Federal inspectors charged with investigating allegations of abuse in immigrant detention centers appear to be helping to perpetuate it, a new report states. The report released Wednesday by the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Detention Watch Network, follows months of protests from immigrant-rights activists over the death of 31-year-old Mexican…
Jessica Burlew, a Glendale teen accused of killing 43-year-old Jason Ash during a sex-act gone wrong, was sentenced to 10 years in state prison today. Burlew had accepted the state’s plea bargain last month — pleading guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a 10-year sentence — and today, Judge Scott…
The lawyer for a Phoenix man accused of helping plan the botched, May 3rd terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, says computer evidence against his client should be ignored because it was obtained unlawfully by police. Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 44, is being held in Arizona on a four-count indictment charging…
An Arizona nonprofit dedicated to protecting a herd of horses that runs free along the Salt River has dropped a lawsuit that aimed to block the U.S. Forest Service from rounding up and auctioning off the animals. Simone Netherlands, president of the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group, said it…
Local Muslim woman Sumayyah Dawud says a civil rights organization defending her in a religious-discrimination case against the Phoenix Police Department dropped her as a client after learning she is transgender. The Council on American and Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country, offered to represent…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s version of G. Gordon Liddy, Cold Case Posse Commander Mike Zullo, is trying to take the 5th, at least partially. Zullo, a former car dealer who along with Sheriff Joe has embraced the nutty crusade to invalidate President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, is a key witness in…
A new billboard in Phoenix promoting a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana for adults in Arizona is receiving mixed reviews on social media by cannabis supporters, some of whom declare it conveys the wrong message.. The advertisement near 7th and Lincoln streets is meant to poke fun at pot prohibitionists,…
If MCSO big shots thought they were bringing in a ringer by hiring private investigator Don Vogel to look into the agency’s disobedience of a federal judge’s order, boy were they wrong. Vogel, a former detective with the Mesa Police Department, testified last week in the ongoing contempt trial of Sheriff…
History got a little too real in Tombstone, when a man reenacting a gunfight fired live bullets, shooting a fellow actor in the thigh and spraying shrapnel into the crowd. The actors, who perform with The Tombstone Vigilantes, a troupe that recreates Old West shootouts several times a month in…
The Tempe Police Department says it now believes Glenn Edward Baxter, the driver of a vehicle that crashed into Tempe Town Lake early Sunday morning and killed his entire family, was a murder-suicide. “Detectives have been working around the clock on this investigation,” Tempe Police Lieutenant Michael Pooley writes in a…
Arizona Department of Economic Security Director Tim Jeffries doubled down on his blunt comments about 72 employees fired from the agency in the past three months, taking to New Times’ website comments section to answer readers’ points personally. But under criticism from some readers, he attempted to clarify: “I have referred…
What would you call a guy who claims there’s a recall effort against him just so he can score donations off elderly, out-of-state supporters? A sleazy prevaricator? A political con artist? A creep of the highest order? Well, yes, all those things. But specifically, in Maricopa County, we call him…
A mother, father, and their three young children are dead after their vehicle crashed into Tempe Town Lake near the Scottsdale Bridge. According to Tempe Police, four witnesses say they saw a silver SUV drive into the lake just after midnight on Sunday morning, though it remains unclear why the…
It’s hard to say why U.S. Senator John McCain is so frequently the butt of late night TV jokes. Maybe it’s his relentless willingness to say or do anything for votes? Maybe it’s his “maverick” unpredictability and love of the spotlight? Or maybe it’s just that he’s such a good…
Within a 24-hour period, both a state and federal judge handed down two separate decisions about medication abortions in Arizona —- decisions plaintiffs are calling “major victories for the pro-choice movement, women, and the reproductive health of women in Arizona.” In the first, a 2012 state law that placed restrictions on…
A U.S. Border Patrol agent stopped a motorist on Highway 95, 75 miles from Mexico. When the man refused to consent to a search, the officer kicked a dent in the man’s car while four of his colleagues surrounded the driver with weapons drawn, forced him to the ground, and…
The county’s top prosecutor, an avid marijuana prohibitionist, has issued a “polite” waning to business owners, community members, and pot aficionados planning to attend the Southwest Cannabis Conference and Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center later this month: We might be watching you. During a presentation on drug abuse this…
It takes a saguaro cactus about 75 years to achieve its iconic, armed stature. It takes a couple burly poachers about 30 minutes to steal it. “They just wrap it in carpet to protect themselves from the spines, then they dig up its roots and heft it into a truck,”…
A new public-service announcement from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office about the evils of heroin curiously shows an image of people apparently smoking marijuana. The short, publicly funded PSA begins at three minutes, 57 seconds into the 44:21 video of Montgomery’s semi-weekly news conference. With a striking graphic of the…
U.S. Senator John McCain announced his new Hispanic voter-outreach effort today at the back of El Mercado De Los Cielos, a small mall-within-a-mall of Latino-owned businesses, restaurants, and kiosks in west Phoenix. “Unidos con McCain,” or “United with McCain,” is the senator’s latest efforts to garner favor with the growing…
About 100 members of the Phoenix Latino community, most of them high school students, descended on the Arizona capital as part of a national day of climate action. They came armed with a simple message for Arizona’s elected officials: climate change is real, it’s killing our community, and you need to…
A private investigator hired by the MCSO to report on the agency’s defiance of a federal judge’s order, concluded that Sheriff Joe Arpaio “failed in his responsibility” to have proper control over his agency. Don Vogel, a former Mesa Police Department detective, testified Wednesday in Arpaio’s ongoing contempt trial. The…
