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Sheriff Joe can always count on ultra-conservative KTAR lip-flapper Darrell Ankarlo to wipe Arpaio's fanny clean with his kisser, even when Joe's been caught with his hand in the RICO cookie jar, as has been the case with the revelation of Arpaio's Chief Deputy David Hendershott's Honduran project. I heard Arpaio growling on air yesterday as Ankarlo lapped it all up like a dog does his own doodie. Nothing new there. Ankarlo's been an unabashed Joe bootlicker since he arrived in Phoenix as the latest cliche of an anti-Mexican hate-jock. Even the stink of corruption does not deter him from puckering up to Joe's stanky keister.

To tell the truth, I've got a lot of respect for KTAR's news room. Despite the rightward slant of the Mormon church-owned station, the reporters there put out a solid product. Must be embarrassing though, attempting to be true-blue journos while the station itself gives free reign to hatemongers like Ankarlo, as well as nationally-syndicated right-wing loon Glenn Beck, easily the most annoying pinhead on air anywhere.

In any case, yesterday Ankarlo played StepinFetchit to Nickel Bag Joe, letting the geezer cop shoot his mouth off about the training of Honduran cops by MCSO bigwigs, all paid for by the county and RICO money.

"What's 30,000?" asked our spendthrift Sheriff, arguing that he's allowed to run his own foreign policy as Sheriff of Maricopa County.

"We've been dealing with the highest level," Joe crowed. "We've been meeting with the president of that country."

Joe justified the Honduran enterprise by claiming that the MCSO has received "millions of photos for our facial recognition," whatever that is. The number of photos has fluctuated wildly from one million to five million. Hey, here's a news flash: There are only 7.5 million people in Honduras. So, what, have they photographed all the little old ladies and kiddies too? Arpaio always begs off explaining what the hell he's talking about, mumbling something about the "sensitivity" of the situation. If you ask me, it sounds like a bunch of bullhockey.

But the money shot of the confab yesterday was Ankarlo's question to Arpaio. "Did one penny of my tax dollars pay for this trip in any way, shape or form?"

Ankarlo was suggesting that the nearly 32K in RICO money was a non-issue if there were no "tax dollars" used. Arpaio's response was, as you might suspect, full of the brown stuff:

"First of all, it was RICO monies...We were using that money -- $30,000, which is nothing."

Ankarlo followed up with, "Not one penny other than RICO money was used, yes or no, Sheriff?"

"Well, I don't know, there may be a couple of dollars here or there," Joe replied. "But if there was it was not significant."

"Is that hundreds, thousands, do you know?" asked Ankarlo.

"No, no, no," insisted our crotchety top constable. "The majority of the money was the RICO money. I don't know if we spent a few bucks otherwise. I doubt it."

OK, so first off, RICO money is OUR money. It's money that comes from asset forfeitures from criminals doing bad stuff, and it's supposed to go for specific law enforcement needs -- not to some other country to train its cops.

But aside from RICO, county tax dollars -- yours and mine -- were used to pay for this Honduran adventure. Check these docs the MCSO just coughed up to me, here. As you can see from the names listed and the payroll hours listed, these 10 cops (previous info the MCSO gave me indicated only nine deputies involved, but here there are 10) were on county time as they were winging it down to sunny Honduras. Also, there was a significant amount of overtime paid to these deputies. In one case, a deputy racks up over 40 hours of OT. And if you'll recall, one of the reasons the MCSO is in a budget crisis is because too much OT has been paid out.

So, no matter what excuses Joe or his lap dog Ankarlo pony up for this Central American boondoggle, it was done with OUR money -- OUR RICO funds, and with deputies who were ON THE COUNTY CLOCK. This is why it's a snowballing news story. And it's why dumbass Darrell had Arpaio on this Thursday.

Ankarlo did correctly note the parentage of the story.

"Having seen the firestorm," said Ankarlo in a windy wind-up to a softball Q. "And again it's no love lost between you and New Times. New Times hates you, and I doubt you even have great aspirations to even be a reporter for that organization. [huh?] So New Times comes out, they expose it. And then KTAR, Channel 12, others pick it up..."

You got that right, Jack. This was a New Times baby, no matter what Channel 12 or the Arizona Republic maintain. Though I'm happy to see it get wider play.

I should also note, as I did in my very first blog item on this scandal back in mid-January, that it was longtime Arpaio-foe Jim Cozzolino of Arpaio.com fame who first tipped me off to the articles on Honduran Web sites discussing Jabba the Hendershott and other deputies being down in Honduras training Honduran po-po. Kudos again to Jim! And thanks for tipping me off first.

The Guv gives Sheriff Joe, David Hendershott and members of their Honduran posse some love. (Click on pic for a slightly larger version.)

Talk about a rogues gallery! Here's Gov. Napolitano in her June 2007 photo op with Sheriff Joe, Chief Deputy David Hendershott and members of the Honduran National Police. As I reported back in mid-January, Napolitano issued a proclamation last year declaring June 5 to be "Bay Island Sister Agency Project for Justice and Service Day." You can click on the link, or read the full document below.

The photo op and the proclamation were obviously a favor to Napolitano's political ally Sheriff Joe. However, the Guv's top flack Jeanine L'Ecuyer told me via e-mail that, "There is no record regarding who originally made the request for the proclamation and drop-by; it was probably done by phone."

I asked L'Ecuyer if the Guv would do it over again knowing what we know now, that these Honduran cops were flown up here all expenses paid by the MCSO, and that this was part of an ongoing training operation in Honduras being bankrolled by county and RICO funds. L'Ecuyer did not reply to this inquiry. However, she did state that, "It may be useful to know the Governor's office prepares and presents an average of 450 proclamations per year."

