With demonstrators outside the Phoenix federal courthouse clamoring for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today characterized the Department of Justice investigation into Arpaio’s office as “serious” and “ongoing,” and said that he expected the probe to produce “results.”The attorney general was at downtown’s Sandra Day O’Connor…
CBS 5’s Peter Busch did a segment for last night’s news on the fight to save the Career Criminal Squad, a squad of four detectives and one sergeant that goes undercover to investigate street-level hate crimes and murder-for-hire cases.I decried the impending disbandment of this squad in last week’s Bird…
Video of Mary Rose Wilcox in D.C. by videographer Dennis GilmanTelling the crowd at the big immigration rally on Sunday in Washington, D.C. that Sheriff Joe runs Maricopa County like a “police state,” county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox urged listeners to call the U.S. Department of Justice and tell Attorney…
If you plan on heading to Mesa Community College tomorrow to protest Sheriff Joe Arpaio, you’ll have to leave your “Joe Sucks” sign at home — the fuzz isn’t allowing signs on the campus while the sheriff speaks with a group of college Republicans.Kevin Fosburgh, president of the Mesa Community…
****Please See Update Below****Will we live in state Senator Russell Pearce’s dream police state, or will we live in the United States of America?That’s the issue at hand this afternoon as Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632 goes to the House Committee of the Whole for debate. The bill, which would greatly expand…
Freedom’s Phoenix Web site owner and Libertarian activist Ernie Hancock is demanding that state Senator Russell Pearce be censured by the Senate Ethics Committee. This, over an e-mail Pearce sent out recently suggesting that Hancock’s advocacy against Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632 was “just short of a domestic terrorist act.”As I’ve…
Today, President Barack Obama buffaloed tens of thousands of activists demanding immigration reform in Washington, D.C., appearing via video on jumbo screens, and telling the masses, according to the New York Times that,”I have always pledged to be your partner as we work to fix our broken immigration system, and…
Jason Shelton (aka, “4409”) arguing against Pearce’s unconstitutional billState Senator Russell Pearce’s police state/bigot bill is under siege by the Libertarians and Ron Paul Republicans over at Ernie Hancock’s Web site Freedom’s Phoenix. As I’ve blogged previously, Hancock sent out a mass e-mail last week with a link to an article…
The soon-to-be-disbanded Career Criminal Squad of the Phoenix Police Department has scored another W: The conviction of local cigar czar Dimitri Rozenman for contracting to have the mother of his two children and members of her family murdered.The jury delivered verdicts of guilty yesterday for Rozenman’s murder-for-hire scheme, as well…
If there is one thing we learned from last night’s episode of Police Women of Maricopa County it’s that if someone steals a Playstation game from you, you apparently have the right to beat the ever-loving shit out of them.Viewers followed Deputy Lindsey Smith in last night’s show as she…
A federal judge today allowed the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office more time to sort through recovered e-mails for confidential info that doesn’t pertain to an ongoing racial-profiling lawsuit. The company that saved the recovered data has until April 11 to produce it for the lawyers on each side, says Cari…
Beware if you’ve got brown skin — Sheriff Joe Arpaio has begun another crime sweep. Maricopa County’s sheriff says he’s turning up the heat once again on illegal immigrants. His 14th such effort, according to the Associated Press, is focusing on “drop houses, drug violators and human smuggling vehicles.” If…
Let’s hear it for the Libertarians. It seems civil liberties concerns raised by writers like John Green over at Freedom’s Phoenix may have gotten the Ron Paul-wing of the local GOP up in arms over a provision in state Senator Russell Pearce’s bigot bill SB 1070/HB 2632, which they call a…
What an embarrassing day for the Republican leadership in the state House. Though House GOPers were prepared this afternoon to ram through state Senator Russell Pearce’s anti-Hispanic apartheid bill SB 1070/HB 2632, to the surprise of almost everyone in the chamber, its House sponsor Rep. David Gowan suddenly moved that…
There’s something particularly obscene about the fact that state Senator Russell Pearce’s bigoted, anti-immigrant legislation SB 1070/HB 2632 will be heard today on the House floor, falling, as the date does, on St. Patrick’s Day.Because before nativist hatemongers had Mexican immigrants to kick around, there were the Irish. Fleeing poverty,…
Maybe Sheriff Joe figures that if he runs for Governor of Arizona, the federal grand jury now investigating him won’t indict him. Could that be why he keeps playing up the drama of a possible candidacy for Governor of Arizona? You know, like in his latest Tweet, where he states…
Not all of the water from all of the jugs placed in the desert by activists from groups like No More Deaths can wipe clean the blood of migrants from President Barack Obama’s hands.What other conclusion can be drawn from the news from Tucson advocacy group Derechos Humanos that the…
As we predicted, it would take an army to keep an old camera-hound like Sheriff Joe Arpaio from a network television camera in his county, and last night’s episode of Police Women of Maricopa County proved exactly that. Joe made a cameo at the end of last night’s show — for…
During this past Wednesday’s rally against state Senator Russell Pearce’s new apartheid-like bill SB 1070/HB 2632, I remained with the mass of the protesters, while a small contingent of demonstration leaders went into the Capitol’s Executive Tower and up to the 9th Floor to try and meet with Governor Jan…
Inspired in part by New Times’ March 19, 2009 cover art for the feature “Are Your Papers in Order?” by Village Voice Media Executive Editor Michael Lacey, Phoenix muralist Francisco Garcia first painted an image on canvas based on that ski-masked, gun-pointing MCSO deputy. That image later became part of…
Around two hundred protesters and speakers from groups such as Border Action Network, Puente, Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, Somos America, the ACLU of Arizona, and others rallied at Capitol’s Executive Tower today to demand that Governor Jan Brewer veto state Senator Russell Pearce’s bill SB 1070/HB 2632. The…
The ACLU of Arizona has issued a blunt analysis of state Senator Russell Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632, which gives the brass tacks on why and how the bill is unconstitutional and the impact of the legislation. For those unfamiliar with Pearce’s new anti-immigrant bill, it offers a good overview, and for…
