Last week Owen Shackelton Jr., an investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), refused to be interviewed. Referring all questions to an NRC publicist, Shackelton said it was a matter of policy. The NRC inspector was not nearly so reticent when it came to talking to the Federal Bureau of…
The arrest of the militant environmentalists of Earth First! on May 30, 1989, included charges of terrorism directed at nuclear power plants in the West. The foundation for the alarming headlines that announced the bust is contained in government files. Those files detail an undercover FBI probe that began in…
That rarest commodity, a saboteur with a sense of humor, wrote the Arizona media in the second week of November 1987. A letter claiming credit for vandalizing ski lifts at Flagstaff’s Snow Bowl arrived on editors’ desks from a group calling itself the Evan Mecham Eco Terrorist International Conspiracy, EMETIC…
My wife’s question at the dinner table gave me pause. Like everyone else, we’d been discussing the outrageous events swirling around state Superintendent of Public Instruction C. Diane Bishop. The police had been summoned on April 21 to a downtown condominium by neighbors who reported a bloodied and battered woman…
Second of a series You might say that Ambrose McCree is obsessed with the beating handed out to Rodney King by the Los Angeles police. A retired California truck driver, McCree spent March 14 at the Los Angeles City Council’s open forum investigation of the videotaped assault. “I just, I…
True or false? Reverend Oscar Tillman is a civil rights opportunist in the flamboyant tradition of New York’s Al Sharpton. Yes or no? Phoenix Police Chief Ruben Ortega looks the other way when his officers abuse Valley blacks. A six-week investigation by Phoenix city manager Frank Fairbanks was supposed to…
Just when I was beginning to tire of CNN’s coverage of “attrited” warehouses in Iraq, Phoenix Police Chief Ruben Ortega unwrapped his million-dollar sting of state legislators. Is this hilarious? I feel like I ought to send out postcards across the country that announce, “Hey, I’m from Arizona, where people…
The television in the saloon was tuned to CNN as the first wave of American bombers struck Baghdad. The crowd, mostly men, gathered in front of the screen erupted with shouts of joy and pumped the air with their fists, woofing encouragement in the style popularized on the Arsenio Hall…
We did not know what we would discover. We knew only that a singular monument to man’s industrious spirit, a dam, was altering the handiwork of God, the Grand Canyon. For six months, Kathleen Stanton roamed the West: From the rapids of the Colorado River beneath the towering walls of…
The stands around the baseball diamond at University Park in downtown Phoenix are spotted with spectators but no one is playing ball at 10 a.m. on Friday. These people are just sitting, homeless. J.R. Murphy, a veteran of the streets himself, moves among the men stretched out on the grassy…
On August 12, Louis Bernard Harper was sentenced to fifty years in prison. An unemployed black resident of South Phoenix, Harper had sold a single $20 rock of crack to undercover police officers. It was his first drug offense. The White House, as well as then- drug czar William Edward…
Second in a series Jessie and Clara Gillespie, an elderly couple surrounded by transients in the historic Oakland-University Park neighborhood, do not always confront the homeless with pistols and shotguns. When they are not protecting themselves from burglary and violence, they admit they are overwhelmed with questions. “We saw this…
Of course it’s a shame about the defeat of the King holiday by the voters of Arizona. But we’re going to remain calm and reasonable about this race relations thing. The people have spoken. Let the legislature do something about civil rights. We must move forward. This is a time…
The purpose of a law enforcement sting is to put a buxom topless dancer on the lap of a sex-starved man to see if he’ll get an erection. State Senator Leo Corbet went bull-goose tumescent when the state Attorney General’s Office did the nasty hula in front of his lusting…
Mormon missionaries do not roar through neighborhoods astride Harley Davidsons, sporting fade haircuts and M.C. Hammer bloomers. Instead, these earnest young men invariably try to convert you by arriving at your residence atop sensible Schwinns, wearing black pants, white shirts and “Hi, your daughter and your soul are safe with…
I saw my son’s still-damp footprint upon the bathroom tile . . . Later, in the twilight, he slept in my arms as I watched the evening news. The broadcaster described the blockade against Saddam Hussein that was gathering itself like a jelling thunderhead; even so, I tried not to…
The coroner’s report said it all; Ric Rankins’ death on July 10 was a “homicide.” A scrawny 144 pounds, Rankins had his voice box crushed by a choke hold. Unnamed employees of Smitty’s grocery chain killed the 43-year-old black man in a west-side parking lot. Three days later, the Arizona…
This is what Pete Span believes. Two United States marshals went to the home of his elderly father in search of a fugitive. Without a warrant, the officers ransacked the house and roughed up the 74-year-old man. After leaving the father’s home, the marshals went to the Span family’s place…
When the Babbitts abandoned Arizona to pursue the White House, they bequeathed Evan Mecham and Rose Mofford to those of us left behind. Not content with this questionable legacy, the Babbitts have once again taken to the road, most recently to midwive the birth of democracy in the unlikely precincts…
They said Phoenix was done. Over. A desert flash in the pan. Worse than Houston. You know who “they” are: the eastern media guys in their fey, little bow ties from Hart Schaffner & Marx. The Valley’s decline didn’t move off the front page of the national press until Donald…
Children believe that television’s Mr. Rogers is a soft-spoken friend. What I believe is that if the man in the cardigan sweater changed jobs, he’d want to drive a bus for Greyhound. Such is the faithful, comforting image all of us carry of the drivers who steward the nation’s poor,…
We at New Times did not tell the truth. Was it deceptive? Of course it was deceptive. Was it unethical? Welllll . . . let’s talk about that. Under my instruction, New Times writer David Koen called State Senator Jan Brewer, and during each of the three phone interviews Koen…