Personally, I don't think that lets Napolitano off the hook. I mean, if Fidel Castro came to town and Arpaio asked her to issue him a proclamation, would she do it? If Arpaio asked Nappy to throw herself off the Luhrs Tower after making love to a koala bear, would she do it? Arpaio is now using her proclamation to excuse this misuse of RICO and taxpayer funds. Maybe that's OK with the Governor. After all, she and Arpaio are buddies. Arpaio backed her first run for Governor, if you recall, by appearing in a campaign commercial.

L'Ecuyer also wrote,

"As a courtesy to Sheriff Arpaio, the Governor honored a request from his staff to issue a proclamation in recognition of his agency's work with law enforcement in Honduras. Also as a courtesy, the Governor spent five minutes with the delegation, during which time a photo was taken. The Governor supports exchanges of law enforcement intelligence and training."

The fact that the Governor jumps when Nickel Bag Joe wants something is instructive. No wonder Arpaio gets away with murder in this burg. To be fair, it's County Attorney Thomas' office, which OKs the use of RICO funds by the MCSO. Still, the fact that the Governor allows herself to be used like a cheap, cigar-store Indian by the most tyranical public figure in the state is bile-inducing.

Remember when Nappy was U.S. Attorney for AZ? On her last day in that position, she and Arpaio had a press conference wherein they both essentially maintained that Arpaio had been exonerated of all allegations in a federal probe. Later, Arpaio appeared in that TV spot on Napolitano's behalf. One hand washes the other in Sand Land, yet somehow neither paw ever gets clean.

Below is the text of the Governor's proclamation:

* BAY ISLAND SISTER AGENCY PROJECT FOR JUSTICE AND SERVICE DAY *
[M07-334]

Janet Napolitano
G O V E R N O R
DONE at the Capitol in Phoenix on this sixth day of June in the year Two Thousand and Seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Two Hundred and Thirty-first.

I'm on the run, but I've just heard that KTAR has reported that Sheriff Joe's suspending his Chief Deputy David Hendershott's pet Honduran project -- one that's been financed by RICO funds to the tune of about $32K. According to KTAR's Bob McClay, Arpaio told KTAR that,

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm telling my staff that, until we get out of this budget crunch, we're going to put it on hold. We could always communicate via telephone, that's not difficult, or letter. But, right now, we're not sending anybody back there. That's my decision."

Funny. I asked Arpaio about all this back in January when I first wrote about it for the blog and for The Bird. Arpaio just looked at me like I was nuts, and said he does not answer questions from the New Times.

The program had the stated purpose of training Honduran cops. Arpaio justified it to KTAR by saying the Board of Supervisors and Governor Napolitano were all for it.

"Actually, we gave a briefing before the Board of Supervisors," said Arpaio. "They all loved this program. The governor gave it a nice award."

He also argued that the Honduran enterprise was dead cheap, even though it was all done on the county dime.

"Our budget is 285-million dollars. You talk about 30-thousand, we just spit and we spend 30-thousand," spendthrift Joe informed KTAR.

He also told the reporter, "We got one-million photos from Honduras, one-million to go into our facial recognition program to identify terrorists and to catch people who are fugitives."

Funny. I've put in public records requests asking for EVERYTHING the MCSO's got on this program. There's nothing in there about thousands of photos.

Anyway, remember where you heard about this Honduran story first. I don't have time to post all the links, but here are my two past blog items. I'm also skeptical that this program will really be suspended. More as I get it.

"Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Chief Deputy David Hendershott in Honduras???"
(Sat Jan 12, 2008 at 03:27:14 PM)

and

"Sheriff Joe Arpaio pays for the training of Honduran cops with RICO funds to the tune of around $32K, and counting." (Sat Feb 23, 2008 at 03:09:53 PM)

PS: Here's a link to The Bird item on the subject from January 24, "Jabba in Paradise." Also, The Bird column this week discusses the story at length.

I'm glad KTAR scored these quotes from Joe, as Joe wouldn't go on camera for the pieces Joe Dana did for Channel 12 News on the story, and Joe generally refuses to answer any queries from New Times. I don't know why...heh...

Paid for by your RICO dollars: Chief Deputy David Hendershott (left), the unchecked power behind Sheriff Joe Arpaio's throne, in Honduras with Bay Islands Police Commissario Julio Benitez; retired MCSO Deputy Roger Marshall; and Captain Jim Miller.

Remember my revelation last month that the upper echelon of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office was in Honduras training Honduran cops? The blog item, "Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Chief Deputy David Hendershott in Honduras???" and a later Bird item, "Jabba in Paradise," detailed articles written in Honduran publications online about MCSO pooh-bahs training Honduran police officers all through 2007 and on into 2008. There were photos of the officers involved, and accounts on the Web sites for Honduras This Week Travel and the radio program The Roatan Bruce Show of MCSO personnel teaching the Honduran po-po all about crime scenes and (very ironically) the evils of corruption.

My speculation at the time was that perhaps this was all being paid for through some U.S. government or international grant. Boy was I wrong. After obtaining 108 documents of MCSO expense reports through a public records request, it's now obvious from the notations on the reports themselves that the training of these Honduran cops is being paid for by the MCSO through tens of thousands of dollars in RICO funds -- monies obtained through asset forfeiture proceedings under the state laws mirroring the Federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, the law which allows law enforcement agencies to seize assets and property from those involved in offenses such as money laundering, extortion or the drug trade.

According to Arizona law, there are two revolving funds: one overseen by the Attorney General's office; and one handled by the County Attorney. The statutes involved also state that "Monies in any fund may be used for the funding of gang prevention programs, substance abuse prevention programs, substance abuse education programs and witness protection...or for any purpose permitted by federal law relating to the disposition of any property that is transferred to a law enforcement agency."

I don't know how the training of foreign cops fits into that definition, but throughout the paperwork I received, expenses such as plane travel, luggage handling, hotel stays, dry cleaning, meals and in one case the flight of Honduran cops to Phoenix, are noted as being paid for by state RICO funds, and are approved by MCSO Chief of Business Operations Loretta Barkell and by Chief Deputy Hendershott.

