A new Arizona law that limits the ability of labor unions to harass employers with picketing and defamation has drawn a federal complaint by two local unions. The United Food and Commerical Workers Local 99 and the Local Union No. 469 of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting…
We’re thrilled sad to report that Deb Moyer, a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy who starred (abused power) in the TLC network reality TV show Police Women of Maricopa County is in some trouble. Moyer was arrested over the weekend in connection with a domestic-violence incident with her husband Peoria police…
Los Lobos was never officially part of the Sound Strike, the musicians’ boycott of Arizona over Senate Bill 1070, Sand Land’s notorious breathing-while-brown law. But when the old-school Chicano rock band announced the cancellation of a gig at Scottsdale’s Talking Stick Resort in June of 2010, they earned plaudits from many in…
The scriptures advise us that a gentle answer turneth away wrath. Apparently it has the effect of disarming Tea Baggers as well.That proverb was put to the test last Sunday at Phoenix’s Margaret T. Hance Park where a couple of hundred people gathered to celebrate International Workers’ Day, otherwise known…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio ought to tell his deputies not to play with Steve Ellman. The Valley developer and former Phoenix Coyotes owner has clearly been a bad influence on the sheriff’s men. * Ellman is a major figure in the SCA campaign finance scandal, and is Arpaio’s…
You can add attempted bribery to the list of misconduct committed by former Deputy Chief Larry Black, one of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s closest aides, the Munnell Memo investigative report shows. A few years ago, the report states, Black offered a sheriff’s lieutenant in his agency season tickets to the Phoenix Coyotes…
Sheriff Arpaio’s disgraced chief deputy, Dave Hendershott, once told us that a stuffed rattlesnake he kept in his office was named after former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley. Maybe that’s what he told visitors, but we figured the forked-tongue serpent was his personal totem. Every new page released from…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s media sluttiness knows no bounds and now includes exploiting abused horses in an apparent attempt to repair his image. As the walls are caving in around his corrupt command staff following the (partial) release of a report from the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office regarding misconduct…
Police in full riot gear, some tech-ed out SWAT-style with pepper-spray guns. A cop chopper overhead. Protesters locking arms to prevent police vehicles from moving. A 69 year-old activist on crutches arrested and cited, along with six others. Cops flinging demonstrators around like rag dolls.In other words, not your average…
Dave Hendershott, the former top aide for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, s apparently was worried enough about being charged with crimes that he hired a legal firm to help him. That wouldn’t be a problem — except he may have gotten the county to pay the bills. It looks like…
Yesterday, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu announced that after his office’s investigation into misconduct by top deputies in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, he’s determined that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio knew nothing of the misconduct.Babeu claims that Arpaio became so insulated by now-fired Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott that the…
The long-awaited report on the investigation into allegations against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s command staff didn’t get released today, after all. True, a 1,022-page summary report was released. But about one-third of it was blacked out, and the three separate reports containing the conclusions of the investigation haven’t…
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said today that he’s convinced his Maricopa counterpart, Joe Arpaio, knew absolutely nothing about the misconduct of his top deputies. Babeu, speaking at a news conference at the state Capitol, said the investigation his office conducted on Arpaio’s commanders proved numerous, serious instances of misconduct and…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said today that he “made mistakes” in dealing with his top aide, former Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott. In an intentionally brief news conference today, Arpaio read from a prepared statement and took questions from reporters. But he didn’t really say much. Arpaio refused to…
Ethnic studies student Angelica Penaran takes a TUSD board member to the woodshedThe fight against the effort to slowly kill the Tucson Unified School District’s embattled Mexican-American ethnic studies program continues today with a TUSD board of governor’s meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Last week, a TUSD vote on a proposal…
We’re down here at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office headquarters, checking on the latest release of documents related to the Munnell Memo investigation. The docs we received last week, we found out today, weren’t part of the 1,022-page summary report that’s been sort of advertised by officials with the…
In the wake of President Barack Obama’s announcement that terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has been killed by American forces during a firefight in Pakistan, I have a few predictions.The first is a given: traitorous right-wing nutjobs will not grant the Obama administration any credit for the kill. They also will…
With their own words and deeds, they are damned.I’m talking about what’s in the latest filings in the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office over claims that his anti-immigrant sweeps racially and ethnically profile Latinos in Maricopa County. Both sides in Melendres vs. Arpaio have asked for…
The guy who put the ridiculous tribal tattoo on the face of former Valley resident/former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has filed a lawsuit against the movie studio responsible for the upcoming film The Hangover 2.St. Louis tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill has asked a federal court judge to bar Warner…
Attwood on Arpaio’s cockroachesBack in August, I wrote up my interview with former ecstasy kingpin Shaun Attwood, whose memoir Hard Time: A Brit in America’s Toughest Jail provides a harrowing account of his two years in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s medieval prison complex.Filth, cockroaches, a cornucopia of drugs, the neo-Nazi Aryan…
From what we’ve seen so far today, the investigative report on allegations against Dave Hendershott, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s former chief deputy, can be summed up with a cliche: Hendershott lied, cheated, and stole. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released part of the long-awaited report today, and we just got done examining it…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently tweeted that he will “speaking at [Arizona State University’s] Cronkite School of Journalism” today at 3 p.m.But if you’re expecting a repeat of the debacle that occurred in 2009 when Arpaio attended a public forum at ASU’s Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix, and questions from ASU dons…
