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…
As I’ve pointed out in my cover story this week on Phoenix Law Enforcement Association president Mark Spencer and his sleazy ways, PLEA swallowed the Phoenix Police Department’s controversial kidnapping stats whole hog at one time. Long before they used them to bash ex-Police Chief Jack Harris as corrupt.Now like…
Former Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott, in a gushing, now-public goodbye to his boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, claims that a long-awaited report on his misconduct is “littered with hundred (sic) of flaws” and other problems. The document to which he refers is the 1,022-page report on an internal investigation into allegations by another high-ranking deputy with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Frank…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio fired his chief deputy last week, but Dave Hendershott is being allowed to resign before the scheduled date of termination. Is that really a resignation? Typically, when someone’s forced to resign from a company or governmental agency, the boss doesn’t first state in writing that the employee…
Courtesy of the Three Sonorans, the revolution is YouTube-izedHow often have you seen students protest and commit acts of civil disobedience because they want to study something?While their peers in the rest of the country may be looking to cut class, Tucson’s students are battling to maintain ethnic studies in…
A couple of weeks back, I blogged about how Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s spokesman Tim Gaffney had apparently borrowed some stills of desert barricades taken by National Socialist Movement member Harry Hughes, otherwise known as the world’s “nicest neo-Nazi.” Or so I’ve dubbed him.Well, hell hath no fury like…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s boys in beige raided a Valley business this morning in search of illegal immigrants using fake IDs in order to work — again. The result: a whopping four arrests.About 9:30 a.m., sheriff’s deputies “swarmed” the Allied Tube Company near 27th Avenue and Thomas Road in…
fromtheleft.wordpress.com Apparently it takes a federal judge to tell the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office that being Hispanic isn’t actually illegal. More than two years after a Hispanic father-son combo was arrested by MCSO deputies near the site of one of their infamous worksite raids, a federal judge ruled Monday that…
The Obama administration on blast and the 1070 boycott rolls on, one year laterBehold this first ever video collaboration between Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman and New Times, documenting Saturday’s anti-Senate Bill 1070 march to the Arizona state Capitol.In the above video, Gilman captures some great footage of angry nativists, pro-immigrant…
A Mohave County prosecutor tells New Times today that he dropped meth charges against a woman working as an informant following allegations that a police officer sexually abused her. As we reported on Friday, Erika Solem of Bullhead City is suing Mohave County and the Mohave County Attorney’s Office, Deputy County Attorney…
Goldwater Institute wants nothing more than to protect your right to have hundreds of small fish suck dead skin off of your feet. Later this week, the Arizona Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear a lawsuit filed by Goldwater on behalf of a Gilbert spa owner told by the state…
Sheriff Arpaio’s double-dipping, now-fired chief deputy, Dave Hendershott, lost his last home in foreclosure proceedings and has been on administrative leave for months while under investigation. This hasn’t stopped him from living in the lap of luxury, judging by his current residence. In 2008, a real estate firm specializing in high-end habitations showed…
Around a year ago, just days after Governor Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law and made Arizona synonymous with nativism and bigotry, Arizona Congressmen Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva, both Democrats, spoke before an anti-1070 rally of thousands, exhorting the crowd to fight against the hate 1070 represents.Pro-immigrant…