At least nine members of the MCSO traveled to Honduras for weeks at a time, costing a total of $31,777.82 in expenses reimbursed by RICO funds. The cost to the taxpayer is likely higher. The official nature and detail of the expense reports suggests that these deputies were on official duty and on-salary during their extensive stays in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, or in the Caribbean paradise of Honduras' Bay Islands. I'll be looking further into whether or not overtime was paid to the officers during their stays, though this seems likely as their junkets to Central America often included weekends.

Each of the Travel Authorizations and Expense Reports reference the purpose of the reimbursement being "Sister City Travel." On other Training/Travel Request Forms, "RICO" is circled as the source of funding. Certain memos, initialed by Barkell and others, usually have comments such as "Approved RICO-State" scribbled across the bottom of the forms.

Indeed, one memo from Hendershott to Barkell is typical of the requests for reimbursement. Dated July 10, 2007, it reads,

"In the spring, as the official representative from the Sheriff's Office, I traveled to Roadan [sic], Honduras to establish and develop a sister city relationship focusing on drug law enforcement and human smuggling. I personally paid $812 toward the airline ticket. As this was official business, I am requesting reimbursement of this $812. The travel was funded from RICO."

The dates of the travel range from January to October of last year, and are incredible considering the budgetary constraints the MCSO has been under recently. In one case, Special Investigations Division Commander Captain Edward "Pat" Lopez asks for the reimbursement of several items he claims were needed to instruct Honduran cops, and includes bills for his dry-cleaning while in Honduras.

There are per diem expenses as high as $51 a day listed in some of the paperwork, and requests for reimbursements of large meals at restaurants feeding several persons.

The MCSO even foots the bill for four members of the executive staff of the Honduran National Police to fly to Phoenix and meet with Sheriff Joe during "a week long tour of our operations from between June 4, 2007 and June 8, 2007," notes a memo from Internal Affairs Commander Capt. James Miller to Hendershott. The memo continues, stating that the Honduran police force lacks the budget "for the expenses associated with travel and accommodations for this meeting." So the MCSO will have to "obtain financing for round trip travel hotel accommodations, and food expenses for their entire stay." Both Hendershott and Barkell initial the request with the note, "approved, RICO fund."

News of the RICO funding for this Honduran escapade angered Buckeye Police Chief Dan Saban, who is challenging Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the general election this year. Saban contended that Sheriff's Office RICO funds should be spent in-county, not for training another nation's cops, especially in light of the MCSO's budget shortfall.

"This isn't right," asserted Saban. "Not when the people in Aguila are arming themselves because they have no protection. They have people dying in the jails because they're under-staffed. We have a law-enforcement need right here under Sheriff Arpaio's nose: The need to supply us with satellite facilities. Our citizens are paying for us to spend extra hours transporting and booking prisoners. And we're providing resources to another country? That's aggravating."

The aggravation's just beginning. As MCSO Captain Brian Beamish told Honduran radio jock Roatan Bruce last year, "there is more training scheduled for the beginning of the year (2008) and it is going to continue for the next several years." That means more RICO money that should ideally be going for programs in Maricopa County will continue to be funneled down to Central America indefinitely. Unless, of course, the voters remove Arpaio's administration from power this election year.

I'll work to get some of these docs up by Monday so you can view them for yourselves. I can't help but wonder if this "project" is being used by the MCSO to award perks. After all, who wouldn't want a free trip to the tropics on the county dime? You know, a little working vacay expensed from the MCSO's RICO account? Like the song goes, nice work if you can get it...

Sen. John McCain's "Oh!" face. Supposedly, the ladies love it...

Am I the only one who's found Sen. John McCain's denial of an improper relationship with Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman to be as insincere as a late-night TV ad for a sex chat service? Right-wing radio, after skewering McCain for being untrustworthy now that he's the presumptive GOP nominee, has suddenly turned on a dime following the New York Times' expose on the 71-year-old Senator, his 40-something Sex in the City-esque urban cougar of a pal, and the favors he's reputedly done her clients. Conservative lip-flappers are calling the Times' piece a smear. They're ones to talk. It's a tactic the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world are experts in.

Basically, I buy the Times piece, even though much of it is based on anonymous sources. There are two pics of Iseman floating around out there. In one, she has the hang-dog, droopy-eyed demeanor of a basset hound. In the other, however, she looks "right fit" as Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G liked to say. Based on that second pic, and based on the theory that all men crave a little "strange" now and then, I believe the Times' line, even though Cindy McCain is a fairly well-preserved MILF herself. (Though, I'd guess from that crack-in-the-sidewalk smile of hers that she's had some work done.)

Do I think it's a big deal that a U.S. Senator might have scored with a Washington lobbyist? Come on, you know it happens all the time. As for helping out that lobbyist's clients, it ain't right, but put most men in that dilemma and they'd cave like a boat of matches in a tidal wave. That's why the French are superior to us on this issue. The French assume their leaders will have mistresses as well as wives. Otherwise, the Frogs'd figure something's wrong with the guy.

In any case, McCain's corruption eruptions are more serious than those of the bimbo persuasion.

Take the very fact that Congressman "Slick" Rick Renzi's the AZ co-chair of McCain's campaign. Everyone here in Sand Land knows Renzi's ethically-challenged, and today's indictment of Renzi and two business associates by the U.S. Attorney's office on numerous counts including "wire fraud, extortion and money laundering, and conspiracies to engage in these acts" is no surprise. Most with a political clue knew Renzi was the target of an ongoing corruption probe by the Feds. Last summer, Renzi announced he wouldn't run for Congress again, probably because he was aware something like this was coming.

So why would McCain be so stupid as to make Renzi his co-chair in AZ? I could understand the misstep if Renzi was an unknown pol repping him in some other state, but this is in McCain's own back yard. Renzi and the allegations swirling around him have been well-reported. It certainly makes you wonder if McCain has a political blind spot large enough to blot out the very state he represents.

