Thanks to a settled lawsuit brought by Arizona and other states, cans or bottles of Enviga, a green tea made by Coca-Cola and Nestle, must now include a disclaimer to let people know the product won’t cause weight loss. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard joined fellow top cops in 26 other states…

Deputies served a search warrant on Thursday at the county office of Don Stapley, a county supervisor who stands accused of numerous counts of felony campaign-paperwork violations. The search was the latest in connection with the questionable investigation of Stapley by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas…

A Mesa dad turned on the family clothes dryer with his son still inside — and he did it on purpose, cops say.  The 1-year-old boy had been sitting inside the dryer with the door open, which the young family thought was “cute,” according to a Mesa police news release…

Less than a week after our report on the high number of 2008 inmate homicides in Arizona prisons, the state Department of Corrections is reporting another possible stabbing. Maybe this latest incident will help draw attention to the inmate-on-inmate violence in state prisons — which has apparently grown out of control. As…

Rapper DMX, who’s serving 90 days in jail for animal abuse and theft, faces an assault charge following a tiff with a jail guard — a legal problem that could send him to prison. DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was first put in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s…

A former 27-year veteran of the Arizona Department of Public Safety has been found guilty of aggravated assault following a drunken collision with a motorcyclist who lost his leg. George Aguilera faces five to 15 years following today’s jury decision, says the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Click here for the office’s PDF…

In looking at records on deaths in state prisons last year for our post about the homicides, we couldn’t help but notice the large number of Hepatitis-C-related deaths among prisoners. Arizona Department of Corrections records show 75 natural-cause deaths, three suicides, two homicides and fourteen “pending” cases of 2008 prisoner…

Four men, possibly more, were killed by other inmates in Arizona state prisons last year, an unusually high number just one year after an inmate death spurred the firing of a warden and discipline for 13 guards. What’s going on behind those walls?As reported in this blog back in October,…

A local cigar shop owner has been arrested by Phoenix police and accused of trying to hire a hitman to assassinate his wife, plus her parents and 17-year-old sister. Dimitri Rozenman of Mesa had been upset at the terms of his divorce (recently finalized) when he planned the murders, police…

Arizona Game and Fish employees have become the first ever in the United States to capture a wild jaguar. The gorgeous, spotted cat in this picture was captured southwest of Tucson and quickly released with a satellite tracking collar. The cat weighed 118 pounds and was in good health, says…

Jarrett Maupin II, one of seven members of the Phoenix Union High School governing board, has been indictedby a federal grand jury of one count of lying to the FBI.If you’ll recall, Maupin was arrested in November for the same alleged crime by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and charged…

The state’s largest newspaper took the blinders off today and published the name of the man killed in St. Johns by his own 8-year-old son — as well as the name of the boy, now 9. UPI named the kid and father two days after the double murder in which…

The Maricopa County Superior Court today posted photos on the Internet of a holding room occupied by child rapist Adrian Cruz until his escape, plus surveillance video Cruz heading for the court building’s exit.Click here to see the page with the photos and video links. In the second video (from…

Arizona’s highway speed camera system is not only saving lives, but also helping bring criminal speeders to justice, says the Department of Public Safety. The latest DPS news release (scroll down for the full text) about photo enforcement continues the agency’s tack of trying to combat some of the negative news stories about the statewide…

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio keeps a filthy, dangerous jail and brags about targeting illegal immigrants. But a statement in a recent federal court ruling that claims Arpaio said publicly that a person’s immigration status should be questioned on “physical appearance alone” is apparently not true. We questioned the American…

Sure, one way to look at it is that light-rail ridership “is off to a positive start,” as a Valley Metro news release opines. Or, as the Arizona Republic put it this morning in a headline, “Rail ridership tops expectations.”That’s the glass-half-full version of the story. In fact, the “average…

  A convicted child rapist who escaped custody at the Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday helped himself to a court commissioner’s leather jacket before walking out the front door of the court building, says a source close to the investigation. Adrian Gonzalez Cruz, 28, showed up to a court hearing…

  Former newspaper reporter and accused armed robber Joe Watson is competent enough to stand trial, after all. Call it temporary insanity: Back in November, Watson — who’s accused of ripping off tanning salons — was deemed too whacked to understand what was going on around him. A judge ordered a…

President Barack Obama told a cheering crowd at Dobson High School in Mesa that the $787 billion stimulus act he signed into law yesterday will create jobs and restore the housing market to stability.Though the speech was loaded with vague rhetoric, Obama focused on a few of the details he…