Duane Okken is a relatively short, apparently fit man with a boyish face, soft hands and blow-dried hair. Seated at a conference table, he wears tasseled loafers, socks selected with some care and a neatly ironed shirt, its top two buttons open. His pale-blue eyes do not betray the fire…
The wheels of justice finally turned for Steve West on November 19, when a U.S. District Court judge ruled that two Bullhead City police officers had wrongfully stomped West–a wheelchair-bound paraplegic–in 1989. Judge William Copple awarded West $816,000 in medical costs and general and punitive damages for the one-sided confrontation…
In an east Mesa courtroom on Election Day, November 3, John Barry stood alone, the last warrior in a five-year fight between his tiny hometown of Gilbert and utility giant Arizona Public Service Company. Representing himself, Barry asked the judge to force the Gilbert Town Council to carry out its…
And–and–what comes next? –Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann Sir Charles Barkley smiled. His eyes twinkled. That fierce warrior look vanished. But that does not mean his guard was lowered. “You guys don’t know anything about basketball,” Barkley said. “And it’s you people, who really know nothing, that are picking us to win…
A 22-year-old Havasupai woman was the first to speak. Carlotta Tilousi fixed her eyes on Ed Fox, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. “My people live in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. There are only 800 of us,” she said. “Our main source of water comes from…
Next year, Arizona high school students will hold mock trials and hear law-and-order lectures from police officers, courtesy of a $185,000 legal-education program funded by the Arizona Bar Foundation. At the same time–for want of $31,000 the same foundation will not give him–John Harris will be telling members of the…
Traffic is light as I drive north on I-17 from downtown. I spot the Woodstone Apartments on the right side of the highway. I know I’ve arrived when I see the big, block letters on the wall of the 700-apartment development. They read: Intelligent Living Intelligent Minds As I turn…
It was the worst time in her career as an educator, school administrator Janice Ramirez says. She didn’t want to believe one of her best teachers would run off with a teenage student. But that’s what happened. Ramirez was the principal of Fremont Junior High. Ken Lamberton had earned honors…
Hockey is brutal, high-speed mayhem. The players wear metal blades on their feet and 20 pounds of plastic and padding everywhere else. The object of play–the puck–is a fistful of rock-hard rubber. The playing surface–ice–is wet, slippery, cold and dense. You can’t play the game well unless you skate better…
The Arizona Board of Education disciplines teachers for sexual activity with students far more than for any other reason. Slipshod hiring and firing practices in Arizona school districts make the state “like a King’s Table all-you-can-eat buffet for pedophiles,” says a veteran Phoenix sex-crimes investigator. A New Times investigation shows…
Berkley Lunt rattles off the names the way sports fans recite the rosters of their favorite teams. Ken Lamberton. Jimmie Benally. Doug Koenig. Robert Zabroske. But these aren’t people Lunt feels any fondness toward. David McCord. John Boone. Louis Emanuel. Suzanne Yeager. They are teachers whose sexual exploits with students…
Sunday, November 15, at 9 a.m., a damsel in distress sat on a trail-side rock three-quarters of the way up Camelback Mountain. She was 29, but looked younger, and dressed as if she were going to the health club. She had hyperextended her knee, then grown nervous over the climb…
You’ve probably heard of Nick Ligidakis–or at least about what he does each Thanksgiving Day. Many news organizations, including New Times, give the Phoenix restaurateur a ton of positive publicity for organizing his annual Thanksgiving Day dinner for the Valley’s downtrodden. You’ve probably never heard of Sacramento and Maria Correa…
Shortly before four o’clock last Sunday afternoon, Michael Jordan strode onto the floor of America West Arena for the first time. The cavernous place, which would later seat more than 19,000 fans, was empty. There was an eerie quiet. People who work the concessions were just starting to arrive. It…
The movie The Silence of the Lambs pulled out all the stops to portray that film’s serial killer as the sickest villain ever to grace the screen. The filmmakers inserted a close-up that drove home the point for even the most jaded moviegoer. Wincing, disbelieving audiences gasped in unison as…
Part I of “Sex Education” (October 28) told how negligence by those who run Arizona’s public schools can turn kids into prey for molesting teachers. The letter to the editor of the Flagstaff daily newspaper pleaded for support of popular Northern Arizona University administrator Ralston Pitts. It asked “the many…
The veterinarian is examining a cat in his office. Shadow doesn’t seem to be his usual frisky self today. Cut to a full feline close-up. From the comfort of the couch, viewers can make their own informed TV diagnoses. Notice the lack of mobility. Ponder the unresponsive reflexes. Get a…
Tom Paniccia came into the New Times Building dressed in a black suit, his shoes still buffed to a military sheen–the habit of 11 years in the Air Force–and grinning from ear to ear with the thought that he would not be out of uniform much longer. Paniccia, 28, was…
For decades, as a truck driver and safety engineer, Joseph Onofrio worked hard for his money, and you can’t blame him for wanting to hold onto it. What with the savings-and-loan crisis and an unstable economy, he felt a need to take money matters into his own hands. That’s the…
The temperature was below freezing. It was one of those Chicago winter days when the sky comes up slate gray and the sun never appears. I was one of a group of reporters and photographers who were all huddled against the wind at the entrance to the old Chicago Coliseum…
Klondyke, Arizona, is little more than a dot on the map west of Safford, a general store on a dirt road that passes a few hundred yards from the middle of nowhere. On a lonely September evening, Gordon Whiting stood in the kitchen of his ranch house there, drinking beer,…
Celebrities, ambassadors and politicians crowded into the Greenwood Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Jesse Jackson was there. Cicely Tyson was there. Dick Gregory was there. Attallah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, was there. Dignitaries from Senegal and the Gambia were there. They had come to mourn Alex…
