Phoenix News Blog

If we're lucky, she'll never come back...

Sand Landers want former guv and now-DHS czar Janet Napolitano to keep polishing her chair in D.C. And not as a U.S. Senator.

That's what a new Cronkite-Eight poll reveals. In a hypothetical 2010 head-to-head between Nappy and Senator John McCain, McCain'd top Napolitano 50 to 41 percent.

No surprise there, really. Nappy's name is mud after ditching the state for a sweet gig with the Obama administration as its token nativist. Her relative hard line toward immigrants (the expansion of the 287(g) and Secure Communities programs) has won her few pals with Arizonans still miffed that she abandoned the Grand Canyon State in the midst of an unprecedented budget crisis and recession.

It would have been interesting to see how she'd have done against right-wing gob-flapper J.D. Hayworth, who's running just behind McCain in a possible primary match up. I'm guessing J.D. would pretty much smoke her in a general election. 

The one thing you can always count on with minutemen, nativists and neo-Nazis is more backstabbing than backstage at a Miss America Pageant. This video from VronRN2 of a conversation between anti-racist YouTuber Naui Ocelotl Huitzilopochtli (try saying that three times fast) and minuteman Jim Gilchrist is a perfect example. It took place outside a fundraiser in Anaheim, California for Orange County sheriff's candidate Bill Hunt. The star attraction at the event? An appearance by our own Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Gilchrist gets catty while talking to Naui

Gilchrist is a former supporter of alleged kid-killer Shawna Forde, and co-founder of the Minuteman Project along with his now-enemy, U.S. Senate dark horse (and man, do I mean "dark") Chris Simcox. The Minuteman Project's board of directors, which included infamous California nativist Barbara Coe, fired Gilchrist from his own organization in 2007, claiming Gilchrist had embezzled funds, which Gilchrist denied. Gilchrist sued those who'd axed him, but later dropped the suit and started a new group named "Jim Gilchrist's Minuteman Project," just in case any of his underlings got any funny ideas.

I just spoke with CBS 5/KPHO news producer Gilbert Zermeno, part of the award-winning team that put together the recent, blistering report on Sheriff Joe Arpaio's abuse of power that ran at the end of October. That's the one that featured reporter Morgan Loew's interview with former U.S. Attorney and straight-shooter David Iglesias, who said that based on the evidence he had seen and his own investigation he would seek an indictment of Arpaio.

Zermeno tells me that CBS 5 will run a follow-up to their October piece tomorrow, November 25, at 10 p.m., so set the TiVo. They broke some ground in their previous investigative report, particularly with the Iglesias interview, setting a high bar for themselves and others. I'm looking forward to what they broadcast Wednesday night.

Sheridan vs. Straus: The best part of the Channel 12 report

CBS 5's nearly 10-minute segment, I think, may have helped inspire Channel 12's recent half-hour long piece on the sheriff, entitled, "Arpaio: Above the Law." Sadly, Channel 12 really didn't deliver on the promise of that title. Instead, what resulted was a hastily-produced and not very well thought-out 30 minutes of air time, with the bulk of it going to lopsided panel discussions on Arpaio, and no new reporting at all, much less a comprehensive exploration Arpaio's more recent abuses.

courtesy of Ernesto Yerena

Maybe ASU could name him "Mr. First Amendment"

As mind-numbingly impossible as it is to imagine, Sheriff Joe, avowed enemy of a free press and brown people everywhere, will be the guest speaker at the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism's "First Amendment Forum" this Monday, November 30.

Talk about eating turkey after Thanksgiving. Arpaio lecturing at a First Amendment Forum? Too bad Idi Amin's not around anymore. ASU could have him come chat about human rights.

Arpaio's interlocutors on this "forum" are listed as journalism prof Rick Rodriguez, Cronkite News Service broadcast director Susan Green, and CNS digital news director Steve Elliott. Needless to say, the onus will be on these three to turn up the Bunsen burner on our corrupt top law dog. Otherwise, they'll never live it down. 

