Let’s talk about old white people, specifically the majority of old white people who live in Maricopa County. They are patriotic. They revere the flag. They vote. And they love — I mean love — Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio, who just turned 83, is like them, supposedly. He has grandkids…
What do you do if a political satirist paints an image of you, which you consider “beyond offensive”? If you’re Sheriff Joe Arpaio, you send it to every reporter in town, and tweet it out to your 63,400 followers. That’s what happened to an image created by longtime anti-Arpaio activist…
Tempe’s historic Double Butte Cemetery is one of the area’s oldest, dating back to the 1890s, before Arizona was a state. One section of the 17-acre property near 48th Street and Broadway Road is lush and green, lined with trees beneath which visitors might spy local fauna, rabbits, or an…
The son of U.S. Senator Jeff Flake has filed suit in federal court against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County, claiming that the sheriff’s investigation into the deaths of 23 dogs last year at Gilbert’s Green Acre dog boarding facility was motivated by politics, spite and Arpaio’s insatiable hunger for…
Joe Arpaio’s lawyers recently bought the sheriff and his chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, a little time by asking for federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s recusal in contempt proceedings against the pair and three of their current and former MCSO colleagues in the racial-profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. Further contempt hearings…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has lost a bid for summary judgment in the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against him, which covers much of the same ground as the ACLU’s big racial profiling case, Melendres v. Arpaio. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow found Arpaio and the MCSO…
Joe Arpaio’s lawyers recently bought the sheriff and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan a little time by asking for federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s recusal in contempt proceedings against the pair and three of their current and former MCSO colleagues in the racial profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. Contempt…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyers achieved what they set out to do on May 22, when they moved to have federal Judge G. Murray Snow disqualify himself from overseeing the sheriff’s contempt trial. That is, they slowed Snow’s judicial express train to the speed of a three-toed sloth. One day before this…
As I watched a live feed of the roiling ugliness outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix on Friday, I kept thinking of “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones, and that chilling refrain, sung by legendary backup singer Merry Clayton: “War, children, it’s just a shot away.” Indeed, with a…
Attorney Mel McDonald, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s personal Bruce Cutler, rode on the coattails of Birther lawyer Larry Klayman Friday morning by filing a motion in Phoenix federal court to have Judge G. Murray Snow recuse himself from the contempt proceedings in the civil rights case Melendres v. Arpaio. Klayman’s move to…
Talk about chutzpah. If a well-dressed moocher were to approach you and ask for money to fight a serious criminal allegation, would you give it to him? What if he admitted that he might kinda-sorta be guilty? And, oh, he has a well-paying job (six figures), owns loads of pricey…
One of the difficulties in holding Sheriff Joe accountable for the costs of his misdeeds in office has been that whenever someone dies in the MCSO’s jails because of brutality or indifference to medical issues, the tab usually is covered by a form of self-insurance called the risk-management trust fund…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s racial profiling ways are making a serious dent in Maricopa County’s budget, to the tune of $44.5 million, and counting. Maricopa County’s fiscal year 2016 budget, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors on Monday, allocates $23.8 million for costs associated with complying with a federal court’s…
During a status conference Thursday in Sheriff Joe’s never-ending contempt case, federal Judge G. Murray Snow laid some much-deserved wood to Arpaio and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, blasting them for ginning up a “bogus conspiracy theory” against his court. According to Snow, the conspiracy theory resulted from Arpaio’s use of…
Which Tim Casey do you believe? There’s the Tim Casey who issued the following statement via his “ethics attorney” (read, “flack”) Karen Clark in April, after his former client Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Arpaio’s Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan stated under oath in federal court that Casey, their ex-lawyer in the…
As if on cue, after my column last week detailing how Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s confidential informant Dennis Montgomery was given a “free talk” in late 2013 by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office under Tom Horne, attorney Larry Klayman entered stage right, seeking to have federal Judge G. Murray Snow recuse…
Since my year-old public records requests to the MCSO regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s costly Seattle snipe hunt continue to be unfulfilled, I’ve decided to periodically release information I’ve collected regarding the sheriff’s flunkies involved in the operation. As confirmed by both Arpaio and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, the MCSO…
Ever wonder why Sheriff Joe Arpaio endorsed ethically-challenged former Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne during the 2014 GOP primary? Four years earlier, Arpaio had backed now-disbarred former County Attorney Andy Thomas over Horne in the 2010 Republican primary for AG, with the sheriff’s spending some of own campaign kitty to…
An upper echelon that willfully defies the orders of a federal judge and may have committed perjury on the witness stand. A county sheriff and chief deputy with enough chutzpah to “investigate” the U.S. Department of Justice, the CIA, and federal judges, all on the word of a Seattle scammer…
Adrian Cruz, the child-raping ice cream peddler who escaped from MCSO custody in 2009, is back behind bars, no thanks to Sheriff Joe. Mexican police, tipped off by the U.S. Marshals Service that Cruz was in Valle de Bravo, a small municipality about 90 miles west of Mexico City, nabbed…
Here’s my pick for the most ridiculous quote from MCSO Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan’s testimony in federal court Friday, during day-four of his and Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s civil contempt trial in downtown Phoenix: “It depends on how you define, `investigated your wife,'” said Sheridan, his face redder than a pack…
In my line of work, it doesn’t get much better than a federal judge’s handing your column to a public official, and getting the accused pol to confirm the column’s facts, one by one, under oath. This is what happened on day three of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s civil contempt trial,…
