "having problems doing investigations … please, call us because we have real policemen here."
Nanos lost his election for sheriff that year but ran again and was elected in 2020.
During the Guthrie investigation, Nanos has been accused of slow-rolling the FBI's involvement and wrongly shipping evidence to a private lab in Florida instead of to the FBI's headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
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Both of those claims he denied in an interview with Fox News' Matt Finn on Friday.
He told Finn that investigators have been using the Florida lab from the start of the investigation and that Guthrie family DNA, as well as other DNA, had already been sent there.
"Why split your evidence to two different labs that could create a conflict, but more importantly, it adds that additional step," he said. "This lab has this piece, this lab has that piece. Now they've got to converge those two pieces to make an elimination or identification. No, just send it to one lab. Let's go. They're both great labs. They both have great equipment and smart people.
"We trust the FBI’s crime lab. We’ve used them before. But, in this case, we started with that lab," he said. "It’s just that simple."
Nanos also denied the claim that his office delayed contacting the FBI for assistance in the case, saying he has no reason not to partner with the federal law enforcement agency, that it would be "absolutely crazy" not to do so and that his department and the FBI are working well together. He said he called the FBI Feb. 2, the first business day after the investigation began.
Nanos did not return a request for comment.