Arizona cop cleared of murder of sobbing, unarmed man

A former Mesa, Arizona police officer who fatally shot and killed an unarmed father of two was cleared of second degree murder charges on Thursday.

Philip Mitchell Brailsford, 27, was also cleared of criminal liability in the death of Daniel Shaver. It took the Maricopa County jury approximately 12 hours over a span of two days to find Brailsford not guilty.

Arizona Senate allows cops to seize assets from anyone who takes part in a protest that turns violent

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate has passed a bill that would let law enforcement officials seize the assets of people who participate in protests that turn violent — even if those people had nothing to do with any violent incidents.

The Arizona Capital Times reports that the bill, which passed on Wednesday, “expands the state’s racketeering laws, now aimed at organized crime, to also include rioting,” while also redefining “what constitutes rioting to include actions that result in damage to the property of others.”

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Sued, Again

One month after losing his reelection bid, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing yet another lawsuit accusing his office of racial profiling in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Jacinta Gonzalez Goodman, a field director for the Latino advocacy group Mijente, filed a suit Thursday against the man who calls himself “America’s toughest sheriff” and Maricopa County over her arrest and detention earlier this year. She claims that the sheriff’s office racially profiled her and unconstitutionally detained her based on a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement ― even though she is a U.S. citizen.

The Election in Arizona Was a Mess

Faith Decker, a 19-year-old sophomore at Arizona State University, got off work a little early Tuesday night so she could vote in her first-ever primary. She arrived at a church in southeast Phoenix just before 7 p.m. to find "the line wrapped completely around the corner, 300 to 400 people." After waiting in that line for more than three hours, she finally reached the check-in desk. She was told that she couldn't vote—not because the polls had closed three hours before, but because she was registered in a different county.

Sheriff Arpaio to police Trump’s Arizona rally

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County is relishing the opportunity to host Donald Trump at a rally on his own turf Saturday — and serve as the muscle at the same time.

After taking a few days off from his long streak of attention-grabbing rallies, Trump is cranking back up this weekend, and has scheduled one of his events right in the backyard of the long-serving and controversial Arizona sheriff.

Arizona Governor Signs Controversial Abortion Bill Into Law

PHOENIX, March 30 (Reuters) - Arizona's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, said on Monday he has signed into law a controversial measure blocking women from buying insurance that includes abortion coverage through the federal healthcare exchange.

The fiercely debated bill also requires doctors to tell women they could possibly reverse the effects of a drug-induced abortion, a claim that critics have called "junk science."

The measure cleared the Republican-controlled state legislature last week, largely along party lines.

"The American people overwhelmingly oppose taxpayer funding of abortions, and it's no different in Arizona, where we have long-standing policy against subsidizing them with public dollars," Ducey said in a statement after signing the measure on Monday. "This legislation provides clarity to state law." (Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix, Arizona; Writing by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Eric Beech)

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Reuters

Arizona Governor Calls Plan To Kick 500,000 Low-Income People Off Of Medicaid ‘Responsible’

As states across the country are moving to expand Medicaid coverage to additional low-income people under the Affordable Care Act, lawmakers in Arizona want to take the opposite approach.

On Friday, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) approved a measure that seeks to tighten the state requirements for Medicaid eligibility, ultimately limiting public health insurance to fewer residents. The legislation proposes requiring the program’s recipients to be employed in order to qualify for assistance and kicking them out of the program after they’ve been enrolled for five years.

Arizona School Board Votes To Get Rid Of Textbook Pages That Discuss Abortion

An Arizona school district is making sure that students are not educated about abortion in biology class.

This week, Gilbert Public Schools’ governing board voted to remove pages from an honors biology textbook because the pages talk about mifepristone, a pill that can induce an abortion, reports local outlet 12 News. Members of the board contended that the pages violate a state statute, which prevents school districts from providing instruction that "that does not give preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion," says the outlet.

How One Right-Wing Christian Group Is Leading Arizona's March Toward Conservative Extremism

On Thursday, a day after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed the state's highly-criticized SB 1062 -- a measure that would have allowed business owners to reject services to any individual on religious grounds, which was widely seen as discriminatory toward the LGBT community -- the state House passed another controversial measure: the "Women's Health Protection Act," or HB 2884.

Arizona Firefighters Charge Family Nearly $20,000 After Home Burns Down

An Arizona couple recently left homeless when their mobile home burned to the ground couldn't believe their eyes when they received a bill for nearly $20,000 from a private fire department.

"I couldn't believe it," Justin Purcell told The Huffington Post. "We lost our home, we just had a baby and now we're going through this. It's crazy. We don't know how we are going to come up with the money."

Justin and Kasia Purcell's home went up in flames on the night of Aug. 12. The Purcells, who were staying with relatives because they were preparing for the birth of a child, were not home at the time of the fire. A neighbor notified them of the blaze, and they made the 45-minute drive to their home in Surprise, a city in Maricopa County. They arrived just in time to see firefighters extinguish flames from what was left of their house. The home was a total loss, and the cause of the blaze is undetermined.

Arizona To Ban Residents From Voting If They Lack Proof Of Citizenship

PHOENIX -- PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona officials will seek to ban residents from voting in statewide races if they can't prove citizenship — a move that critics called vindictive in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said the state couldn't require such documentation to cast ballots for federal offices.