I fully expect that McCain will be dogged throughout the campaign by various stories documenting his Janus-faced approach to political ethics. As I mentioned in a February 5 blog item, The Washington Post recently reported on McCain's meeting with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who had his visa revoked by the U.S.government because of his "suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures." McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis assisted in putting the two men together in 2006.

Davis told the Post that his contacts with Deripaska "all relate to my private business and have nothing to do with Senator John McCain." The Post said there was no evidence of wrongdoing, or of some sort of tit-for-tat. Still, such coziness with a billionaire recalls a certain coziness with a high-roller named Charles Keating.

Indeed, the ghost of the Keating Five scandal is always close by McCain. I was reminded of this in watching grizzled old legal warhorse Robert Bennett being pulled out of the barn to defend McCain in this recent joust with The New York Times. Attorney Bennett (who's famous for defending Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky case), led the Senate ethics investigation in the Keating affair back in the '80s. Bennett was criticized by another member of the Keating Five, Senator Dennis DeConcini, in his recent memoir, Senator Dennis DeConcini: From the Center of the Aisle.

In the book, DeConcini, a centrist Dem, charged that Bennett was attempting to make the controversy a "Democrat scandal" by steering it away from McCain, the scandal's sole Republican. DeConcini asserts that McCain was knee-deep in guilt. As I wrote in the Bird column "McCain Shame,"

McCain made out like a bandito, scoring a whopping $112K from Keating's [fundraising]efforts. Indeed, McCain and the slimy S&L-er were thick as thieves. While serving in the House from 1983 to 1986, McCain flew with Keating to the latter's private retreat in the Bahamas aboard Keating corporate aircraft. And the senator's trophy wife, Cindy McCain, along with her pops, invested $359K in a Phoenix shopping mall developed by an offshoot of Keating's American Continental Corporation.

At McCain's press conference yesterday, with his ice-blonde wife steadfast by his side, the senator declared that, "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust, nor make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest and would favor anyone or any organization."

Uh, OK, so what about the Keating Five scandal? Are we supposed to let that one slide, Senator? McCain is insufferably pompous, almost preachy while holding himself up as a paragon of virtue. The reality is he has feet of clay. Or is that some other kind of brown stuff on the Senator's shoes?

Who will Wilenchik blame the Lacey-Larkin arrests on next? Mr. Green Jeans? His manservant Cato? Col. Mustard in the kitchen with a wrench?

In case you missed it, disgraced ex-special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik has a little op-ed in the Arizona Republic today. In it, he woodenly attempts to rationalize his actions in the October debacle that saw my bosses Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin arrested on bum raps. Wilenchik's dissembling diatribe couldn't have been timed any more perfectly. He digs his hole deeper and deeper one day after New Times announced its Notice of Claim against Wilenchik, his former boss County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the co-defendants in the case. (See this week's cover story, "Blowback!")

In his stilted, poorly-written opinion piece, Wilenchik flays away at former employee William French, heretofore a respected ex-prosecutor and judge. Last week in the Arizona Republic, French pointed the finger at his erstwhile boss, holding Wilenchik responsible for the arrests of Lacey and Larkin for the alleged misdemeanor of revealing grand jury subpoenas in their October 18 feature "Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution." French, who resigned following the arrests, told the Arizona Republic in a February 11 Q&A that he believed Wilenchik had used him, and that ultimately Wilenchik was responsible for the Lacey-Larkin collars, even though such an offense would normally garner the issuance of citations, not the wrist-cuffing of suspects.

"Somers told me that Wilenchik said, `No more Mr. Nice Guy. we're going to arrest them,'" recalled French, referring to his colleague at Wilenchik's law firm, attorney Rob Somers. "That's what happened. From what I read, Dennis said something like, `There was a mistake from someone in my office.' You don't make that kind of mistake."

French's account seems self-serving, and leads to still more questions. At one point, he mentioned that Somers "started writing the citation[s]," which were to be delivered to Lacey and Larkin. Such misdemeanor citations don't need to be composed by a lawyer. Rather, they are hand-written, usually by the officer issuing them. In the cases of both Lacey and Larkin, they received hand-written citations from the arresting deputies. Each one was signed by a deputy, so why would Somers need to "draft" them? It doesn't seem to jibe with the fact that such citations are standard forms, so standard that an officer on the beat can fill them out.

Furthermore, French's name is listed right beneath Wilenchik's in the Application for Order to Show Cause, which Wilenchik submitted to Judge Anna Baca on the day that Lacey and Larkin published Wilenchik's unconstitutional and over-broad subpoenas. This Application demands the arrest of Lacey, Larkin and their lawyers, and it asks for crushing fines to be imposed on New Times as long as the issue is in the stands and the subpoenas up on New Times' Web site. In the course of a year, these fines would have equaled $90 million, likely bankrupting the paper. How could French have not known about this Application, which was faxed to all parties around 2 p.m. on the same day of the night of the Lacey-Larkin arrests?

But back to the Wilenchik op-ed, which leaves me thinking that the dood must be a Gemini.

Throughout the piece, Wilenchik desperately wants to have it both ways, arguing that it was the Sheriff's Office that made the decision to arrest Lacey and Larkin, and that he and his underlings had nada to do with it. At the same time, Wilenchik asserts that the arrests were justified and lawful.

"The decision to bring the owners of the New Times downtown was therefore not only called for under the law," writes Wilenchik, "but was the decision of the Sheriff's Office, not mine..."

Jeez, guy, pick a lane, will ya? They say defeat is an orphan, but in Wilenchik's case it's also got one eye, three arms, and an albino unibrow. Still, I wanna see the DNA test on that puppy. MCSO flack Paul Chagolla has denied that the Sheriff's Office made the call on the collars, and instead pointed the finger back to Rob Somers and William French. Asked by New Times if he knew who insisted on the arrests, Wilenchik wrote to us in an e-mail after the fact, "Don't know. If I find out, will be back."

