Looks like it’s splitsville for Hooman Karamian, aka Nik Richie, the gossipmonger and trash-talker behind the Web site The Dirty.com, and his wife of about four years Amanda Toney. According to court filings, Toney, who is a managing partner in the Scottsdale marketing firm The Taka Group and was once a…
As I anticipated in yesterday’s blog post, the Arizona ACLU today had a press conference at their offices with father-son Julian and Julio Mora present, announcing a lawsuit on their behalf against Sheriff Joe and other members of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. The incident at issue occurred during the…
It sounded like an interesting story — at first. Dave Hendershott, chief deputy of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, told us last night that his agency’s criminal investigation into what’s going on with the county computer system might involve the Arizona Republic. Naturally, we were a bit suspicious of the info…
The Arizona ACLU isn’t giving out any details, but they’ve just issued a press advisory that at noon tomorrow they will announce a lawsuit, “on behalf of two Avondale residents who were illegally arrested and detained during a worksite raid conducted by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.” Though the ACLU’s…
Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott claimed last week that federal law prevented him turning over a password to a computer system used by law enforcement officials. Yesterday, without an act of Congress, Hendershott reportedly agreed to give the county computer administrators the password. The agreement means a judge won’t be sending…
I don’t know if playwright James Garcia modeled the character Captain Montoya from his new play The Tears of Lives on Deputy Chief Paul Chagolla of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. But as portrayed by actor Andrew Valenzuela, Montoya is a chilling vision of Hispanic self-loathing, a man driven to…
Know how the minutemen and the nativists are always kvetching that illegal immigrants are all criminals, even though the most they’re guilty of is a federal misdemeanor, if that? Well, methinks these pseudo pay-triots kvetch too much about others, particularly in the wake of the arrest of Minuteman American Defense founder Shawna…
The billionaires join ranks with the Obama-haters in this new Dennis Gilman video. In the tradition of Michael Moore and the stunts he regularly pulled in his TV show The Awful Truth (and continues to pull in his films), come the Billionaires for Wealthcare, a crew of wannabe-Warren Buffets who crashed…
It’d do the hate-filled nativist knuckledraggers good to read the latest Cato Institute report, Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform, but I can’t be sure if these pseudo-patriot pinheads can read past a third grade education. So, instead, I’m going to suggest that Homeland Security czar…
We interviewed Maricopa County Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott (pictured) today about this computer-takeover business and his possible trip to jail next week, so naturally we asked him about his involvement in the SCA, too.He didn’t bite. “You’ll have to talk to the lawyers about that,” he tells us.The lawyers for…
Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott could end up behind bars next week. We’re not kidding.If you followed our earlier play-by-play from the court hearing this afternoon about the Great Computer Takeover, (and we won’t be offended if you didn’t), you’ll have anticipated our headline.The sometimes-jocular Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph…
Lorena learned about her mom’s arrest during the MCSO raid at Royal Paper Converting Company in South Phoenix when her uncle called to tell her about it. Lorena’s mother had been working long hours at the plant to feed her and her two younger brothers. Lorena is 17, and she had to care for…
4 p.m. Kerry Martin, sheriff’s office lawyer, says he can’t put on his case in 20 minutes. It’s a complex law-enforcement issue. Judge Heilman says there’s a simple issue in this case: what transpired on Wednesday and why it transpired. Says Martin has spent a lot of time talking…
2:40 p.m. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Heilman says he wants to wrap this up by 4:30 today. Steve Wetzl takes the stand… Chief Information Officer for Maricopa County. Wetzl says he heard from the sheriff’s office this week and was told the agency was taking control of the ICJIS…
Captain Joel Fox, front man for the shady group of SCA donors, has apparently given up trying to answer our questions. But that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to comment on our blog. Fox still falsely claims we haven’t identified a possible crime that the SCA has committed: I’ve been…
We finally got a chance to inspect the report from the raid on Mesa city buildings last year by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, months after we requested it. You remember this one — the nighttime raid on the city government that employed Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s law enforcement nemesis, George Gascon,…
As our readers know, we corrected misinformation yesterday about whether the takeover of a computer system by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office gave Arpaio and his minions access to judge’s e-mails they aren’t allowed to have. But someone forgot to send the memo to the Arizona Republic’s editorial writers, who…
Mayor Phil Gordon is to be congratulated for the Elements of Hate panel discussion his office organized, which took place Wednesday at the newly-renovated AE England Building at Civic Space Park in Downtown Phoenix. The event coincided with the visit of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s representative Heidi Beirich. In…
The chief deputy for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office told a judge yesterday he believed intrusion into a law enforcement computer system “was imminent,” the Arizona Republic reported this morning. Apparently, that’s the reason the chief deputy, Dave Hendershott, ordered a dozen armed deputies to take over the system on…
Despite a shift by Immigration and Customs Enforcement away from indiscriminate worksite raids nationwide, and despite the fact that Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to thumb his nose at the feds in various ways — taping conversations between ICE and MCSO employees, refusing to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation, etc…
Two-and-a-half hours of this hearing and we’re wondering how much money taxpayers are paying for this. Remember, we’re all paying for the lawyers on both sides. On the sheriff’s side, it seems like even if this password-changing action was legitimate, it didn’t need to be done as some kind of…
2:40 p.m. Back to hearing. Sheriff’s office is turning over info to the Department of Justice that it believes shows court personnel engaged in criminal activity, says the sheriff’s lawyer, Kerry Martin. Martin does not go into detail but apparently it might have had something to do with the ICJIS…
