The Maricopa County Board Supervisors today sealed the deal on their transfer of power over civil litigation matters out of the office of County Attorney Andrew Thomas (pictured). With a vote in their informal meeting this morning, the supervisors created a new department to handle civil lawsuits and funded it…
It seems like the very definition of paranoia: Spending thousands of dollars sweeping for hidden electronic devices — and finding none.But that’s what Maricopa County Supervisors are doing — with your money.The county has now spent $14,600 sweeping for bugs on the 10th floor of the county building at 301…
KTAR (92.3 FM) has a revealing quote from Arizona Representative Trent Franks (right) this morning about why he thinks Sheriff Joe Arpaio is under federal investigation:”They feel like that if they can take him out and do him damage or intimidate him, they end up intimidating the whole specter of…
The plot thickens:Following our report on an e-mail distributed by the journalism director at Scottsdale Community College, two of the five governing board members of the Maricopa Community College District have written in comments (reprinted in this post), and we’ve had a chance to talk to Tom Gariepy, district spokesman.The…
After 11 days of deliberating, a jury has returned guilty verdicts on multiple first-degree murder counts for serial shooter Dale Hausner.Here are a few links to the coverage:Arizona RepublicEast Valley TribuneChannel 15 (KNXV-TV)heatcity.orgHere’s an official response from Phoenix police:…
Drool away at this big-buck seizure. The Arizona Department of Public Safety today released photos of cash seized in traffic stops by state troopers, including one of a stop that netted a duffle bag containing $248,249 in cash. The evidence shows what law enforcement is facing, DPS says. The large cash…
Call it a celebrity-airplane sighting. The Arizona Republic is reporting that an airplane is parked at Deer Valley Airport that might be John Travolta’s. Even more astonishing: Some folks may have even seen John Travolta! Sure, Republic writer Betty Reid got our attention with her piece; she’s even got a nice…
The dumbing down of society has reached a new depth: The Associated Press reports this morning that a daycare worker in Arkansas accidently served 10 kids bright blue windshield wiper fluid, believing it was Kool-Aid. And we thought turning on the dryer with your kid inside was bad…
Talk about huevos.Last June, a man strolled up to Phoenix police officers at Sky Harbor International Airport and tried to talk them into releasing into his custody another man they were holding on an FBI warrant, says the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. In a news release put out this afternoon,…
Light rail ridership went up slightly in February, driven by an apparent increase in the number of commuters using the 20-mile system. The estimated daily average of boardings in February was 32,430, higher than January’s estimate of 29,415. Helping the system out was about 5,000 extra riders each weekday, according to a Metro…
A widely disseminated article by 247wallst.com, a financial news blog, that lists 10 newspapers likely to fold or go all-digital in 2009 is notable locally for one reason: The Arizona Republic isn’t on it. The alleged analysis of the health of major newspapers left the state’s largest newspaper off its list despite the toilet-swirl…
Controversy over an editorial cartoon that some say makes President Obama look like a monkey is blowing up into a fight over control of student newspapers at local community colleges. At a Tuesday meeting of the Maricopa Community College District Governing Board, “all but one” member of the five-person panel “decided that all student newspapers in the…
Hellfire and damnation came to a Mesa Kingdom Hall last month in the form of an arsonist who lit up the place. The fire caused $500,000 in damage to the building, a church for Jehovah’s Witnesses. As it turns out, this wasn’t retribution by a jealous god, nor the devious…
Two State Bar complaints against Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas have been dismissed. Whether these are the last two complaints against Thomas, or how other complaints against any of his staff members may be doing — well, we’re just not sure. But it seems like Thomas may be off the…
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office added a special bulletin to its Web site today about escaped child rapist Adrian Cruz, displaying more photos of Cruz in the hopes someone will spot him. Scroll down to see the new pictures. As you’ll recall, Cruz was the guy who slipped past inattentive…
On the heels of recent articles across the United States that claim heroin use is surging, the Arizona Department of Public Safety says it recently broke up a major heroin ring based in Chandler. Detectives worked for seven months on the case with members of a northern Arizona anti-drug task force,…
You know the feeling: You want to convince people you’re a killer, and no one buys it. Never had that feeling? Well, Gilbert resident Stanely Cook Jr. sure has. The Arizona Republic reports that although Cook confessed to a reporter that he beat Dale Harrell to death in January, police say no evidence justifies that…
State Senator Russell Pearce’s plan to add a state surcharge on the cost of taking defensive driving school to pay for the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s crime lab contains one major problem: A $45 surcharge on motorists taking the classes already exists, and Pearce’s proposal for a new surcharge of…
There’s nothing like knowing something is worth an expensive pricetag — as long as you’ve got little choice but to pay for it. Days after a prominent Arizona Republic story about how lawmakers are scrambling to find funds for the cash-poor Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab, the agency…
One last word on photo enforcement this morning (unless it isn’t): A reader recently sent us a few pages of info obtained from a Phoenix company called “City Photo Radar Information LLC,” which explains how to avoid the process servers who are sometimes dispatched when motorists blow off speed camera…
A commenter on our recent post about process servers who fib plugged a computerized speed-camera-finding unit called GPS Angel, claiming it “knows where all the speed cameras and red light cameras are…” We assume “Todd Gerson” works for GPS Angel or its PR firm, since he left the same basic comment on several national Web…
If you don’t like the $1.2 million in earmarks shoved into a Congressional spending bill headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate, it may be tough to get ahold of the man responsible: Indicted Former Congressman Rick Renzi. USA Today reports that Renzi is one of several former…
