Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is putting the infamous 4th Avenue Jail on lockdown for an indeterminate amount of time on Friday because of a scheduled protest against him and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Phoenix-based grassroots organization for migrant rights, Puente Arizona, is organizing a rally for an “Arpaio-Free…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Maricopa County settled yet another wrongful death suit this week, paying almost $1 million to the family of Felix Torres, who died an excruciatingly painful death from ulcer-related complications in a county jail while detention officers refused to help him. Michael Lacey wrote about the case last month for New…
“Thanks, but no thanks” was the message a group of church leaders and community members had for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the day after he announced a plan to keep dozens of black churches “safe” across Phoenix with “armed deputies and posse members.” Arpaio stated his intention at a press conference…
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…
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…
For years, Arizona recyclers have been making big bucks by shipping empty aluminum cans in trucks to California, a state with a lucrative, consumer-subsidized recycling program. Passing Arizona cans off as California cans is illegal in California, but not in Arizona, leading to a cottage industry of can-shipping that’s destroying…
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…
Guadalupe Torres held her head in weathered hands. Tears trickled between her fingers. In a world with a God, your children do not die before you. But Guadalupe’s son, Felix, did, in fact, pass over. He was 47. Abuela Guadalupe is that saddest of women. No faithless husband ever inflicted…
Retired Mesa police union president Javier Fabian Cota won a partial victory this week in his civil-rights lawsuit against San Diego police, but so far no monetary award or reimbursement of his many expenses. The flap began about 3 a.m. on June 4, 2011, while Cota was in downtown San…
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…
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…
A former Scottsdale woman is making a last-ditch effort to avoid losing her Rocky Point condo over a fight between a developer and construction workers. Donna Peckenpaugh faces imminent eviction from her condo at Bella Sirena on Sandy Beach, as well as the total loss of the $350,000 she paid…
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…
Which Tim Casey do you believe? There’s the Tim Casey who issued the following statement via his “ethics attorney” (read, “flack”) Karen Clark in April, after his former client Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Arpaio’s Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan stated under oath in federal court that Casey, their ex-lawyer in the…
The City of Phoenix and police Officer Mark Rine are getting sued in federal court for the death of Rumain Brisbon, a 34-year-old unarmed black man who was fatally shot by Rine on December 2, 2014. The plaintiffs include Mykel Chambers, mother of one of Brisbon’s three daughters and the…
Since my year-old public records requests to the MCSO regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s costly Seattle snipe hunt continue to be unfulfilled, I’ve decided to periodically release information I’ve collected regarding the sheriff’s flunkies involved in the operation. As confirmed by both Arpaio and his Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan, the MCSO…
