As you turn down the air conditioning in your dark living room during these brutal summer evenings, think for a moment about Leslie Christiansen, Daniel Purpura and Charles Ward. The latter two needlessly died in Outlaw Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County jail. Christiansen could soon become the next victim of Arpaio’s…
From here on out, 72-year-old Joe Arpaio isn’t the Maricopa County sheriff in my book. He’s an outlaw waiting to be hog-tied and strapped into one of his infamous restraint chairs scattered throughout Maricopa County’s jails. I now have proof, in writing, from one of Outlaw Joe’s top deputies, that…
Hey Joe, why are you hiding from me? Are you scared? Seems “the toughest sheriff in America” should have nothing to fear from me. All I’ve got is a pen, a notepad and a couple of hundred questions. You’ve got an army of deputies equipped with machine guns, tanks, wiretaps…
Want to throw the fear of God into Phoenix elected officials, downtown business tycoons and their self-serving cheerleaders at the Arizona Republic? Want to get them to finally pay attention to you, the little guy, whose taxes keep getting sucked up into massive big-box projects that line the pockets of…
How’s this for a get-rich scheme? You get elected to public office, say, sheriff. You start scowling like John Wayne and jam the jails full. You put the cons in stripes and house them in surplus Army tents, where four guards oversee 1,800 inmates. Your detention officers beat up prisoners,…
Linda Saville leans across the table in a downtown Phoenix restaurant and recites the pledge she made at the moment her brother was acquitted of conspiring to kill Sheriff Joe Arpaio. “I swore I was not going to let this happen to someone else,” she said about that fateful Friday…
Maricopa County Administrator David Smith was named best county leader in the nation by Governing Magazine in November 2001. Now Smith deserves to lose his job. The publication, which is read by practically every high-level bureaucrat in the nation, had gushed that Smith performed miracles in leading Maricopa County out…
Governor Janet Napolitano has finally found her man. Tucked under the right arm of presumed Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, Napolitano beamed radiantly during a Democratic party rah-rah at the Arizona Biltmore recently. Normally aloof, Napolitano never drifted far from the Massachusetts senator’s side. She got the good lovin’…
One day isn’t enough. Phoenix should be celebrating Cuatro y Cinco de Mayo. A two-day party would allow us to fete not only the Mexican Army’s smashing defeat of the French Foreign Legion on May 5, 1862, but also the founding of Phoenix on May 4, 1868. Next year, if…
“I just wish that sometimes your paper could say ‘Thank you’ rather than taking shots!” Jerry Colangelo bellowed over the phone in October, the last time I was able to reach him for comment on his business endeavors. The Godfather of Phoenix sports was angry because I had dared to…
I’ll never forget the scorching blast that poured through the open door of the Boeing 707 as I prepared to exit the jet on August 15, 1974, my first summer day in Phoenix. As a wide-eyed, 18-year-old freshman entering Arizona State University, I was stunned by the intensity of the…
It’s not every day that the governor of a state is faced with an open insurrection by thousands of religious zealots. It’s even rarer when the fanatics flout the state Constitution in a hell-bent pursuit of reaching heaven by coercing teenage girls into a life of subjugation, rape and breeding…
I ventured up to Flagstaff the other day. Just to walk around and enjoy its wonderful downtown at the base of Arizona’s most impressive mountains, the San Francisco Peaks. Rain, wind, sleet, snow flurries and occasional sunshine had left the air clear and crisp. The dramatic landscape and tumultuous weather…
There are two rule books for doing business in downtown Phoenix. One is for Jerry Colangelo and his stable of businesses revolving around the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Phoenix Suns. This rule book is very thin. In fact, open it, and there’s only one page containing four words: Cut Jerry…
Connie Thompson was livid about my recent column reporting that she had lied by failing to disclose a felony arrest record on an application leading to her appointment to a powerful state regulatory board. In a widely circulated e-mail to people she thinks are her supporters that was forwarded to…
Cheers to Mayor Phil Gordon for moving to seize control of downtown Phoenix’s rehabilitation from a corporate cabal controlled by Jerry Colangelo. In public statements and in an interview with New Times recently, Gordon claimed the city won’t rubber-stamp Colangelo’s privately funded, secret master plan for downtown that Disney-esque Jerde…
Hey, have you heard the news about Jerry Colangelo? No, not that he’s trying to sell the Phoenix Suns. Did you know he’s already sold his controlling interest in the Arizona Diamondbacks? That’s right. Jerry Colangelo is no longer the grand master of major league baseball in Arizona. In fact,…
Connie and Mark Thompson aren’t letting ethics, honesty and honorable public service get in the way of boosting the fortunes of the elder care referral business they run from their Tempe office. Instead, they are simply abusing their position of public trust to benefit their private business — even if…
I’ve got this creepy feeling about Tempe mayoral candidate Hugh Hallman. I know Tempe desperately needs new leadership at City Hall, and, for many voters, Hallman, a Republican attorney, is the hands-down choice in the hotly contested March 9 election. Hallman scored points with the electorate during his four-year term…
The corporate big wheels are putting the screws to downtown Phoenix. Each twist brings us inexorably closer to obliterating a rare and fragile opportunity to create an urban center unique to our corner of the world. Anyone who thinks a corporate-dominated glitter mall with chain eateries and high-end housing isn’t…
Fundamentalist Mormon cult leader Warren Jeffs has convinced thousands of polygamist followers that he receives direct revelations from God, visions that reveal the most intimate details of their personal lives. But Jeffs’ insights may be based far more on modern technology than any supranatural spiritual powers. Warren Jeffs, the Prophet…
COLORADO CITY — With his wife and six children clustered behind him on the front porch of his modest home, Ross Chatwin did what no resident of this isolated, fundamentalist Mormon town has ever done. Chatwin, 35, publicly denounced the religious leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of…
