Visit sunny Arizona, stay for seven to ten, behind bars. That could be the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s new slogan for the state, based on a recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which shows that from 2006 to 2014, Arizona’s incarceration…
Federal authorities have charged a Phoenix police officer and his cousin for setting off a wildfire near the ghost town of Cleator while target shooting with tracer ammunition. Tom Sario, who has worked as a Phoenix officer for nine years, “is currently working on a non-enforcement position,” says Sergeant Jonathan…
Ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s name now can be added to the list of infamous criminals to emerge from the Minuteman movement. On Wednesday, after deliberating for a day and a half, a Phoenix jury found the onetime anti-immigrant firebrand guilty on two counts of child molestation and one count of…
Monday morning, during the last day of ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s trial in Phoenix on six felony counts related to child molestation and exposing minors to porn, a video of one of his alleged victims dealt serious damage to Simcox’s cause when the prosecution played it in court. Simcox, who…
A Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community police officer has resigned following accusations that he sexually abused a woman in his squad car. On May 26, Scottsdale police arrested 45-year-old Jay Wu, a decorated Salt River officer who’d been with the department for 10 years. He was released him on his…
Taking the stand Thursday, during day 12 of his trial in Phoenix for child molestation, former Minuteman and onetime Fox News regular Chris Simcox attempted to undermine the credibility of his accusers, calling one child “extremely precocious” with a penchant for foul language, and another, his grown daughter Linsey Randich,…
Former border vigilante Chris Simcox probably won’t be getting any Father’s Day cards in jail, judging from the testimony of three of his daughters on Monday, during the Minuteman Project co-founder’s ongoing trial on six counts of child molestation and furnishing pornography to minors. Two of the daughters who took the…
Shitcanned. A local TV news outlet has fired one of its top reporters after he was arrested for public defecation. CBS 5 (KPHO) news director Dan Wilson confirmed to New Times via e-mail today that reporter Jonathan Lowe “no longer works for the station.” When New Times wrote about the bizarre incident,…
Four decades after little Gary Ray Hose vanished, his brothers are certain he was murdered by their mother in 1974 and buried on a piece of land in Pinal County. Following two unsuccessful searches, Guy Hose, now 50, says detectives from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have given up on finding…
On Thursday, May 19, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge sentenced Tracy Elise, head priestess of the now-defunct Phoenix Goddess Temple, to four and a half years in prison for numerous felony counts related to running a house of prostitution. The long-running case received international attention and was the subject…
Former border vigilante Chris Simcox came face to face with one of his accusers in a Phoenix court on Wednesday, May 18: a pretty, 8-year-old girl with long brown hair, who likes to read and used to play with Simcox’s two daughters, who are about her age. She testified about…
Goodyear Police arrested CBS 5 journo Jonathan Lowe Monday afternoon while he was on assignment, reporting on a former Arizona State University football player who allegedly sacrificed the family dog by putting him in a smoker in order to appease an angry God. That doesn’t begin to explain the kind…
A jury acquitted a former Phoenix police officer of criminal sexual assault charges last week, clearing the way for his accuser to seek damages via a civil lawsuit – which she’s already in the process of doing. Court records indicate that the 23-year-old woman, whose name New Times is withholding, filed a…
The Phoenix Police Department is launching a series of anti-DUI memes to go along with a Cinco de Mayo enforcement effort this weekend. Using photographs well-known for their meme-making potential, the department’s “web ‘guru,'” Officer T. “Chad” Amos, created a series of 14 public-service announcements that will launch at 5 p.m. on the PPD’s…
Youth advocates and members of the Arizona Public Defender Association want the Arizona Supreme Court to do what many other states have done and end the indiscriminate shackling of youth in juvenile courtrooms. In a petition submitted to the court, attorney Christina Phillis writes that, “The goal of juvenile court is…
A cornucopia of meth, heroin, ecstasy, and other drugs, along with $7,000 in cash and evidence of drug-making equipment allegedly were seized by authorities this week at a Phoenix residence shared by a high-powered GOP fundraiser, her boyfriend, and his two young children. According to probable-cause statements on file with…
Federal authorities arrested an arson suspect last week in the same area where a string of suspicious fires worried residents of a neighborhood on Mount Elden in Flagstaff. Court records filed on Monday detail how Officer Charles Emerson of the U.S. Forest Service and another officer nabbed Shawn Patrick Farnham,…
The argument was getting heated so police allege that 28-year-old Rafael Arredondo decided to set his girlfriend on fire. Well, first, Arredondo, who lived with his girlfriend near 21st Avenue and Indian School Road in Phoenix, allegedly bound and gagged her with clear packing tape. Then, he doused her shorts…
An Arizona Department of Economic Security worker cracked under the strain of an abusive boss, admitting herself to a psychiatric ward and talked of wanting to “shoot someone,” the agency says. When the DES Office of Inspector General investigated, witnesses corroborated the employee’s story of verbal and physical abuse, and…
A Mesa man, who according to police went by the online alter ego “Zel the Wolf”on the digital art-sharing site DeviantArt.com, was arrested this week for alleged online sexual contact with two 12-year-old girls and for bestiality. Mesa police say Aaron Thomas Usery, 21, engaged in virtual sexual relationships with…
Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the country, still is believed to be on the loose, 15 years after he allegedly slaughtered his wife and two kids before blowing up his Scottsdale home. On Friday, the week before Fisher turns 55, the FBI and Scottsdale police released…
The Scottsdale Police Department may be stating the obvious with its new public-safety campaign, but the cops are warning teens that unsupervised prom parties in hotel rooms are prime places to drink and do drugs. It’s called “We’re Coming to the Party!” — the “we” being Scottsdale police. And it’s…
