Ramon Charley Armendariz, who was an MCSO deputy before his run-in with police last week, had drugs in his garage that investigators found in evidence bags, according to court documents.According to court documents, deputies found “possible drugs” at Armendariz’s place, including pot, meth, heroin, and LSD. These finds were made…
Much of Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne’s executive office staff is involved in “substantial campaigning” for his 2014 re-election, “while on state time and utilizing State resources.” This, according to a litigation hold letter made public Monday by Chandler attorney Tom Ryan, who represents former AG employee and ex-Horne campaign…
***Please see updates at the end of the post*** The MCSO remains quiet on the name of the 40-year-old ex-MCSO deputy who apparently barricaded himself in his home late Sunday night until surrendering around 1:30 a.m. And the Phoenix Police Department is referring all questions to the MCSO. But reliable…
To paraphrase Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, at the end of the day, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne will always be the guy in the red hat who’s in a car with a woman who’s not his wife. Granted, I’m no fan of Monty. But the county attorney, who is…
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne’s office has been in crisis mode this week over allegations that his staffers have been doing campaign work on the public dime. First, on Monday, the resignation note of AG staffer and Horne campaign volunteer Sarah Beattie was leaked to the Arizona Capitol Times. In…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s weasel-y attempt to exempt the “jail side” of his operation and all posse members from having to obey federal Judge G. Murray Snow’s latest dictate in the ACLU’s big civil rights case Melendres v. Arpaio has failed. With the exception of jail volunteers and others personally guaranteed…
So here’s a joke that was, until just recently, on the public Facebook page for Phoenix Police Officer Clint Brookins: “How many cops does it take to get a suspect downstairs?” “None, he fell.” The joke could be written off as dark humor, as could many of Brookins’ other posts…
Do Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his top brass and his lawyers all suffer from brain damage, or perhaps some form of what now is politely referred to as “intellectual disability”? If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the answer was, “yes.” That’s because the MCSO is, again, objecting to the full…
Sometimes I hate to be right. For instance, in a recent blog post about Sheriff Joe Arpaio traveling to Los Angeles for a Hollywood screening of producer Randy Murray’s documentary The Joe Show, I noted that Murray’s idea of inviting Joe along for the ride was a bad one, unlikely…
Among other things, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a liar and a coward. To prove my point, I could go into Arpaio’s history of dodging debates with re-election rivals, his opportune moments of amnesia under oath, and his sloughing off responsibility for MCSO scandals onto subordinates. But let’s examine more recent…
Should it surprise anyone that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, once called a “media whore” by his own PR flack, will be flying to Los Angeles for the red-carpet screening of a documentary that’s highly critical of him? Still, I’m a little annoyed by news of Arpaio’s attending a showing of director/producer…
U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow finally may be catching a clue about Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his team of beige-shirted flunkies, and all the lies they’ve been spreading about Snow’s findings and orders in the ACLU’s big civil rights lawsuit Melendres v. Arpaio. Today, Snow filed an enforcement order,…
Is there a diaper big enough to fit big ol’ baby Sheriff Joe Arpaio? Yep, Arpaio’s pitching a fit like the spoiled, soiled octogenarian that he is, demanding a do-over on a “corrective statement” that his attorney Tim Casey recently submitted to the federal court in the ACLU’s groundbreaking civil…
What will it take to rid Arizona’s political scene of the man whom one wag I know has dubbed Sand Land’s “Rasputin”? Not the conclusion of a humble administrative law judge, that’s for sure. I’m not knocking ALJ Tammy Eigenheer, trier of fact in the campaign finance case against Arizona…
First nativists and birthers, now Holocaust-deniers and anti-Semites? Yes, even for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, this jumps the proverbial shark. I’m talking about a recent interview Arpaio granted to Pennsylvania-based Holocaust-denier Victor Thorn, author of The Holocaust Hoax Exposed: Debunking the 20th Century’s Greatest Fabrication and Made in Israel: 9-11 and…
Not sure I’ll believe this until I see Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s geriatric scrawl on it, but reproduced at the bottom of this post is the so-called “corrective statement,” filed by the MCSO’s attorney Tim Casey in the ACLU’s big civil rights lawsuit Melendres v. Arpaio. You’ll recall that on May…
Two years is apparently enough to revive the fortunes of disgraced, former congressional candidate and wannabe underwear model Sheriff Paul Babeu. Back in 2012, my colleague Monica Alonzo revealed that the strident, anti-immigrants, Pinal County border hawk had been sleeping with his reputed enemy in the form of Mexican national…
Was last week’s posse crisis triggered by a former Cold Case Posse’s whistle-blowing article on March 9? Brian Reilly, the former posseman and an ex-Surprise Tea Party member, believes so. A new policy affecting posse cars and other vehicles put into effect on Thursday suggests he could be right…
Savings and loan swindler Charles Keating, who died Monday in Phoenix at age 90, hated pornography. Or so he claimed. The devout Roman Catholic made a name for himself in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, and beyond, as a scourge of smut, founding an influential anti-porn organization that eventually became…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will reportedly discuss the snafu over vehicle insurance for posse vehicles in Sun City today. Meanwhile, we found out that a third posse unit has parked its vehicles, contradicting information put out previously by the Sheriff’s Office (which didn’t respond to our inquiries about the…
A March 24 memo sent by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to Valley posse organizations warns that many posse vehicles violate a 2012 policy. The memo, obtained by the Phoenix New Times this morning, came about a week before the announcement over the weekend by the Sun City West and…
Contradicting several published reports, Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio’s office now says that no posse program was ever suspended due to an insurance “glitch.” The precise nature of the “glitch” still isn’t being explained to the public by county leadership or Sheriff Arpaio. But it seems to have something to do…
