A federal judge sentenced former Redflex CEO Karen Finley to 30 months in prison last week for her role in a bribery scheme to win photo-enforcement contracts in Chicago. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall also ordered Finley to pay $2 million in restitution, telling the 57-year-old Arizonan “there is no…
A Phoenix judge set January 6, 2017, as the final pretrial hearing for Andy Barrios, accused of killing three men on December 26, 2015, in an auto accident.
Senate Minority Leader Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, worked with victims of sexual violence as a social worker and knew there were rape kits that were going untested. “I knew it was an issue, but I didn’t know the extent of it,” she tells New Times in an interview this week. Hobbs learned…
Wolfskin Ink, a popular West Phoenix tattoo parlor whose late proprietor is the subject of this week’s New Times cover story, was firebombed early Wednesday morning by unknown persons wielding a Molotov cocktail. According to Wolfskin’s current owner Rayney Perkins, most of the damage done to the shop was due…
Illegal arrests by a cult-run police force have spurred a new federal lawsuit against two polygamous towns on the Arizona-Utah border. Three businessmen who are former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints allege that officials in the rural towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, violated…
Just before sunset on a recent Sunday, Alfonso Cordoba is the only street vendor left on a highly trafficked corner near 65th Avenue and Berkeley Road in west Phoenix. Cordoba, an amiable-looking man in his 40s, is wearing sensible-looking Teva shoes and a straw hat to keep the last traces…
In a lengthy statement released to news outlets on Monday, Arizona’s top federal prosecutor called for the public to curb its rampant speculation about police shootings, which he blamed on “news media, social media, and some politicians.” The statement by John S. Leonardo, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, follows…
The Reverend Jarrett Maupin was dragged away in handcuffs by Tempe police Monday morning during a nonviolent protest of police shootings that closed down both sides of Mill Avenue Bridge for about an hour. Maupin had just finished leading a small but vocal crowd of about 50 to 75 to…
The Reverend Jarrett Maupin catches a lot of flak for leading protests of police shootings in greater Phoenix. But nature abhors a vacuum. And love him or loathe him, Maupin remains the point man for direct action in the Valley, keeping the pressure on law-enforcement agencies with marches and demonstrations…
Despite an Arizona Supreme Court opinion and sensational news articles, Arizona parents and caregivers can rest easy: Nobody’s going to be charged with child molesting just for changing a baby’s diaper. But the fear is real — and so is the embarrassment Arizona is once again facing nationally because of poor…
Former Phoenix police officer Sergio Virgillo remembers the point of no return for what should have been a routine call to a trailer park in South Phoenix, when fellow cop Richard Chrisman took his Glock 22 and pressed it so hard against the temple of Daniel Rodriguez that it bent Rodriguez’s head to one side. Chrisman and Rodriguez had been “going at it…
At a press conference on Thursday, Arizona’s top law-enforcement officials announced that they have increased the reward for information about the Serial Street Shooter, saying they urgently need the public’s help to crack the case. The news conference at Phoenix police headquarters included Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Maricopa County…
The Phoenix man who narrowly escaped being killed in July by the Serial Street Shooter doesn’t want his identity revealed. “I’m just an ordinary young man who experienced an extraordinary miracle,” he says with a grin. He may be right about that. On July 11, the unknown assailant, who appears…
Maricopa County’s death-penalty system is plagued by “overzealous” prosecutors and creates a high number of questionable death-penalty cases, according to a new Harvard Law School report. “Too Broken to Fix: Part I: An In-Depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties,” by the school’s Fair Punishment Project, identifies Maricopa as one of…
A Mesa police supervisor was facing termination before he retired last week following his recent conviction for super-extreme DUI, a police spokesman says. Richard “Rick” Van Galder, who had more than 20 years on the force, was stopped in February with his wife, Teresa, a Mesa PD homicide detective, as…
An employee of the Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim faces a detention hearing this morning on a charge that he choked and raped another employee after a dorm party. Jeremy Ean Bird has been held in detention since his August 11 arrest in connection with the assault, which…
New evidence shows that a few weeks before a teenager held in solitary confinement at Perryville Prison died in what appears to be an act of suicide, the Arizona Department of Corrections had been specifically warned about her deteriorating mental health and notified that the conditions in which she was…
An inmate who raped a teacher at an Arizona state prison in 2014 may be forced to pay her $10 million — in the unlikely event that he gets out of prison and/or inherits a boatloads of cash. A federal magistrate made the recommendation earlier this month after Jacob Harvey, 22,…
An Arizona woman charged with receiving infant porn said on Monday that it was her teen daughter, not her, who was in communication with a Colorado child-porn suspect. Sarah Cox, 39, of Clarkdale, was charged last week with three counts of knowingly receiving child pornography. As a New Times article…
An Arizona woman has been caught up in the federal investigation into an alleged child pornographer in Colorado. On August 4, authorities charged 39-year-old Sarah Cox of Clarkdale with three counts of knowingly receiving child pornography. The complaint, filed in Arizona U.S. District Court by Homeland Security Investigations, alleges that Cox and Richard Hennis…
The Mesa Police Department has released findings from a months-long project on community engagement, just in time to buoy public confidence in the agency. With one of its officers facing trial for the January 18 killing of an unarmed man, the agency is looking ahead. On Tuesday, in a conference…
Newly released body-cam video (embedded below) shows Loreal Tsingine brandishing a pair of scissors at Officer Austin Shipley of the Winslow Police Department before he shot her during a confrontation outside a Circle K store on Easter Sunday. The police department has edited the actual shooting out of the March 27 clip. It…