Arpaio's deputies have arrested reporters, intimidated them, and blocked the release of public records, forcing news outlets to sue to get them. He plays favorites with the media, rewarding those outlets and journos that whitewash him with access and ride-alongs, and punishing those he doesn't like by banning them from his press conferences on the 19th floor of the Wells Fargo Building. 

Hate's all the rage in Sand Land. But you knew that...

The FBI today released its hate crime report for 2008, showing the number of documented hate crimes by participating agencies to be up nationally by about 2.1 percent. Locally, hate crimes were up in Arizona by nearly 15 percent, in Phoenix by 11.25 percent (see note below), and in Maricopa County by 100 percent, but this last figure is somewhat misleading. There were only two hate crimes reported by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for 2007. There were four reported in 2008.

According to the FBI's stats, Phoenix had the largest chunk of the reported hate crimes in the state, 89 in 2008, which is nine more than 2007. The state had a total of 185 for 2008, up from 161 in 2007.

These are significant increases, and should come as no surprise to those who pay attention to Arizona's roiling debate on immigration, with nativists, neo-Nazis and opportunistic politicians -- such as our own Sheriff Joe -- dominating the discussion. No doubt, Arpaio's ongoing anti-immigrant sweeps of the Valley's Hispanic communities increase ethnic tension, spread fear, and contribute to such crimes being underreported.

Indeed, trouble with reporting issues for bias crimes likely skews the results, as Professor Brian Levin, Director of Cal-State San Bernardino's Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, pointed out in his Huffington Post blog on the new numbers.

"Participation is simply too spotty to be able draw firm conclusions about the direction of hate crime nationally last year," Levin wrote in his blog item.

Gov. Arpaio? If Rasmussen's right, start packing your bags...

Arizona voters apparently love racial profiling and corruption. That's the conclusion I'm drawing from newly released Rasmussen poll numbers showing that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio does the best of possible GOP gubernatorial candidates against Arizona Attorney Terry Goddard. In a survey of 1,200 likely voters, Arpaio, a Republican, would top Democrat Goddard 51 to 39 percent in a hypothetical match-up.

Governor Jan Brewer and state Treasurer Dean Martin don't fare nearly as well. The poll shows Goddard beating Brewer 44 to 35 percent in a 2010 general election. Martin does a bit better, at 38 percent to Goddard's 40.

Arpaio is clearly the big dog, with a 63 percent favorable rating, while Goddard has only a 51 percent approval rating. To the question of whether or not Arpaio is doing the right thing, "trying to work around federal law and track down illegal immigrants," 64 percent of Arizonans replied in the affirmative.

Though the sheriff likes toying with the idea of gubernatorial run, he's never taken the bite. The conventional wisdom has been that his message is limited to crime and illegal immigration, and that he would not do as well statewide as he does in conservative Maricopa County.

But as this poll shows, you can't go wrong bashing Mexicans in Ari-bama.

Nixon redux: Document shredding, deleted e-mails. What's next, secret tapes?

In a stunning revelation recently made public as part of the ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an MCSO sergeant has admitted that the department has been destroying documents and e-mails directly related to the MCSO's anti-immigrant sweeps. This, despite numerous requests by the plaintiffs' lawyers for those documents and e-mails since the beginning of the Melendres v. Arpaio suit in December 2007.

During an October 27 deposition of Sgt. Manuel Madrid, a supervisor and founding member of the MCSO's infamous Human Smuggling Unit, Madrid admitted that he had been deleting e-mails related to the sweeps and shredding so-called "stat sheets" submitted by individual deputies and posse members. The Human Smuggling Unit takes the lead in all immigration raids and sweeps, and Madrid was one of those responsible for compiling data on the dragnets.

In that deposition, part of which was made public Friday in a massive 132-page motion by the plaintiffs seeking sanctions against the MCSO's defense, Madrid stated that the destruction of evidence continued at least till the recent October 16-17 sweep in Surprise. Below is a small excerpt from Madrid's questioning under oath by a lawyer for the plaintiffs:

Q. After the sweep from about two weeks ago, were you given stat sheets by the individual officers who participated?

A. Yes.

Q. And do you still have them?

A. No.

Q. What did you do with them?

A. I believe I shredded them.

Madrid made clear that he destroyed all stat sheets as a matter of course after collecting data from the sheets, which included information on stops made by sheriff's deputies, any criminal arrests, citations issued, and the number of hours the deputies worked. The stat sheets also included a section for notes by the deputies or posse members involved. 

