"Camp Titties and Beer," a Country Thunder Campground Occupied by Tucson Police Officers is Where a DPS Office Was Attacked. Paul Babeu's Office Wanted This Covered Up

Camp Titties and Beer, a Country Thunder campground occupied by Tucson police officers, was the site of an attack on a DPS officer and injury of a detecitve with the Pinal County Sheriff's Office last year.

With his office already under fire over allegations that it improperly deleted e-mails and himself under fire for allegedly threatening his gay ex-lover with deportation, it appears that a member of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu's command staff  asked that an arrest record be scrubbed from a DPS database.

The arrest record belongs to Ronald Keys, a 26-year-old former Marine who jumped on the back of a state Department of Public Safety officer, wrapped his arm around the cop's neck, and knocked him to the ground after he had arrested Keys' wife during last year's Country Thunder musical festival in Florence.

New Times obtained a copy of the e-mail Lieutenant Blake King sent at 11:20 p.m. on Saturday, April 9, 2011 to Deputy County Attorney Paul Ahler, who oversees review of most cases submitted to the Pinal County Attorney's Office to decide on appropriate criminal charges.

"Unfortunately the subject booked for Agg Assault had been finger printed before I could have a chance to get him released," King wrote, the same day of the arrest. "If you can, please attempt to have his DPS record of this cleared."

Ronald and Julie Keys at Country Thunder last April after their arrests.

Pinal County officials say the arrest record was not deleted.

However, it's an odd request for King to make because a record of an arrest is just that -- a record. And state law prohibits tampering with public records, doing so being a felony offense.

But that's isn't all that King did to accommodate Keys that night.

Babeu's lieutenant also called in a judge -- on a Saturday night -- within hours of Keys' arrest in connection with, not only the assault of DPS Officer Hugh Grant, but for a knee injury caused to PCSO Detective Andrew Goode, who was helping Grant arrest the combative suspect.

According to internal investigative reports, King arranged for a PCSO deputy to pick up the judge to release Keys from jail. Indeed, the judge released Keys that night, without requiring him to post a bond. And King arranged for a PCSO deputy to chauffeur Keys back to Country Thunder, a four-day festival that draws thousands of country-music fans to Florence every year.

That's where the incident went down -- at one of the camps in a campground just outside of Country Thunder occupied by off-duty cops from the Tucson Police Department and dubbed "Camp Titties and Beer."