The change was announced Monday by Attorney General Tom Horne and Secretary of State Ken Bennett, both Republicans.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Racially Profiled Latinos, Federal Judge Rules

PHOENIX, May 24 (Reuters) - Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers in his crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge found on Friday, and ordered him to stop using race as a factor in law enforcement decisions.

The ruling against the Maricopa County sheriff came in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by Hispanic drivers that tested whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling U.S. citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin.

How Long Will Arizona Deny Driver's Licenses to Immigrant Youth?

President Obama announced his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) memo late into last year’s election season, which allows certain undocumented immigrant youth to apply and obtain renewable two-year work permits. While some lawmakers responded favorably, others reacted with vitriol. In Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer made clear that DACA youth would not be eligible for driver’s licenses. A federal court has now ruled there’s no rational basis for her decision—but refused to issue an injunction as the case moved forward.

'You Deserve Rape' Sign Held By 'Brother Dean' Outrages University Of Arizona Students

Dean Saxton, a student at the University of Arizona, stood on campus Tuesday wearing a shirt that said "Virgin Pride" and holding a sign reading "You Deserve Rape."

Saxton, who's known on the UA campus as "Brother Dean," gathered a crowd of onlookers by holding the sign and suggesting women who wear short shorts in 90-degree weather are asking to be raped, the Daily Wildcat reported.

Phoenix Office Shooting: Multiple Injuries Reported In Attack At Arizona Workplace

Multiple people were wounded during a shooting at an office complex Wednesday morning in Arizona, Reuters reports.

Authorities are searching for a suspect described as a white male in his 60s, according to Fox 10. He was last seen driving away from the scene in a white SUV.

Police said one victim was in extremely critical condition, ABC 15 reports.

Arizona Bill Would Turn Hospitals Into Immigration Checkpoints, But Exempts Canadians, Europeans

An Arizona lawmaker wants to turn hospitals into immigration checkpoints -- but the law wouldn’t apply in the same way to Canadians or many Europeans.

As Republicans and Democrats come together in Washington to debate immigration reform, Rep. Steve Smith, a Republican from Maricopa County, has submitted a proposal to the state legislature that would require the uninsured to provide proof of citizenship at hospital visits.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Loses Appeals Court Ruling Allowing False Arrest Lawsuit

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio might want to get ready to spend more time in court defending himself.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that two news executives for the Phoenix New Times can sue the Maricopa County sheriff's office for their 2007 arrests.

The men, newspaper co-owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, were arrested at their homes in the middle of the night after their publication reported the sheriff's office planned to use a subpoena to figure out who was talking to journalists about Arpaio. Arpaio's allies drafted subpoenas that "demanded that the paper reveal its confidential sources as well as produce reporters’ and editors' notebooks, memoranda, and documents" related to stories about Arpaio, according to the court ruling. The New Times refused, leading to misdemeanor charges against Lacey and Larkin of disclosing grand jury inner workings. The charges were dropped the next day.

Arizona's Immigrants Under 'Reasonable Suspicion'

When she heard today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the “reasonable suspicion” (a k a “papers, please”) provisions of Arizona’s SB-1070, immigrant rights activist Isabel Garcia saw the Arizonification of the nation. “We’ve been fighting local ‘reasonable suspicion’ laws here in Arizona for decades,” said Garcia, a Pima County public defender and co-chair of Coalición de Derechos Humanos, an organization dedicated to defending immigrants and documenting immigrant deaths in the desert. “Here in Tucson ‘reasonable suspicion’ has proven a very weak and vague legal standard that is responsible for lots of family separations, enormous suffering—and death. Now, SB-1070 is going to haunt those of you in the rest of the country.”

Arizona Immigration Law Ruling May Mean Boon For Private Prison Business

As the Supreme Court upheld a central provision of Arizona's controversial immigration law on Monday -– a requirement for law enforcement to check the legal status of suspected undocumented immigrants -- a powerful corporate lobby may stand to benefit: the private prison industry.

For-profit prison companies including Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group Inc. have capitalized on the immigration crackdown over the past decade, now controlling nearly half of the nation's vast immigrant detention system. Both companies have more than doubled revenues from the business of detaining immigrants since 2005, collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In Mixed Ruling, Supreme Court Overturns Parts of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, Upholds "Show Me Your Papers"

The Supreme Court has overturned key parts of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law S.B. 1070 but upheld the law’s controversial "show me your papers" provision. On Monday, the court struck down three of the law’s four provisions that subject undocumented immigrants to criminal penalties for seeking work or failing to carry immigration papers at all times. In each case, the majority said those powers rest with the federal government, not with Arizona. But in a unanimous decision, the justices upheld the law’s controversial Section 2B, which requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop before releasing them. We’re joined from Washington, D.C., by Marielena Hincapié of the National Immigration Law Center, a group that has filed a civil rights challenge to S.B. 1070 and similar laws in five other states, and from Phoenix by Viridiana Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant who would benefit from the Obama administration’s recent order allowing undocumented youth to apply for a two-year stay from deportation. "The fact that I can leave my house and tell my mom, 'Mom, I'll be back tonight,’ does not change the fact that she can leave the house and not tell me the same thing," Hernandez says. "That’s why we continue fighting, because our families are still at risk, and our communities are still at risk. And so, there hasn’t been [a] win unless our whole community wins."

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Source: Democracy Now!
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