By Ray Stern Telling your dog to sic a police officer ain’t a good idea under any circumstances. Especially in Maricopa County. Just ask 31-year-old Guillermo Bustamante, who’ll be sentenced to 15 to 60 years for doing just that last fall. One thing Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas seems to…

By Ray Stern Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas is too high. Too high, that is, when it comes to the hysterical statistic quoted in his new public service announcement about drop houses. Like much of the government propaganda about drugs, Thomas’ PSA uses a questionable stat to grab our attention:…

By Ray Stern The Arizona Corporation Commission is jumping on Mark Bosworth, the former self-proclaimed real estate “guru” whose troubles were documented in a May feature article in New Times. In this July 3 “Notice of Opportunity for Hearing,” the commission says Bosworth and three of his employees ripped off…

By Ray Stern All 29 public pools in Phoenix were open again today following last week’s parasite scare, but parks workers still weren’t quite sure how the bug found its way into the water. Only one thing seems certain: It was no Baby Ruth, the candy bar from the famous…

By Ray Stern The voice of the young girl on television, the screen showing only her socked feet, rivets the viewer to her story. The Phoenix 12-year-old had been attacked in broad daylight while walking to a friend’s house, her pants pulled down by a brazen pervert who was subsequently…

Associated Press photo Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas boasted at a press conference this week that his office has now prosecuted 750 people under the state’s two-year-old human-smuggling law. Against the wishes of the very lawmakers who wrote the law, Thomas has mostly convicted the “human cargo” of smugglers (as…

The police chief had stolen the spotlight, and the sheriff was furious. It was a scorching hot day in late June, and dozens of demonstrators had turned up at a Maricopa County services complex in Mesa to protest the sheriff’s immigration-enforcement tactics. Dozens more Mesa police officers monitored the situation,…

Blair Parker has escaped the 30-year minimum mandatory sentence his wife received last year for starving their three children on a strict “vegan” diet.

By Ray Stern Gerald Richard, Democratic candidate for Maricopa County Attorney (pictured), today released a list of people endorsing him that included Paul Charlton, former U.S. Attorney in Arizona. Charlton was famously fired by the Bush Administration in 2006 along with several other top federal prosecutors in what appeared a…

By Ray Stern Blogs are buzzing about the Bush Administration’s faux pax in hiring scandal-plagued former NAU president Owen Cargol as the first chancellor of the American University in Iraq. According to this article on www.insidehighered.com, nobody appears to have performed a Google search on Cargol when he was hired…

By Ray Stern Guess what came to Mesa today? No, it’s not Sheriff Arpaio’s Mexican supression operation–that’s scheduled on Thursday. The East Valley Tribune rolled out its new and improved look, plowing deep in tabloid territory and essentially ending–by design, anyway–a traditional-style newspaper that has published in Mesa for more…

By Ray Stern She’s big, she’s beautiful and–according to Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard–she’s naughty, too. Goddard is accusing Nicole Galbraith, 24, of ripping off the clients of her East Valley bail bond company. Galbraith, a young entrepreneur from Mesa, is the owner of Quick Bail Bonds. While inmates rotted…

By Ray Stern Gun-loving Arizona has had a robust concealed weapon program since 1994, and about 85,000 people have received permits that allow them to take hidden handguns with them just about everywhere they go. You’d think that number would be higher, given that some statistics show as many as…

By Ray Stern How close did I come to getting arrested by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies today? As Maxwell Smart would say, “Missed it by that much.” These cowardly MCSO deputies refused to identify themselves. The problem: I had the nerve to want to look at the same public records…

By Ray Stern Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to know what you think about his approach to illegal immigration. Well, only if you agree with him. But we encourage those who disagree with him–or outright hate what he’s doing–to flood a special hotline he’s set up for his supporters…

By Ray Stern The small ad by something called “AZ Green Dining” in the Cafe section of this week’s New Times couldn’t help but catch my eye (after a co-worker pointed it out, that is): “The New Times 4-17-08 edition printed lies about biodiesel.” I had written the article in…

By Ray Stern Following a rancorous public debate, the Phoenix Police Department last month toughened its policy toward illegal immigrants, allowing cops to report people to tederal immigration authorities far more often than before. But Phoenix officers still aren’t supposed to ask about immigration status during routine traffic stops. The…

Last year, Blair Parker saw his wife, Kimu, sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in the slow starvation of the Scottsdale couple’s three children.

By Ray Stern The choice of homemade poisonous gas in the apparent suicide of East Valley Tribune theater critic Chris Page shocked those who knew him and resulted in the evacuation of Page’s Mesa townhome complex on Monday. Chris Page: Memorial service information below. Page, 29, had mixed potassium cyanide…

Downtown Tempe’s under aerial assault. The evidence can be found all over Mill Avenue’s sidewalks, trademark red-brick buildings, and on automobiles parked up and down the thoroughfare. It’s bird poop. Lots of it. The culprits: thousands of grackles, starlings, and other birds that have made Mill Avenue their home in…

By Ray Stern Do illegal drugs fund a government plot to keep black and brown people down? Whatever the answer, it’s a conspiracy theory that makes for a somewhat interesting documentary now airing on Showtime called American Drug War: the last White hope, a movie to which ex-DEA agent and…