Now Wilenchik wants to pin the blame solely on the MCSO. French told the Republic that "Dennis had a deputy from the Sheriff's Office come in and explain to me what the options were." Admittedly, that sounds pretty lame. Wouldn't a former judge know what the options were? Why would he need a lowly deputy to tell him how a citation is issued?

Wilenchik reams French a new one on this point, stating in his "My Turn" column that "I did not request a deputy from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office come to our office to talk to French or seek his advice." Rather, "The deputy was sent by the Sheriff's Office to drop off papers at my office..." Papers? What was it, your dry cleaning bill, Dennis?

The disgraced former special prosecutor continues in the op-ed, hammering home the point that it was the MCSO that made the call on apprehending Lacey and Larkin. Not that he's implying there was anything wrong with it...

"Once the Sheriff's Office made the determination to lawfully arrest for the offenses," states Wilenchik in the Republic piece, "their options were a matter for them to determine under the law and they properly made their determination on how to thereafter proceed -- not me or French."

But back in October of last year, Wilenchik was singing a different tune, releasing a statement to the press that's contradicted by this new claim of his that responsibility for the arrests lies with the MCSO:

"The arrests of Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin...were the result of a miscommunication. My knowledge and intent was to have them cited for violating A.R.S. § 13-2812, understanding that if they refused to accept the citations, they could be taken to jail and booked, then cited. The direction from me was apparently misunderstood by the other Special Prosecutors, which resulted in a request that the MCSO deputies arrest, book and cite Messrs. Lacey and Larkin, rather than attempting to just issue them citations. The actions against Messrs. Lacey and Larkin were completely legal, and some might argue more than justified, given the offenses they knowingly and openly admitted they committed, as detailed above. Nonetheless, the County Attorney, Sheriff Arpaio and I had no personal knowledge that Messrs. Lacey and Larkin would be arrested that evening until after they were, nor would they or I have condoned such action in advance I am sure as a matter of policy of the County Attorney’s Office."

You can read Wilenchik's entire October 25 statement, here.

Back in October, Wilenchik was trying to blame it all on his flunkies Somers and French. Now, here on February 21, the arrests were the choice of the Sheriff's Office. Wonder if Wilenchik saw New Times' Notice of Claim coming? Sure seems like he's trying to distance his law firm from October's legal disaster.

He's in fine company. In his press conference ten hours after the October 18 arrests, County Attorney Thomas asserted that he'd had no advance knowledge of the rousts, and proceeded to fire Wilenchik as special prosecutor and quash the subpoenas. Arpaio whined at the time that he was the true "victim" in the controversy. Then just last week, French pipes up, sniveling, "I know I did nothing wrong," and throwing his ex-boss Wilenchik under the proverbial bus.

Not many soldiers left in Wilenchik's foxhole nowadays. You know, if I were Rob Somers, I'd be bucking for partner in Wilenchik's firm right about now.

The following is a consumer alert reported by my colleague Ray Stern, following up on features he wrote last year concerning the local co. LifeLock.

LifeLock, the ethics-challenged, Tempe-based company featured in two investigative New Times articles last year, has been slammed with a federal lawsuit that aims to deliver the business equivalent of a mortal blow.

The lawsuit was filed February 13 in the United States District Court, Central District of California, by one of the Big Three credit bureaus, Experian, which alleges it’s losing millions of dollars a year because of LifeLock’s “illegal and fraudulent activities.” You can read the entirety of the complaint, here

Experian not only wants to stop LifeLock from providing its primary service – it wants massive payback and punitive damages, including the “disgorgement of profits earned by LifeLock as a result of its illegal practices.”

As New Times reporter Ray Stern revealed in his May 31, 2007 article, What Happened in Vegas, LifeLock was founded by Robert J. Maynard Jr., a local entrepreneur who had been banned for life from the credit-repair industry after the Federal Trade Commission shut down another of his businesses in the mid-1990s. The article also exposed as a lie Maynard’s oft-repeated tale about spending a week in jail because he was a victim of identity theft, and quoted his own father accusing Maynard Jr. of identity theft. Maynard Jr. resigned in the wake of the article, but reportedly still retains a 10 percent stake in the company.

Despite the negative media attention following New Times’ expose, not to mention a follow-up article that blasted anti-identity-theft services as a waste of money ("Money for Nothing," July 19, 2007), the company continued to gain thousands of customers. LifeLock claims more than 500,000 customers now, though such a figure must be taken lightly considering a LifeLock spokesman’s admission that the company has falsely inflated customer numbers in the past.

One reason for LifeLock’s success is the millions it spends on heavy advertising, with much of that funded by private investors. CEO Todd Davis is widely known for giving out his Social Security Number in advertisements, though that tactic has also resulted in Davis becoming the victim of identity theft. Last month, the company reported it received $25.5 million in fresh funding from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other investors.

At the heart of the lawsuit are the “fraud alerts” LifeLock places on its customers’ credit bureau accounts, which are like electronic red flags. They require a lender to call the consumer directly if someone applies for credit in the consumer’s name. In other words, if you wanted to a buy computer on credit, Circuit City would have to call you first and confirm you really wanted to take out a loan. Without your credit bureau account being red-flagged, it’s possible someone other than you could take out a loan in your name -- a frequent type of identity theft.

A 2003 amendment to federal law gave consumers the right to place fraud alerts good for 90 days on their credit accounts. But the law states that only the consumer or an “individual” acting on behalf of the consumer can place the fraud alert – even then, the consumer must believe he or she is about to become a victim of identity theft. People can easily place a fraud alert on their own account, for free, by calling Experian at 1-888-397-3742.

LifeLock charges people more than $100 a year to place the fraud alerts four times a year, leaving the person’s account in a perpetual state of alert. And that ain’t right, Experian charges.

Experian claims it incurs a huge expense operating the toll-free line being used to process fraud alerts for thousands of LifeLock customers. And the credit bureau alleges LifeLock “launders” the fraud alerts by hiding who is making the calls to the toll-free number.

