Battlefield Quartzsite

By: Alan Brooks

 

In a small town in western Arizona, a political firestorm is raging.

The Town Council and the Chief of Police of Quartzsite are under investigation by the Attorney General of Arizona, almost half of the officers in the Quartzsite Police Department have been suspended for accusing the Chief of Police of corruption, and the Town Council has declared a state of emergency and suspended normal public meetings.

In an interview Tuesday, Mayor Ed Foster accused the Town Council and the Chief of Police of “conspiracy” and “deprivation of rights under color of law”, both of which are federal crimes.

He alleges that the council has conspired to steal almost five million dollars from the public coffers over the last twenty years, that they have conspired with the Chief of police, the Tax Auditor, and the office of Building Codes Enforcement to harass and falsely arrest anyone who challenges them including political rivals, journalists, and activists.

Foster himself has been arrested several times in the last year since he became Mayor, most recently in June when he was arrested for disorderly conduct while trying to stop the Town Council from having local newspaper publisher Jennifer “Jade” Jones arrested at a public meeting.

Jones already has a pending two million dollar lawsuit against the city alleging police harassment and false arrests related to previous incidents.

Foster is a retired Marine and a relatively new resident of Quartzsite who was elected in 2010 and ran on a platform of anti-corruption. He says that, since then, the Town Council has stonewalled him at every turn, tried to intimidate him, and harassed him and his supporters.

He has been trying to get the state to investigate the Town Council for some time, but until recently was unsuccessful.

“I was told previously by the Attorney General ‘Go home and take care of your problems’. Well that’s hard to do when the corrupt ones control the police and the building inspector and everything. They control the whole process so you have a hard time of going home and taking care of it,” said Foster.

Tom Horne, the Attorney General for Arizona said Tuesday that his office is investigating a closed-door meeting of the Quartzsite Town Council on July 10th.

“We have probable cause to believe that it was an illegal meeting,” said Horne, who went on to say that it could lead to criminal charges for members of the council.

When asked about the corruption allegations made against the Chief of Police Horne said “We did start a criminal investigation some time ago… and that’s ongoing and that’s something I can’t discuss.”

Calls Tuesday to the offices of Town Manager Alex Taft and Chief of Police Jeff Gilbert for comment were not returned.

“What should happen is these people oughta be removed from office by the Attorney General,” said Foster. “The open meetings violations are so numerous, and so egregious, that the Attorney General can remove them from office.”

Foster says that he hopes that the state’s intervention in his town will set an example for other town councils in Arizona and around the country.

“The real story here” he said, “is that I have been contacted by many people. The most prominent one is probably Ernie Nash the Mayor of Gould Arkansas. His story and my story are really quite similar, but the disgusting thing is, they’re not unique. This is a nationwide problem that small-town America has.”

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