Analysis by Michael Lacey A new and refreshingly competent political star, Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, emerged from the startling judicial proceeding held yesterday afternoon in a basement courtroom in downtown Phoenix. And federal prosecutors, who’ve convened a grand jury to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio, were handed unimpeachable evidence that…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas have defiled our town square with hanging corpses: five county supervisors, four superior court judges, two county administrators, three attorneys, an entire law firm, and (everywhere) Mexicans. All of this occurred in a single month, December 2009, when the two lawmen…
President Barack Obama gracefully accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. Here, in Phoenix, Arizona, we enjoy little peace; indeed, we live in the chaos generated by a reign of terror that Obama has done little to address. Yes, his federal investigators are here examining the assaults against…
Elaine Sanchez understands Guadalupe, Arizona, as well as she understands her six children. She was born and raised in the village of 5,500 souls hard by the freeway and the conventional suburbs of Tempe and Phoenix. Sheriff Joe Arpaio put Guadalupe on the nation’s map during his anti-immigrant sweep last…
Elaine Sanchez understands Guadalupe, Arizona, as well as she understands her six children. She was born and raised in the village of 5,500 souls hard by the freeway and the conventional suburbs of Tempe and Phoenix. Sheriff Joe Arpaio put Guadalupe on the nation’s map during his anti-immigrant sweep last…
Consorting with anti-immigrant enforcers, indulging rank opportunism, and adhering to failed policies seem an unlikely recipe for change we can believe in. And yet this very cocktail of mediocrity — stirred by an early endorsement of Barack Obama — has thrust Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano into the heady midst of…
By Michael Lacey State checks that finance aid for the severely disabled have gone missing for months. Hanky panky or a sign of the economic times and a harbinger of things to come? Since the answer involves some of the largest corporate names in philanthropy, the government will not be…
The most visible hammer of ethnic cleansing in greater Phoenix — which has swept 50,000 Mexicans from our community — is Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Two weeks before the election, his deputies — 60 strong — executed a home invasion of Mesa’s City Hall and library. Decked out in flak jackets,…
Contrary to newswire accounts, our lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and former special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik is not dead, though parts of it have been compromised by a new ruling. What is true is that Federal Court Judge Susan Bolton found little wrong with this cadre…
When I read our lawyer’s interviews with the deputies in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s most notorious division, I had one question: Who staged this piece of theater? You too can read, for the first time, excerpts of deposition statements from Arpaio’s leaders and foot soldiers. The chiefs and deputies…
His gang prosecutions had salt; a street banger he put away took out a contract on Richard’s life.
My invoking the argot of Black artists achieved a level of insensitive stupidity almost galactic in scale. Whatever discussion lingers about the use of the words “bitch” or “ho” in hip-hop, comedy, film or literature, there is no question about the N-bomb coming out of the mouth of a 59…
County Attorney Andrew Thomas has not issued a single grand jury subpoena in the wake of the fallout from my arrest and that of my business partner, New Times CEO Jim Larkin. According to a document leaked to the paper from inside the prosecutor’s office, Thomas is mulling his next…
Judge Anna Baca delivered her stern rebuke in genteel tones. She described the abuses of the grand jury process committed by since-“fired” Special Prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik in his investigation of New Times as threatening to the average citizen. “It’s a serious situation in terms of the protection I believe the…
Special Prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik sought to put this newspaper out of business by going after our financial assets. According to confidential grand jury records released by the court, Wilenchik adopted a scorched-earth policy when confronted with our misdemeanor. These same documents also make it clear that Wilenchik lied when he…
Disgraced “special prosecutor” Dennis Wilenchik responded last week to critics with a talking-in-tongues defense reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s divine delirium as he sank beneath the waters in Cape Fear. Wilenchik dispatched a press release filled with astonishing and devious assertions. What Wilenchik lacked in clarity he compensated for with…
This newspaper and its editorial staff — both current and former — are the targets of unprecedented grand jury subpoenas dated August 24. The authorities are also using the grand jury subpoenas in an attempt to research the identity, purchasing habits, and browsing proclivities of our online readership. It is,…
Brace yourself for the crescendo in the vulgar procession of congressional sex-scandal witnesses. Arizona’s elusive Representative Jim Kolbe must eventually appear before the committee investigating the moral corruption, click his red pumps together and testify about the grooming of high school students by the very men elected to lead the…
You cannot slug a cop. It’s that simple. And the police cannot assault prisoners. This simple bargain between law enforcement and the rest of us is one of the things that separates Americans from the denizens of Iraq and every other dusky pest hole. Keeping the scales even on this…
Driving defines Phoenix the way surfing shapes Venice Beach. Here, in this blacktop desert that stretches to the horizon, we all share in the drive. Behind every steering wheel slumps a stranger. You look through anyone else’s windshield and a driver’s character is no more distinct than a smudged fingerprint…
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced at a press conference yesterday that he would not prosecute three off-duty baggage inspectors from Sky Harbor Airport who held the entire congregation at Immaculate Heart Church hostage at gunpoint. The South Phoenix churchgoers, virtually all Mexicans, were detained May 1 until police officers…
J. Fife Symington III, our former governor, plopped about his yacht in the Pacific Ocean last August. He explained to former colleagues that he was about to double-cross them. Nuzzled by the harbor breezes in Santa Barbara and far from Arizona’s maddening summer sun, Symington outlined how his consulting firm…