When Experian discovered thousands of fraud alerts were being placed by LifeLock through a Canadian telephone number, it blocked that number from being received – but LifeLock switched to a Pennsylsvania phone number to make the calls. When Experian blocked that number, too, “LifeLock then resorted to larger banks of telephone numbers in an attempt to further disguise its activities,” the lawsuit states.

Experian also makes other allegations, such as that LifeLock habitually uses false advertising to claim its service is legitimate. The company seeks an injunction to stop LifeLock from making fraud alerts on behalf of individals, and it wants LifeLock to pay back the money it has made from offering the service.

“It’s damaging for us and to the industry as a whole,” says Peg Smith, one of Experian’s senior VPs.

No word yet from LifeLock, whose local spinmeister, Jason Rose, hadn’t yet heard of the suit as of Wednesday.

****UPDATE****

LifeLock flack Jason Rose finally got back to us with the following statement:

"LifeLock does not comment on pending litigation.We have engaged counsel and intend to vigorously defend the case. In the meantime, we remain focused on our mission of providing valuable services to help protect consumers from identity theft. National consumer reporting agencies like Experian have an important role to play to protect consumers too. Instead of taking actions to hinder or challenge us, we want Experian to join us in pursuing this mission of helping consumers prevent identity theft."

J.T. Ready, 2nd from right, proud Republican and anti-Semite, at a neo-Nazi rally in Omaha, NE last year.

I've lived in several states over the years, but AZ takes the proverbial cake when it comes to the casual, ho-hum acceptance of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other dangerous political extremists as a part of everyday life. These rabid, right-wing reactionaries rear their foaming pit-bull mugs with alarming regularity in Sand Land, and for the most part, folks just respond with a collective shrug.

Take the events of January 19 in Tempe, where the Maricopa County Republican Party hosted its "mandatory meeting" and elected a new chairman, Tom Husband, who replaced outgoing county chairman Lyle Tuttle. At this MCRP assembly, Mesa neo-Nazi J.T. Ready distributed several racist and Holocaust-denying tracts, leaving copies on the seats of attendees for them to pick up.

See, turd-Reicher Ready was enjoying the privileges of membership. J.T. Ready became a Republican precinct committeeman in 2006, running unopposed for this unpaid, yeoman's rank in the GOP, and winning a slot with 36 votes. Ready was elected from precinct 529, also known as Mesa 67. There were two slots open for Republicans, but Ready was the only one on the ballot in that primary.

If someone at the local GOP had been paying attention, they could have kept the Valley's most infamous National Socialist agitator from infiltrating Republican ranks. As it was, neither the county nor the state GOP knew about Ready's rise until I told them. To his credit, Sean McCaffrey, executive director of the AZ Republicans, had an intermediary ask J.T. to step aside. Predictably, the gargantuan goosestepper told 'em to go fly a Nazi kite.

McCaffrey has vowed to run enough candidates for precinct committeeperson this year to kick J.T.'s obese, anti-Semitic ass to the curb. In the meanwhile, J.T. apparently is allowed entree to party-only functions.

The county convention was held at a local Christian church. But that didn't stop Ready, who openly attended a neo-Nazi rally last year in Omaha, NE and who keeps an active page on the white supremacist networking site Newsaxon.org, from passing out such anti-Semitic filth as the essay "Simple Arithmetic," which posits that "The mass-murder of six-million Jews...is a myth."

He also distributed a blatantly bigoted tract copied from Stormfront.org, a white power message board run by Ron Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, titled "What is racism?" In it, the author asks, "If blacks, for example are equal to whites in every way, what accounts for their poverty, criminality and dissipation?"

Then there was, "A Warning for Americans: A Message from a South African," which offers a doomsday scenario for America, suggesting that non-whites will one day strip U.S. Caucasians of all their rights and riches. "Once you lose social, cultural and political dominance," warns the screed, "there is no getting it back again."

This embarrassment has so far been kept quiet by the local GOP. Chairman Husband, who had not yet assumed his position when the matter was dealt with, told me that then Chairman Tuttle ordered the prejudiced propaganda collected from the floor and declared that such racist and anti-Semitic documents would not be tolerated.

"This is the first time we've ever encountered anything of this nature," said Husband, who was more forthcoming than Tuttle when asked. "So it kind of blindsided us. But we acted immediately to correct it. And as long as I'm the chairman, that's our policy: Nothing hits the seat unless it has the chairman's approval. We're not going to have hate literature permeating our meetings."

McCaffrey informed me that when he was told of Ready's little stunt, he took steps to increase security at the state mandatory meeting. "And at our meeting he wasn't hard to miss," said McCaffrey. "He was the only guy there dressed like a girl." Seems Ready showed up to the state gathering in his XXXL Scottish kilt, with nothing on underneath but his, ahem, Heinrich Himmler underoos...

Don't the Republicans have any sanction for known neo-Nazis who show up to meetings and pass out crap more suitable for a cross-burnin'? Heck, both the Dems and the Reps kept ALL of the independents from voting in AZ's recent presidential primary. Can't the GOPers find some little-known bylaw that would allow them to blackball this bum? Get creative, people. You're the party of Dick Nixon. Rat-fucking's in your blood. What if ol' J.T. happened to be a retro-Commie and was handing out free pics of Che Guevara at Republican clambakes? You're telling me you couldn't do something about the fool then?

The Republicans are a tad chagrined by J.T., but they need to be thoroughly ashamed and pissed off. You have a freakin' Nazi in your party, besmirching the good name of the political organization that gave the nation the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln and Nazi-quasher Dwight D. Eisenhower. Get off your duffs and act. If you can't give him the boot, condemn him loudly and ostracize him. Keeping J.T.'s shenanigans on the QT does nothing but make you seem guilty by association. You know, along the lines of J.T.'s erstwhile butt-buddy, state Representative Russell Pearce.

Courtney Bisbee's supporters at the state capitol yesterday. Courtney's mom Camille Tilley is in the center.

