So why did Maricopa County Republicans need six reserve sheriff’s deputies/posse members, a patrol car, and two plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle to guard a recent Thursday night meeting of mostly alter kocker conservatives? According to the attendees I chatted with that evening, Maricopa County GOP Chair A.J. LaFaro…
“What happened: I blame myself. I fell.” That’s what Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said from his hospital bed last year in an official video he posted about breaking his arm. As usual, the six-term politician (who vowed back in the 1990s to only serve one term) wasn’t exactly telling…
Tim Casey, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s longtime lawyer, wants out of the hot-potato Melendres racial-profiling case now that it’s in a “compliance phase.” Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona don’t want him to leave so fast, though — not with questions and things left to discover…
Just in time for Halloween: The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced that it’s changing its name to the Arizona Chamber of Economic Incompetence. Okay, not really, but it might as well. With its endorsement of Republican Doug Ducey for governor, the chamber is siding with the failed…
Like a visual version of an earworm — you know, those songs that get caught in your head and you can’t get out — I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a famous 18th-century etching by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. It features…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is making a detention officer stay home for the next three weeks because the officer visited Sierra Leone. Arpaio issued a press release announcing that the unnamed officer has been placed on administrative leave over MCSO’s fear of Ebola…
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Pearce is still under investigation by city prosecutors in connection with his speed-related crash that killed a man in December, New Times has learned. The job of the City Prosecutor’s Office is to prosecute people for misdemeanor crimes, meaning that Pearce, the son of disgraced…
Keeping Kav on his toes: Pennypacker’s cable TV spot… In spite of a more than two-to-one registration advantage for tuskers in Legislative District 23, Republican-turned-Democrat Paula Pennypacker’s been all over GOPer John Kavanagh like white on rice in the general election contest for the district’s open state Senate seat. Pennypacker…
Are Muslims the new Mexicans? Turn on the TV, check out Twitter or make the mistake of listening to AM radio, and you’re almost guaranteed to get a red hot blast of Islamophobia. Even folks as enlightened as HBO’s Bill Maher are suggesting that there is something intrinsically wrong with…
Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Ducey’s spokeswoman, Melissa DeLaney, declined to comment Tuesday when I contacted her regarding this week’s cover story on Ducey’s hailing from an infamous Toledo organized crime family. But Wednesday, she gave a statement to the Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts, and I’m glad she did, because she…
Roughly simultaneous to his feud with the county, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had been fighting one of the biggest scandals of his time in office – the so-called SCA campaign-finance debacle. The scandal involved a secret organization, sometimes known as the Sheriff’s Command Association, and corresponding slush fund. Retired…
Four years ago, when actor Steven Seagal found himself in need of a publicity-hungry, big-city law enforcement agency to help him shoot a reality TV series, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio rolled out the welcome mat. The controversial six-term sheriff hooked up the wannabe cop with Executive Chief Brian Sands,…
Legal same-sex marriages could take place in Arizona by the end of 2014, says an attorney representing a lawsuit by same-sex partners. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to consider appeals of lower-court decisions supporting the challengers of same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia…
Does Sheriff Joe Arpaio want people to see Phoenix filmmaker Randy Murray’s critically-acclaimed film The Joe Show, which begins a week-long run today at Harkins Valley Art in Tempe and Harkins Arrowhead in Peoria? Certainly, Arpaio helped pimp the flick in Hollywood when it played there earlier this year, clowning…
Does Gila Bend have a dead body problem? An examination of Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s data indicates yes. The medical examiner’s Unidentified Persons Bureau offers a public database listing every unidentifiable body found in the county since 1970. Since that time, the database records 260 unidentified male bodies and 40…
Anything to do with the billionaire Koch bothers gets the liberals riled, just as anything to do with Benghazi, gun control or lefty billionaire George Soros sets Teabaggers aflame. Don’t get me wrong. Charles and David Koch’s influence over the electoral process is a legit issue, but there’s only so…
The mother of a man who died last year in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Towers Jail has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit. Felix Martinez-Torres, was 47 years old when he was found unconscious in a cell on October 6, 2013, and he was pronounced dead shortly after being taken to a hospital…
A lot of Latinos are ticked by President Barack Obama’s decision to delay any further executive orders on immigration until after the election. But let’s be honest, with the U.S. Senate up for grabs in a handful of close races around the country, to have done otherwise would’ve been foolhardy…
Maricopa County’s jails continue to provide inadequate medical and mental-health care to pretrial detainees, a federal judge found yesterday. Judge Neil Wake, who placed the jails under supervision years ago after determining that they neglected detainees, ruled that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails must remain under court supervision. “Those in charge…
Maricopa County will appeal a jury award in the case of a lawyer fired for speaking to the press, ignoring a judge’s harsh criticism of the county’s actions. Maria Brandon, who worked for the county as a lawyer for more than 30 years, was fired in June 2011 after she…
As I mentioned in my column this week, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s Islamaphobic “expert,” disgraced ex-FBI agent John Guandolo, recently accused Channel 12’s Brahm Resnik and Fox 10’s Mia Garcia of being “media collaborators,” who “defend stealth jihadis.” This, because of their coverage of Guandolo’s coming to town on…
The court-appointed monitor of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office shared results from his team’s first quarterly assessment of the MCSO last night at a community meeting in Guadalupe. But tensions ran high, especially given Arpaio’s contentious history with the town. Chief Robert Warshaw and his team have been charged with…
