Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez has sent a letter to Sheriff Joe’s legal counsel, threatening to sue the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office if it does not comply with the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into allegations of civil rights violations against the agency.You can read the entire letter, here…

Update: Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said during a press conference today that he agrees there was no probable cause for Reza’s arrest, and that the charge against Reza from July 30 will be dropped. Please see my colleague James King’s report, here.  Yesterday, I obtained the “probable cause statement” in the…

All it takes is a cell phone text and bit of garbled audio to get Sheriff Joe Arpaio running around like a chicken sans head. “America’s toughest sheriff”? Puh-lease.  As was reported by Fox 10 back on July 29, and is now being regurgitated by The Drudge Report and the Associated Press,…

Kudos to Valeria Fernandez and A.J. Alexander for their work on this video You never know when Sheriff Joe is going to blurt out a bit of the truth. Case in point: This video from the crew at 90daystoPhoenix.com, part of a documentary about Arizona currently in post-production. Crusading independent…

Is this America, or is this a Third World dictatorship? You decide.Puente has posted this new video of Phoenix civil rights leader Sal Reza’s arrest Friday. Literally, it looks like something out of a film by Costa-Gavras. The sort of thing that happens in Third World dictatorships. That is, a…

As civil rights leader Salvador Reza stood in stripes before a night court judge around 3:30 a.m. this morning at the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix, the county prosecutor made an eye-popping admission.”This is really my review,” he stated cautiously of a statement from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office before…

Governor Jan Brewer’s bad week just got worse. Today the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Arizona’s appeal of District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton’s July 28 injunction of the most significant parts of SB 1070, the state’s “paper’s please” legislation. In their motion to the 9th Circuit, Brewer’s pricey…

Note: For the latest on Reza’s release, and the prosecutor’s admission of no probable cause, please click, here.Like you needed more evidence of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s police state tactics, civil rights leader Salvador Reza of the group Puente was arrested this afternoon by a contingent of MCSO goons, apparently on Arpaio’s direct orders…

A cluster of supporters were there to meet Phoenix civil rights leader Salvador Reza when he stepped out of the Fourth Avenue Jail around 10:30 or so Thursday night.The 58 year-old veteran activist, who heads up the pro-immigration group Puente, was collared earlier that day by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s boys…

Phoenix exploded today in a fit of anti-SB 1070 rage that only a summer rain seems to have dampened for the moment. Scores of activists including Phoenix civil rights leader Salvador Reza of the organization Puente, and former state Senate majority leader Alfredo Gutierrez were arrested by federal officers, Phoenix…

Chanting, “We will not comply,” and, “Whose streets? Our streets,” a group of about 70 protesters took over one of the entrances to the square-mile town of Guadalupe Wednesday night, facing down Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies in a tense standoff that lasted a little over an hour.From 11:45 p.m. till…

In a daring act of civil disobedience in downtown Phoenix this evening, at least four activists occupied a tall crane near Central Avenue and Jefferson Street and deployed a huge banner that read “Stop the Hate,” with red lines crossing out “287(g)” and “1070.”Phoenix Fire Department trucks and Phoenix Police…

Although district court Judge Susan R. Bolton did not enjoin Arizona Senate Bill 1070 in its entirety this morning, she cut the heart out of the state’s discriminatory “papers, please” legislation, leaving its zombie-like corpse bloodied but still standing. In her order filed in response to the U.S. Department of…

If ever there was a time for people to raise freakin’ hell in this city, July 29 is the day. As we all know, that’s when SB 1070, Arizona’s new “breathing-while-brown law” is slated to start harassing Latinos, assuming federal Judge Susan R. Bolton doesn’t put the kibosh on it.And…

The latest round of photographs from neo-Nazi J.T. Ready’s patrols in the Arizona desert shows the Mesa storm trooper getting chummy with the U.S. Border Patrol, even leaning on a Border Patrol vehicle at one point.There’s a photo of Ready with a Border Patrol Agent on a motorcycle, and there’s a pic…

The only problem with this, of course, is that Arpaio’s so sick in the head he’ll probably get a rise out of it. Still, brilliant of Zack de la Rocha to dedicate “Killing in the Name” to him. For a full report on Friday’s Rage Against the Machine concert at…

Of all the high points in Rage Against the Machine’s anti-SB 1070 concert at the Hollywood Palladium Friday night, the one that made it worth the six hour trek from Phoenix to Los Angeles for me was when Rage front man Zack de la Rocha dedicated the incendiary anthem “Killing…

Gilman’s latest on yesterday’s arrestsAs I was locked in SB 1070 legal hell Thursday, eyeballing the two proceedings in front of U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, I missed a lot of the action outside the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix where the hearings were taking place.While legal beagles…

This just in: Get Out! Arizona and America Join Joe Arpaio in Rushing to Inquire: Are Your Papers In Order?In a day filled with protests, arrests, legal arguments, an appearance by the governor, and at least one certified neo-Nazi, the most significant developments in the SB 1070 saga happened within the…

For all the haters out there who dissed Zack de la Rocha’s anti-SB 1070 Sound Strike concert, to take place at the Hollywood Palladium this Friday, July 23, I’ve got two words for you: SOLD OUT. Tickets for the event, which will be headlined by Rage Against the Machine and Conor Oberst, were…