Pima Sheriff Chris Nanos: Disciplinary record in previous job 'irrelevant'

The Pima County board had demanded earlier this month that Nanos answer questions about his work history while an El Paso police officer, citing a March report by The Arizona Republic that Nanos misstated his experience on his résumé. The sheriff has said he worked until 1984 in the El Paso Police Department, but The Republic revealed he left that department in 1982, and that he did so when given the choice to resign or be fired after a series of suspensions and disciplinary measures.

The Republic also reported that in a sworn deposition in December 2025, Nanos was asked if he'd ever been suspended, and testified he had not been.

Nanos' attorney, James M. Cool, responded to the Board of Supervisors in a letter Tuesday, saying his "disciplinary history is irrelevant to the performance of his official duties. The sheriff was the subject of robust public scrutiny during the election and the public record includes information about his decorated career as a sworn police officer. Armed with this information, the voters of Pima County elected him as sheriff," Cool wrote. 

Nanos, appointed as sheriff in 2015, lost an election for the post in 2016, then was elected in 2020 and reelected in 2024 by 481 votes. 

When Nanos originally applied to work in the Pima County Sheriff's Department and was hired in 1984 as a corrections officer, he accurately stated he worked for El Paso police from 1976-82, Cool said. Through "every step in the hiring process," he was "truthful and forthcoming," he said.

When Nanos learned of the résumé error on the Sheriff's Department website, he immediately instructed staff to correct it, he said. 

As for the 2025 deposition, Cool gave the following account:

When Nanos was asked "Have you ever received discipline as a law enforcement officer?," he responded "Yes." Asked in a follow-up question, "Did you ever receive a discipline that rose to the level of a suspension?" the sheriff answered "No."

"But context matters," Cool wrote, saying that immediately before and after the suspension question, Nanos had been asked about the Arizona Peace Officer's Bill of Rights, which applies to officers employed in Arizona.

Said Nanos' attorney: "It is 100% correct that Sheriff Nanos was never suspended during his four decades of decorated and faithful service with the Pima County Sheriff's Department. However, Sheriff Nanos was suspended more than 40 years ago when employed by the El Paso Police Department."

"In the contest of his live deposition, Sheriff Nanos did not understand the question related to discipline with a different agency not governed by the Arizona Peace Officer's Bill of Rights. In reviewing the transcript shortly after his deposition, Sheriff Nanos spotted his misunderstanding and promptly notified his attorney." 

Cool does not say in the letter what Nanos' attorney did or did not do after receiving that notification.

Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz, a staunch critic of Nanos, a fellow Democratic elected official, had seized on the deposition discrepancy after The Republic pointed it out. 

"You can't lie under oath," Heinz said at a board meeting in March, when the supervisors voted to have an outside attorney investigate Nanos' work history. "This is about accountability and preventing further erosion of public trust in the county government and in county law enforcement."

Heinz also said then of the résumé misrepresentation: "The sheriff's work history in Pima County for 42 years seems to be based on a fraud."

Cool said in his letter that despite what he called "the impropriety of the question," due to what he says is the board's limited oversight authority over an elected official, Nanos was providing information to the supervisors about his early work history "in the interest of transparency and in the spirit of cooperation."

He said Nanos resigned in El Paso as a corporal in 1982, rather than accept a 3-day suspension for insubordination, "in the wake of a dispute with a supervisor over the towing of vehicles."

While working for El Paso police, Nanos "was the subject of various disciplinary actions, which included counseling, reprimands and suspensions," Cool wrote, calling this a "minimal" disciplinary record from more than four decades ago. "The sheriff has little specific recollection of those events," he wrote.

Nanos has come under national scrutiny this year during the extremely high-profile search for Nancy Guthrie, 84, a retired University of Arizona communications professional who is believed to have been abducted from her Tucson-area home on Feb. 1 and has not been found. Her daughter is NBC "Today" host Savannah Guthrie.