During an hour-long status conference Monday in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s never-ending contempt case, federal Judge G. Murray Snow granted a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to review documents from Arpaio’s confidential informant Dennis Montgomery in the MCSO’s so-called “Seattle investigation.” That investigation, as first revealed in June of…
Once again, the U.S. Department of Justice has disappointed us when it comes to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s abuses of power, this time with a Neville Chamberlain-esque settlement that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors approved on Wednesday. The board unanimously agreed to settle on three areas of dispute in United…
How far was Sheriff Joe Arpaio willing to go in ginning up a false conspiracy theory he hoped would disqualify federal Judge G. Murray Snow from the ACLU’s big civil rights case, Melendres v. Arpaio? As far west as Seattle and as far east as Washington, D.C. I’ll get to…
Ruling late Friday, federal Judge G. Murray Snow crushed Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s attempt to have the jurist recuse himself from contempt proceedings in the ACLU’s big civil rights case Melendres v. Arpaio. Snow declared that the motion, submitted on behalf of the sheriff and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, did…
We live in a time where the left in this country is scoring wins like there’s no tomorrow. From gay marriage to Obamacare to redistricting, conservatives are licking their wounds and looking at the prospect of being denied the White House yet again in 2016 by their Democratic bete noir,…
If there is anything more idiotic than rallying round the Confederate battle flag in a Walmart parking lot in Phoenix, it may be assembling for a counter-protest in the same parking lot. As reported by my colleague Miriam Wasser, it was the rednecks versus the radicals at the Walmart Supercenter…
There was no love lost for Sheriff Joe in Salem, Oregon on June 27 as he paid a visit at the invitation of the Beaver State GOP. According to Salem’s daily Statesman Journal, Arpaio drew about 100 supporters to a rally on the steps of the Oregon state capitol, and “three…
I took a lot of raspberries from the left over the profile I did earlier this year of Arizona’s new Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Though, I must admit that I enjoy ticking off liberals who think New Times should mimic their own third-grade comic-book attitude toward politics. You know: Dems…
Let’s talk about old white people, specifically the majority of old white people who live in Maricopa County. They are patriotic. They revere the flag. They vote. And they love — I mean love — Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio, who just turned 83, is like them, supposedly. He has grandkids…
What do you do if a political satirist paints an image of you, which you consider “beyond offensive”? If you’re Sheriff Joe Arpaio, you send it to every reporter in town, and tweet it out to your 63,400 followers. That’s what happened to an image created by longtime anti-Arpaio activist…
Tempe’s historic Double Butte Cemetery is one of the area’s oldest, dating back to the 1890s, before Arizona was a state. One section of the 17-acre property near 48th Street and Broadway Road is lush and green, lined with trees beneath which visitors might spy local fauna, rabbits, or an…
The son of U.S. Senator Jeff Flake has filed suit in federal court against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County, claiming that the sheriff’s investigation into the deaths of 23 dogs last year at Gilbert’s Green Acre dog boarding facility was motivated by politics, spite and Arpaio’s insatiable hunger for…
Joe Arpaio’s lawyers recently bought the sheriff and his chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, a little time by asking for federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s recusal in contempt proceedings against the pair and three of their current and former MCSO colleagues in the racial-profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. Further contempt hearings…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has lost a bid for summary judgment in the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against him, which covers much of the same ground as the ACLU’s big racial profiling case, Melendres v. Arpaio. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow found Arpaio and the MCSO…
Joe Arpaio’s lawyers recently bought the sheriff and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan a little time by asking for federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s recusal in contempt proceedings against the pair and three of their current and former MCSO colleagues in the racial profiling case Melendres v. Arpaio. Contempt…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s lawyers achieved what they set out to do on May 22, when they moved to have federal Judge G. Murray Snow disqualify himself from overseeing the sheriff’s contempt trial. That is, they slowed Snow’s judicial express train to the speed of a three-toed sloth. One day before this…
As I watched a live feed of the roiling ugliness outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix on Friday, I kept thinking of “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones, and that chilling refrain, sung by legendary backup singer Merry Clayton: “War, children, it’s just a shot away.” Indeed, with a…
Attorney Mel McDonald, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s personal Bruce Cutler, rode on the coattails of Birther lawyer Larry Klayman Friday morning by filing a motion in Phoenix federal court to have Judge G. Murray Snow recuse himself from the contempt proceedings in the civil rights case Melendres v. Arpaio. Klayman’s move to…
Talk about chutzpah. If a well-dressed moocher were to approach you and ask for money to fight a serious criminal allegation, would you give it to him? What if he admitted that he might kinda-sorta be guilty? And, oh, he has a well-paying job (six figures), owns loads of pricey…
One of the difficulties in holding Sheriff Joe accountable for the costs of his misdeeds in office has been that whenever someone dies in the MCSO’s jails because of brutality or indifference to medical issues, the tab usually is covered by a form of self-insurance called the risk-management trust fund…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s racial profiling ways are making a serious dent in Maricopa County’s budget, to the tune of $44.5 million, and counting. Maricopa County’s fiscal year 2016 budget, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors on Monday, allocates $23.8 million for costs associated with complying with a federal court’s…
During a status conference Thursday in Sheriff Joe’s never-ending contempt case, federal Judge G. Murray Snow laid some much-deserved wood to Arpaio and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, blasting them for ginning up a “bogus conspiracy theory” against his court. According to Snow, the conspiracy theory resulted from Arpaio’s use of…
