Phoenix, Maricopa County, and Brutality to Children

Phoenix, Arizona, and the surrounding Maricopa County long have had a reputation of having its legal institutions being synonymous with lawlessness. Here is a place where a mentally-ill female prisoner literally was tortured to death by being put in a metal shack for four hours, exposed to the brutal desert heat until she died.

(After World War II, German and Japanese soldiers who did such things to American prisoners of war were executed. Maricopa County has decided that no one on the prison staff would be prosecuted. Please do not try this at home with anyone you know as only police and prosecutors have a "get out of jail free" card.)

Arizona's brutality is not limited to torturing mentally-ill women to death, however. No, the state also brutalizes children, and in the coming weeks, I will be dealing with an egregious case that reflects just how Phoenix and Maricopa County used unconscionable interrogation tactics on a young child in order to get him to say what the detective wanted him to say, rather than telling what most likely was the truth.

This particular case is more proof that Arizona, Phoenix, and Maricopa County operate according to a code of "ethics" that make the LMJC look like a paragon of justice. That's right: these are people who make people like Tim Deal and Holly Kittle look to be competent and truthful. Lord help us.

Not surprisingly, this is a child molestation case, another one in which the authorities are hellbent on pursuing a specific narrative, and they are willing to use whatever tactics necessary to get the story they want, the truth be damned. While Kerwyn and I went over the police reports, Kerwyn found something very, very disturbing: the "interviews" were not interviews at all; instead, they were interrogations in which Det. Terje Boe of the Phoenix Police Department threatened one child with a lie detector test, and continually told lies to the children in order to get them to change their stories.

Sitting with Boe was Jennifer Ingalls, an infamous Child Protective Services worker who already has been involved in some high-profile, false accusation cases, including one in which she tried to have parents who took photographs of their two very young children taking baths thrown into prison for "child pornography."

What we know so far is shocking. A 14-year-old boy is being held without bond in a juvenile detention facility in Phoenix, and the authorities are determined to try him as an adult. The only "evidence" of child molestation comes from some young children who were "encouraged" by Boe and Ingalls to change their stories, and who also have had their parents involved in telling the children what to say.

Not surprisingly, the authorities in Maricopa County (home of the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio) are making it difficult for the boy's mother even to get normal documents that are supposed to be made available quickly to defendants. In the meantime, the Maricopa County DA's office is trying to find a way to try this boy as an adult.

Yes, that is right. The same office that refused even to consider bringing the tiniest of criminal charges against prison workers who literally tortured a mentally-ill woman to death is teaming with local police to engage in brutality against a young teenager.

The "law" in Arizona definitely is skewed. Police gun down unarmed people and assault others, and Phoenix police are at the top among the largest U.S. cities in per population shootings. Phoenix and Maricopa County are places where people truly must fear the occupying costumed army known as the "police."

There will be more on this case as we get material. As in the Tonya Craft case, we will not back off.