Those remarks are not collected by the MCSO, and so are now lost, thus damaging the plaintiffs' ability to prove that the department is racially profiling, which is the point of the lawsuit. Other pertinent information is lost when those stat sheets are shredded, as well as the ability to cross-reference them with the final MCSO reports.

Under oath, Madrid copped to deleting e-mails concerning the sweeps whenever his e-mail box got full. Madrid testified that he had never received an order from higher-ups instructing him to save requisite e-mails or to retain stat sheets. 

Additionally, in a November 4 affidavit from Madrid's boss Lt. Joe Sousa, the Human Smuggling Unit's top dog, Sousa admits that after the information on the stat sheets was transferred to a "master data sheet," the stat sheets were "discarded."

Because each sweep has been performed by 100 to 200 deputies and posse members, and because there have been 13 sweeps so far, plaintiffs' lawyers estimate that "hundreds, if not thousands, of stat sheets would have been available to Plaintiffs but for Defendants' shredding of the documents." 

Could J.D. eat McCain's lunch? The Rasmussen poll suggests that it's a possibility.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll just out shows KFYI lip-flapper and former congressman J.D. Hayworth in a dead heat with U.S. Senator John McCain for the 2010 GOP primary nod. Hayworth is within the 4 percent margin of error, trailing McCain 43 to 45 percent with likely Republican primary voters.

That's a little too close for comfort for McCain and for anyone who remembers Hayworth's buffoonish performance as a congressman from Arizona's fifth district until he was bested by Democrat Harry Mitchell in 2006. Hayworth's Southern accent, which he has labored unsuccessfully to lose over the years, earned him the nickname "Foghorn Leghorn," by detractors. The former sportscaster was born and raised in my home state of North Carolina, you see.

Hayworth is a committed right-wing extremist, and a darling of Arizona's anti-Mexican nativist knuckledragging crowd. He regularly bashes the undocumented on his afternoon drive-time radio show, and hosted the popular hate-Obama tax day tea party at the Arizona Capitol earlier this year. In 2007, he spoke at a nativist rally where neo-Nazi J.T. Ready also spoke. In his remarks, Ready called Hayworth and now state Senator (then state Representative) Russell Pearce "statesmen."

Dennis Gilman's outdone himself yet again in his latest video, this time focusing on the November neo-Nazi march to the state Capitol, and the links between the Nazis and the nativists. It's a creepy, almost apocalyptic vision of Arizona dominated by racist politicians such as state Senator Russell Pearce, done to the tune of Tom Waits' Rain Dogs, electronic music by local composer D.warf, and some guitar by Gilman himself.

Gilman's latest: Nazis and nativists in Sand Land

Thanks to New Times Web Editor Jonathan McNamara, you can now watch Phoenix muralist Francisco Garcia creating the Blue Boy image that so freaked out the little town of Pine-Strawberry, Arizona, that he was ordered to take it down and replace it with the image of a cabin. McNamara squeezed four hours of video into about a two minutes, so it's an easy watch.

Francisco Garcia Paints "Blue Boy" from Jonathan McNamara on Vimeo.

Garcia's mural, of which the Blue Boy was just a part, is the subject of an item in my Bird column this week. School officials insist the move was not racist. But statements they made in e-mails to Garcia reveal that race and ethnicity were issues in the decision for the school, which only has one African-American kid, and a few Latino children.

You can check out more of Garcia's work at his Myspace page myspace.com/grafftruth. He's a talented cat, and he tells me that he's planning to make prints of the Blue Boy image to sell online. Hey, why not T-shirts, with slogan like, "Too blue for Pine," or "Censored in Strawberry"?

I'll post some of the other images from the mural shortly.