I just slapped my 5-year-old on the head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. He stumbled a bit from the blow. He squared up again like some tough guy, so I thumped him in the gut. Call Child Protective Services. Call the principal and superintendent. Quit the team, call a parents’…
Sometimes The Spike just wants to bang its pointy little head against a brick wall. The one at Phoenix’s downtown Fire Station 1 will do nicely this time. What’s got The Spike in a lather this week is a recent federal court judgment against the City of Phoenix to settle…
Disappearing ActNeighborhood watchers: I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article about Eva Mae Wilson (“Whatever Happened to Eva Mae?” John W. Allman, May 16). I, too, was relieved to hear that she is alive, and I, too, was disappointed to hear that she does not have good living conditions. I just…
Bored of Supervisors Aloha, Mr. Stapley: The article “Crack Addicts, Political Shenanigans and Indian Relics” (John Dougherty, May 9) goes a long way to explain why Arizona, my old residence, and Hawaii, my new residence, have both dropped near the bottom of the 2002 “Best States.” Louisiana is ranked last…
Eva Mae Wilson might as well have been a ghost. She didn’t speak to strangers. She never opened her front door to company. She guarded her personal life as if it were a precious treasure someone might want to steal. For most of her life, she cultivated anonymity like the…
The toddler in the photograph beams as he rests his arm on the cantaloupe-size growth on his side. The doll-faced boy in the old print seems unaware that his body shouldn’t look this way, that the growth isn’t an armrest, that humans shouldn’t have cauliflower feet. Doctors in Denver chopped…
The Spike nearly dropped the phone this week when Barbara Kingsolver called back. The Tucson writer has become infamous for her J.D. Salinger-esque disappearing acts, and she’s been mum on the topic of One Book AZ, the group grope of a book club in which librarians invited the entire state…
Longtime Tempe resident Babak Dehghanpisheh knew long before he graduated from college in 1993 that he needed to see the world before he sorted out his career path. So he went to work on a boat in Alaska, “slinging the crab,” for months. The experience only aroused Dehghanpisheh’s wanderlust. Eight…
David Therrien had a simple proposal for real estate developer Dixon “Duke” Cowley. In July 2000, Therrien says he approached Cowley seeking to lease an abandoned lumber yard that Cowley had purchased in June 2000 for $1.2 million. Therrien says he wanted to negotiate a one-month lease for the 7.8-acre…
Until a few weeks ago, it seemed certain that beloved Maricopa County Jail psychiatrist Leonardo Garcia-Bunuel had lost his job of 28 years. Garcia-Bunuel had been informed of his firing March 5, in a terse letter approved by then-director of Correctional Health Services Joseph P. Murray. “The intent of this…
Little Nasty Boy sits sullenly at home in Oregon on a weekday afternoon. He has just been informed, for the second time in two weeks, that a scheduled midget wrestling bout in Phoenix, in which he was to take on Pitbull Patterson, has been canceled. The news hits him like…
Hurtt So GoodBeing in the news biz, The Spike makes it a point to keep up with the countless newspapers, magazines, tabloids and various other rags that abound in a city the size of Phoenix. But The Spike had never seen or even heard of a slick local entertainment guide…
Arresting DevelopmentsDisorganized crime: Kudos to New Times for its excellent article “Capitol Cop-Out” about the Capitol Police (John W. Allman, April 25). This is yet another example of the validity of the Peter Principle — that organizations die because the people who run them who have risen to the top…
Church Confession Come clean: Well, well. The pope has finally made a public statement that anyone accused of abusing children is a criminal. That would also include priests. Duh! Will church leaders now release a list of all who have ever been accused of abusing children? Or will they continue…
Soon after Robert “Gypsy” Comer awakes each morning, he starts walking. Comer knows that 300 laps around his cell makes one mile, and he keeps track of how far he’s gone. He walks for hours on end, doing his time with a kind of Zen focus, trying not to indulge…
The Spike has gotten used to getting publicly patted down, probed, searched and scrutinized in the months since 9/11. But The Spike never expected extreme measures at a Blink 182 concert, where the guys like to run around naked, or nearly so, under all those tattoos. No need to frisk…
Five children lost their mother when APS serviceman John Noack, drunk and stoned, plowed into Pauline Jeffery’s Ford Escort with his 13-ton APS utility truck. The impact catapulted the economy car and its passengers into a pine tree along Highway 260, east of Payson. It took Jeffery 10 minutes to…
The United States Department of Agriculture is investigating the Phoenix Zoo following the death of Tinkerbell, an 8-year-old female porcupine used by the zoo in educational programs. The federal investigation — the second of the Phoenix facility in recent years — could result in substantial fines and, if serious violations…
One New Times staff writer was honored as the state’s top journalist by the Arizona Press Club and eight others won first-place awards for news and feature writing at the club’s yearly banquet. Amy Silverman won the prestigious Virg Hill Journalist of the Year award for a portfolio of stories…
© 2002 Bishop Thomas O’Brien continues to harbor priests who molest children. In doing so, O’Brien continues to heap anguish and injustice on the children and parents in the Phoenix Diocese who were betrayed, and forever damaged, by their parish priests. One such parent is Doris Kennedy, who contacted me…
Kids on the SkidsTeen angel, can you hear me?: Please, take the time to read this. I read your article about Christopher Camacho’s death at the Adobe Mountain facility (“Dying Young,” Amy Silverman, April 18). I am interested because I know several teens who are incarcerated at that facility, and…
For years, Capitol Police officers have arrested people without cause and harassed the homeless. They target those who hang out along the sidewalks and parking lots near state government office buildings just west of downtown Phoenix. They are lax in turning in booking information, leaving people to sit in jail…
