Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris won’t tell Judicial Watch who asked him to write a letter in support of the feds’ anti-1070 lawsuit. And he won’t tell you, either. If you’ll recall, Harris’ declaration — which ended up attached to the federal filing — outlined several problems the double-dipping chief believed his officers would have…
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has declined to stop Sheriff Joe Arpaio from pounding Tom Horne and Rick Romley in a televised attack ad. Judge John Buttrick stated in his ruling on the matter this morning that state election law provides remedies for complaints like Horne’s, and an injunction against…
Arizona lawmakers convened a special session today to fiddle with the language of a ballot measure intended to preserve secret-ballot elections in labor-union campaigns. Funny thing, though: Arizona’s got a lot of problems — and this ain’t one of them. We’ve written about the issue before: In a nutshell, labor unions — which have…
Randy Parraz has filed a federal lawsuit against Maricopa County and several deputies regarding his trumped-up arrest for protesting at a 2008 meeting of the Board of Supervisors. The pro-union, anti-Joe-Arpaio attorney-activist is currently running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat. If he manages to win over three other Democrats in the race (polls…
Dan Saban, who ran twice against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, has lost his appeal of a failed defamation lawsuit he filed three years ago against Arpaio and his office. The Arizona Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the September 2007 trial-court ruling against Saban’s lawsuit. The Appeals Court ruling seems to…
Back in November, we heard that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office had Governor Jan Brewer under investigation, and passed that rumor to you. It didn’t seem a stretch to believe our source on the shocking piece of gossip. After all, Arpaio’s office investigates its political enemies, perceived or real, at…
The “stars” of last Saturday’s episode of MSNBC’s inmate reality show, Lockup, were a couple of guys who should be familiar to regular readers of New Times:One is former New Times writer Joe Watson, a.k.a. the “Salon Bandit.The other: Former karate instructor Jonathan Antonucci, the key figure from a fatal arson…
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has improved its handling of requests for information and public records in the past year, but the paranoid minds over there still see some reporters as the enemy. Example: The investigative detour into Arizona Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett that detectives took while cooking up a case against County Supervisor…
Last year’s sweep of Maricopa County offices for hidden bugs had nothing to do with the feud between county officials and the tag-team of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and then-County Attorney Andy Thomas, says County Manager David Smith. Instead, the two sweeps costing taxpayers $14,600 were conducted out of concern about…
Wanna take a trip to Mars, without donning a spacesuit? Try the new Mars map compiled for online use by Arizona State University, in collaboration with NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Microsoft. Philip Christensen, Regents’ Professor of geological sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, calls it…
Scenes of TV news folk running outside to experience two minutes of monsoon rain have become too common to make fun of. But we can’t help dissing last Tuesday’s ridiculous, first-person report by Kevin Kennedy of Channel 12 (KPNX) about hiking Camelback Mountain in 111-degree heat. Yes, hiking in the…
Seven activists were arrested by Phoenix police today during protests of SB 1070 outside of the federal courthouse, where hearings were under way on the law’s validity. The arrested were part of a protest involving about 50 people at the corner of 4th Avenue and Washington. Protesters banged drums, held…
While Andrew Thomas won’t stoop so low as to take our call, his debate-loving spokesman, Barnett Lotstein, nearly always calls us back. We just heard from him on our question, posed in an earlier blog post: If Thomas, who’s running for state Attorney General, can praise Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon for…
Back in May, an attorney for Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon sent Maricopa County officials a demand to preserve documents in anticipation of a legal claim. Gordon “intends to pursue all his legal options for the actions leading up to and arising out of the investigation, intimidation, and harassment..by members of…
November won’t come soon enough for Tempe. If all goes well, officials say, that’s when Town Lake will be repaired and filled back up. Until then, the picturesque view of rippling water and early-morning rowers is going to be supplanted by that of a dirty, concrete-lined ditch. And folks in the lofty…
The State Department has issued an updated travel warning about Mexico, urging visiting Americans to be ultra-cautious because of all the drug-related violence. The announcement supercedes a previous warning in May and comes after extreme, new violence — including a Sonoran gun battle between rival gangs that left 21 people dead (two charred…
The Phoenix office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is on track to remove fewer illegal immigrants from Arizona in 2010, following what it says are two record-setting years for removals. As of July 19, the agency says it has removed 55,699 people from the state back to their countries of origin. Since ICE’s fiscal…
New info obtained by ICE shows that the Arizona’s border isn’t quite the revolving door some may think it is. Of the illegal immigrants “removed” from Arizona by the U.S. Immigration and Customs bureau in 2009, 4 percent of those individuals had also been removed in 2008. Most of the…
Pets need more than just food and exercise in the summer — they need some damned shade, too. Xavier Montes, 30, didn’t catch on to this part of dog ownership, court records show. At about 10 a.m. on Friday, police were called to Montes’ home at 10407 West Montecito Avenue to check…
Firefighters have rescued 10 people from Camelback Mountain because of heat-related illness since Friday, and even more from other local hiking trails in the last two weeks. Not all 10 on Camelback needed rescuing, (read full details on our previous post today), but several of the hikers looked to…
We stepped out of the house just before 6 a.m. yesterday to hike Camelback Mountain and nearly jumped back inside. It was about 90. The air was warm and fluffy, like we’d climbed into a sleeping bag in a sauna. We weren’t deterred, though, and sweated our hiney off while hiking Echo Canyon trail. Forget about…
A lawyer for Maricopa County Supervisor Andy Kunasek chides a sheriff’s official to put up or shut up on a new, vague accusation of wrongdoing made last week. The letter by attorney David Derickson also suggests that the allegation by Chief Deputy David Hendershott of a theft of public funds…