The mothers of the disappeared. That's the first thought that came to mind upon seeing the supporters of Courtney Bisbee on the lawn of the state capitol this Valentines Day. Though unlike those Argentine mothers who gathered in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo in the late '70s to protest the disappearance of their children in that government's "dirty war," Bisbee's supporters know exactly where she is, in Goodyear's Perryville prison, where she waits and waits for justice.

You can read all about Courtney Bisbee's case at www.justice4courtney.com, and the more you read, the more disturbed you will become by what you learn. Bisbee was convicted of child molestation, and on April 14, 2006, sentenced to eleven years for supposedly inappropriately touching a teenage boy by the name of Jon Valles. There was no physical evidence, and Bisbee had passed a polygraph. Reading the transcript of the trial, there seems more than enough room for reasonable doubt. Unfortunately, there was no jury. Bisbee's attorney convinced her to waive jury trial and put her life in the hands of Judge Warren Granville. In hindsight, that was a tragic mistake.

Since Bisbee's conviction, new, exculpatory testimony and evidence has come to light. The most convincing of these is the recantation of Nik Valles, Jon's brother. In the affidavit dated January of last year, Nik Valles alleges that he was coerced by his mother Janette Sloan not to contradict the testimony of his brother during trial. According to Nik, his mother's motive was financial gain through lawsuits. His father, Eugene Valles, backs up his son's allegation against the mother, who no longer lives in Arizona.

"My mother threatened and blackmailed me so the truth would not come out," states Nik in the affidavit. "And if I did not follow her instructions, there would be consequences...my mother's boyfriend beat me up and put a chokehold on me. A police report was filed and I feared for my safety in their household."

He goes on to reveal that he witnessed his brother, his mother and other state witnesses discussing their testimony, sculpting it to lead to a conviction. He denies that his brother had any sort of relationship with Bisbee, or that anything untoward occurred. Now that he's no longer a minor, he explains, he can speak freely, and believes Bisbee should be released and exonerated.

"Courtney Bisbee was a helpful and friendly person," states Nik, later adding, "Anything portraying her any differently would be a lie."

Powerful stuff. You can read the affidavit in its entirety, here.

Fox 10's Linda Williams did an excellent piece on Bisbee's story last year. The video is also on the Web site, and I encourage you to watch it. Currently, Bisbee's case is on appeal, and she has filed a pro per motion for her own release. The authorities, including County Attorney Andrew Thomas, whose office prosecuted Bisbee, are aware of the new evidence in this case. So why does this woman continue to languish in prison?

Bisbee's long-suffering parents, Camille and Tom Tilley, moved to Arizona to be near their daughter and work to have her freed. They've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and other expenses. And they've lost access to their granddaughter Taylor Lee, who is in her father's custody. They are ordinary, middle-class, law-abiding American citizens whose lives, along with their daughter's, have become a Kafkaesque nightmare.

There's a lot more to this case, and I intend to continue peeling back the layers of this rotten onion. Suffice it to say that an innocent person is not convicted and sent away without the collusion of various government entities.

The public is titillated by cases involving grown women and teenage boys. There's a creepy obsession people have with these incidents, and an immediate assumption that the accused is always guilty. Prosecutors play upon this assumption, as they did in Bisbee's case, to obtain convictions. But Bisbee's case does not fit the mold. At the very least she deserves a new trial, and considering Nik Valles' recantation, she deserves to wait for it as a free woman.

In a sign of United for a Sovereign America's continued embrace of fanaticism and anti-immigrant extremism, U.S.A.'s Web site immigrationbuzz.com refers to iconic Arizona neo-Nazi Elton Hall as "Our Patriot," and reports that his pelvis was broken in an accident Saturday near 25th Street and Bell Road in north Phoenix. Hall, 74, is known as being one of the early Arizona organizers for George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party, and he's still active in local white supremacist circles.

As stated in my Sunday post on this topic, Hall was on the sidewalk facing Bell Road Saturday as part of a demonstration organized by U.S.A. against the nearby Macehualli Work Center, which caters to day-laborers seeking work. According to PHX PD, when one driver made an illegal left turn that morning, he hit a woman driving eastbound, who in turn hit Hall. Hall was taken to Paradise Valley Hospital just down the street, where he was listed in stable condition the day after the accident.

I was on site shortly after the crash, and the members of U.S.A. I spoke to called me a liar when I asked if they knew Hall was an important neo-Nazi. Of course, that didn't stop them from using one of my photos of Hall on their site as if it were their own. So I must be telling the truth somewhere, right laddies?

The item on immigrationbuzz.com, posted by Childress himself, attempts to ignore the issue of Hall's affiliations altogether, as if Hall were any other protester in the U.S.A. camp who had been hurt by an "invader."

Elton Hall Injured In Accident Caused By Invader, Broken Pelvis

The usual Phoenix Patriots were demonstrating at the Day Labor site on 25th St just south of Bell Road when a car made an unsafe left turn and hit another car. That car spun around, hit one of our Patriots who was sitting in a chair near the intersection, then ended up backwards on the sidewalk, resting against a fire hydrant.Our Patriot was taken by ambulance to a hospital. We latered [SIC] learned that the driver of the car making the unsafe left turn DID NOT HAVE A DRIVER’S LICENSE OR INSURANCE, BUT HE DID HAVE A MEXICAN CONSULAR MATRICULA CARD.

This is not the first time Childress has opened his ranks to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and others whose beliefs dovetail with such intolerance: Mesa neo-Nazi J.T. Ready has been an attendee at past U.S.A. meetings, and has been closely linked to Childress; PHX white supremacist Damon Ashenfelter is another frequenter of U.S.A.-sponsored events; a man identifying himself as a member of the separatist AZ group White Knights of America rose to speak at a U.S.A. meet-up previously; cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs wing-nut Sandra Miller has made her presence known at U.S.A.'s Mexican-bashin' coffee klatches; and Yosemite Sam-lookalike Buffalo Rick, who has on more than one occasion referred to non-whites as "monkeys" and who sells T-shirts that read "My Back Is Still Wet" and "That Sucking Sound You Hear Is Anchor Babies," is Childress' chief lieutenant.

