AT&T has turned to federal court to make Phoenix approve a cell-phone tower that the company says is needed to fix a dead-air zone on the Piestewa Freeway. A complaint filed by the company last week in U.S. District Court claims that Phoenix’s Board of Adjustment erred by denying a use permit for the planned…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio ought to tell his deputies not to play with Steve Ellman. The Valley developer and former Phoenix Coyotes owner has clearly been a bad influence on the sheriff’s men. * Ellman is a major figure in the SCA campaign finance scandal, and is Arpaio’s…
You can add attempted bribery to the list of misconduct committed by former Deputy Chief Larry Black, one of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s closest aides, the Munnell Memo investigative report shows. A few years ago, the report states, Black offered a sheriff’s lieutenant in his agency season tickets to the Phoenix Coyotes…
Sheriff Arpaio’s disgraced chief deputy, Dave Hendershott, once told us that a stuffed rattlesnake he kept in his office was named after former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley. Maybe that’s what he told visitors, but we figured the forked-tongue serpent was his personal totem. Every new page released from…
Dave Hendershott, the former top aide for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, s apparently was worried enough about being charged with crimes that he hired a legal firm to help him. That wouldn’t be a problem — except he may have gotten the county to pay the bills. It looks like…
The long-awaited report on the investigation into allegations against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s command staff didn’t get released today, after all. True, a 1,022-page summary report was released. But about one-third of it was blacked out, and the three separate reports containing the conclusions of the investigation haven’t…
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said today that he’s convinced his Maricopa counterpart, Joe Arpaio, knew absolutely nothing about the misconduct of his top deputies. Babeu, speaking at a news conference at the state Capitol, said the investigation his office conducted on Arpaio’s commanders proved numerous, serious instances of misconduct and…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said today that he “made mistakes” in dealing with his top aide, former Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott. In an intentionally brief news conference today, Arpaio read from a prepared statement and took questions from reporters. But he didn’t really say much. Arpaio refused to…
We’re down here at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office headquarters, checking on the latest release of documents related to the Munnell Memo investigation. The docs we received last week, we found out today, weren’t part of the 1,022-page summary report that’s been sort of advertised by officials with the…
Federal agents may bust anyone participating in a “large” pot-growing operation, despite Arizona’s voter-approved medical marijuana law, says Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in a letter to the state. In a recent letter to Will Humble, the director of the state Department of Health Services, Burke reiterates that the feds will look the other…
A wanna-be “Fight Club” member was bested and a guy’s girlfriend’s sister took revenge in two separate stabbing incidents over the weekend in Mesa. The knifings were just two of the noteworthy crime stories passed along this morning by our flyboy buddy over at Mesa PD, helicopter pilot…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio can be deposed in a lawsuit against him by Chandler police officer Thomas Lovejoy, an ex-K9 cop who let his dog die in a hot car. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake ruled this week in a dispute over the demand by Lovejoy’s attorney, Mike Manning, that Arpaio be interviewed. In Thursday’s order,…
From what we’ve seen so far today, the investigative report on allegations against Dave Hendershott, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s former chief deputy, can be summed up with a cliche: Hendershott lied, cheated, and stole. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released part of the long-awaited report today, and we just got done examining it…
Former Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott, in a gushing, now-public goodbye to his boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, claims that a long-awaited report on his misconduct is “littered with hundred (sic) of flaws” and other problems. The document to which he refers is the 1,022-page report on an internal investigation into allegations by another high-ranking deputy with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Frank…
For the first time, the U.S. State Department has specifically mentioned Rocky Point in a travel advisory, citing recent cartel violence there as the reason. The small town on the coast of the Gulf of California has long been a popular vacation spot for Arizonans — but not so much…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio fired his chief deputy last week, but Dave Hendershott is being allowed to resign before the scheduled date of termination. Is that really a resignation? Typically, when someone’s forced to resign from a company or governmental agency, the boss doesn’t first state in writing that the employee…
A Pittsburgh natural-gas exec and his wife will donate $2,500 to a central Phoenix school on Friday as part of their cross-country trip in an alternative-fuel-powered Hummer H3, which they say pollutes less than a Smart Car. Murry Gerber served as CEO for EQT, a major natural-gas producer in Pennsylvania, for 12…
Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams (left) will step down from his post on Thursday as a likely step toward running for Representative Jeff Flake’s seat in Congress. Flake’s planning a run for U.S. Senator Jon Kyl’s soon-to-be-vacant seat, and Adams has been among the possible candidates for Flake’s Congressional District…
The Obama Administration is gearing up to sue Arizona again. In a letter to Arizona and three other states, the National Labor Relations Board’s lawyer announced plans to sue over state laws that guarantee the right to a secret ballot election in unionization efforts. While the letter went out to four states that…
A Mohave County prosecutor tells New Times today that he dropped meth charges against a woman working as an informant following allegations that a police officer sexually abused her. As we reported on Friday, Erika Solem of Bullhead City is suing Mohave County and the Mohave County Attorney’s Office, Deputy County Attorney…
Christopher Benitez’s second chance at trying to prove he wasn’t responsible for the 2001 death of a Phoenix firefighter didn’t work out well. The Phoenix man — a solider sent home Iraq two years ago to face trial in the crime — was found guilty today of negligent homicide and two counts of arson Now…