All but one of the respondents to the Childress post seem oblivious to the fact their organization has just owned a famous neo-Nazi. Commenter Dan Peitzmeyer tries offering a smidgen of perspective to the diatribes of the others:

"It’s unfortunate that Mr. Hall was injured," he writes. "And I do wish him a speedy recovery, but it is an inaccuracy to refer to this known neo-Nazi as a `patriot.'"

In many ways, actual neo-Nazis are far more straightforward, despite the odiousness of their views, than the other members of U.S.A. who claim disingenuously that race and ethnicity have nothing to do with their objections to immigration. Riiiight. If there were 12-to-20 million white Canadians crossing the border to do all the jobs Americans turn their noses up at, Childress, et al. wouldn't wiggle a nostril at 'em. Mexicans? Now that's a different matter, eh, Rusty?

Elton Hall (left) at a neo-Nazi BBQ last year; note his pal's affection for the neo-Nazi punk rock band Skrewdriver.

Alter kocker anti-immigrant activist Elton Hall, 74, a persistent protester of the Macehualli Work Center and a fixture at other anti-immigrant protests, was struck and injured Saturday morning when two vehicles collided at the intersection of 25th Street and Bell. According to Phoenix police, Bernardino Diaz Conde was making an illegal left-hand turn onto 25th from Bell, when he struck an eastbound vehicle being driven by Robin Govert. Govert's vehicle slid out of control, went up on the sidewalk, and hit Hall, who was standing near the curb.

Hall's injuries were not life-threatening, though an ambulance was called and he was taken to Paradise Valley Hospital. A spokesperson for the hospital listed him as being in stable condition. Speculation from some at the scene was that Hall might have broken a leg or a hip, but PV Hospital declined to verify the exact nature of Hall's injuries.

This sort of accident may have been just a matter of time. On each occasion I've paid a visit to Macehualli, Hall was invariably standing right next to the curb on Bell with some sign warning of the evils of immigration. And Bell's a very busy roadway, to say the least.

No doubt the nativists protesting Macehualli on a nearly daily basis now will make much of the fact that Conde was the driver at fault, and did not have a driver's license on him. Conde was cited and his car impounded, according to the PHX PD. The nativists up at Macehualli love when something like this happens. Who knows, maybe United for a Sovereign America, the extremist group run by former Kia-peddler Rusty Childress, will award Hall a month of free breakfasts at Denny's for taking one for the team. Childress' U.S.A. is promoting the Macehualli protests, you see.

Elton Hall, standing a little too close to the road for comfort.

Why am I bothering with the fact this old coot got hit by a car? Well, Hall just happens to be an iconic AZ neo-Nazi from back in the day. And he remains active in local white supremacist circles. Local National Socialist Movement organizer Scott Hume often lauded Hall on his now-defunct "Sacred Order" Yahoo group. And there were photos of Hall at an NSM BBQ organized by Hume last year, which hailed Hall as one of George Lincoln Rockwell's original stormtroopers.

Hall may appear to be some kindly ol' grampa, but he's been in the neo-Nazi movement for so long that he's actually mentioned in two academic studies about white supremacists in America.

In the Duke University Press' Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, by Mattias Gardell, pg. 261, Hall is mentioned in reference to a far-right-winger by the name of Valgard Murray:

"Active in the national socialist wing of the radical right, Murray in the late 1960s learned about Odinism through Elton Hall, then Arizona organizer of the American Nazi Party."

Hall's also mentioned in the study, The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization, by Jeffrey Kaplan and Heléne Lööw, (AltaMira Press) on page 172:

"In Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP), Arizona organizer Elton Hall in vain tried to move the ANP toward a more class-based white worker direction and to get it engaged in union organizing."

I've confronted Hall more than once about his past. He answers to his name for me, but that's about it. Otherwise, he just offers a coy little smile. He's been less coy towards Salvador Reza, the operator of the Macehualli Work Center. Reza says Hall's called him and the day-laborers at the center "wetbacks" in the past. This, despite the fact Reza's an American citizen who's served in the armed forces.

Hall is the kind of far-right crackpot that the U.S.A-organized protests at Macehualli continue to attract. I don't know if Hall's an actual "member" of U.S.A., but they seem to get along fine with him. Anti-Hispanic Hispanic Anna Gaines of You Don't Speak for Me (a frequenter of U.S.A. events) often stood side-by-side with Hall on the very section of sidewalk where the car struck him Saturday. I didn't see her around, however, on the day of the accident.

Prejudiced powwow: Anti-immigrant fanatic Buffalo Rick's seated to the left, Elton Hall's seated to the far right, don't-know-who's behind Rick.

They're a hostile, pistol-packin' little crew. Nearly every time I walk through their encampment on the outside of Macehualli, I'm met with verbal abuse and veiled threats. Once in a blue one, I'll find someone in the nativist camp I can have a civil confab with, but that's rare. As evidence, check out this excellent video up at Barriozona.com of Macehualli's 5th Anniversary. At one point, you can see Hall in a crowd of people shouting "Bullshit!" at the folks celebrating. Witness that all of the hatred is on the nativist side of that fence.

(Where Hall's standing in the video is about a block from where he was struck -- there are usually xenophobes stationed in both areas. Reza told me that he and others prayed openly for Hall after he was hit, and were taunted for doing so by the nativists.)

I did ask Elton Hall's compadres if they knew that he was a famous neo-Nazi. They said I was lying, but the pics don't lie. And I suspect that even if they knew of his background, they'd just shrug it off.

One protester did mention that Hall was a veteran. I don't know if this is true. However, I do know that American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell served with distinction during WWII. Does that lessen his influence as one of the premier American bigots of his time? Not at all.