Of the many blogs written by outside contributors to the Arizona Republic’s website, Bill Richardson’s was perhaps the most critical of the region’s police and their practices.

Now, the retired Mesa police officer says the the state’s largest newspaper has given in to outside pressure from those who wanted his criticism silenced. The newspaper closed down his blog, deleted all his old posts and blocked him from even commenting elsewhere on its website.

“The Republic called me and told me it was being shut down,” Richardson said in an email to Heat City on Tuesday. “They shut down everything and even wiped out my Republic account where I can comment on other people’s blogs or columns.”

Richardson said one of the paper’s opinion editors, Joanna Allhands, called him Monday to tell him the blog was being yanked because of recent posts he had written about the Tempe Police Department.

That decision, Richardson said, came after the department’s police chief, Tom Ryff, and one of his advisers complained about the blog to the Republic.

“The Tempe PD was pissed about my hitting them on crime issues,” Richardson said, pointing to four posts he wrote since the beginning of August, including one in which he said the city “continues to lead the region in violent crime.”

But reached by phone late Tuesday, Allhands flatly denied the move was made because of Richardson’s criticism of Tempe.

“No, that’s not correct,” she said when asked about the allegation. Still, she refused to explain why Richardson’s blog was closed or why his entire archive was deleted from the website.

Allhands called the matter “an internal decision” and referred all other questions to the newspaper’s top editor, Randy Lovely.

Lovely’s assistant, meanwhile, said he was on vacation until next week and would not likely return any phone calls before then.

Click for a larger look at the way Richardson’s blog looked after the Arizona Republic shut it down.

A Tempe police spokesman also denied that the agency had anything to do with the Republic’s decision, saying no one there had even voiced concerns about Richardson’s blog.

“To answer your question, no,” Sgt. Steve Carbajal said. “Nobody from the department, including the chief, has made a complaint to the Republic.”

Carbajal said a journalist with another news organization had called to look into the matter on Monday and that was the first he’d heard about it.

Regardless of why, however, it’s clear that the Republic has taken the unusual step of scrubbing Richardson’s work from its website without any public explanation.

Richardson, who also occasionally wrote for the newspaper’s op-ed page, said he was invited by the Republic to start blogging last year.

Since then he has written dozens of posts, many of them focusing on issues in law enforcement as well as in Tempe (that’s where he lives.) He was often critical of police policies, but he sometimes wrote positive stories about local law enforcement, too.

Now, visitors to his former home on the web are greeted with a simple message: “The blog requested does not exist.”

Except that’s not entirely true either; Google cached most of Richardson’s posts from the time he started writing the blog. They are, at least for now, available to anyone who wants to read them.

Heat City was hoping to get its hands on a nice, colorful police report about the attack on a Phoenix television news crew earlier this week. But we found out Friday it’s not going to happen.

It turns out the KPHO (Channel 5) crew never pressed charges against the man who threw some large rocks at them Wednesday while they were on assignment in Casa Grande.

Tim Gaffney, a spokesman for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, said he reached out to the station after watching video of the attack, which showed reporter Pat McReynolds dodging the stones. (Neither McReynolds nor his videographer were hit.)

“I actually called Channel 5 and asked if he wanted to prosecute,” Gaffney said on Friday. “They told me no.”

The rock thrower, whose name has not been released, was never arrested, Gaffney said.

A story posted on KPHO’s own website appeared to have said something different on Thursday. The story said the news crew was accusing the man of assault, which would be a serious criminal charge.

But Gaffney double-checked and confirmed, again, that no arrest had been made.

Heat City left a message for Michelle Donaldson, the news director at KPHO, but have yet to hear back from her.

File it under the dangers of being a journalist. In this must-watch video, Phoenix television news reporter Pat McReynolds and a videographer dodge rocks being thrown at them by a man they were hoping to interview.

Here’s how their station, KPHO (Channel 5), said it went down:

When a CBS 5 News crew went to the Torres house in Casa Grande to get his family’s side of the story, the brother of Frank Torres greeted them with a litany of profanity before they ever got to the yard.

He refused to answer questions. When the reporter and videographer didn’t leave as quickly as he wanted, he picked up several large rocks and hurled them at the news crew, they said.

The headline on the KPHO story said the “CBS 5 news crew accuses Casa Grande man of assault,” but the man was never arrested.

UPDATE (Aug. 27, 2010): Our original version, based on the story on KPHO’s website, said the rock-thrower had been arrested. We found out Friday he hadn’t. This story has been updated to reflect that.

Challenger Bill Montgomery pulled out a major upset in the Republican race for Maricopa County attorney on Tuesday by unseating one of the most familiar names in Arizona politics, Rick Romley.

Romley conceded the race within hours of the polls closing after unofficial results showed him down by almost 12 percent. Montgomery was leading 50 percent to 38 percent.

“In a way, it feels very satisfying to have hard work pay off like this,” Montgomery said in an interview afterward.

The challenger had the backing of the county’s powerful Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who not only endorsed him but spent big money on an ad campaign attacking Romley in the final weeks of the race. Elections officials on Tuesday determined some of the ads were illegal, but the ruling came down after the damage had already been done.

Montgomery said Arpaio’s overall support was a bigger key to his victory. But he acknowledged the attack ads were effective, too.

“To the extent that it educated voters about my opponent’s record, sure, it helped,” said Montgomery.

But the former deputy prosecutor, who used to work under Romley at the county attorney’s office, gave even more credit to the driving political force known as S.B. 1070, Arizona’s new immigration law.

Even though the most controversial parts of the law were blocked by a federal judge in July before they could take effect, Montgomery said the issue helped cement him as the tougher of the two candidates on illegal immigration.

Romley vowed to enforce the law, but he also urged Gov. Jan Brewer to veto it earlier this year, saying it was tearing apart the community.

With the win, Montgomery is all but guaranteed to be elected as the county’s next chief prosecutor in November. Democrats chose to stay out of the race this year. So his only opponent will be Libertarian Michael Kielsky, who has yet to raise any money or even launch a campaign website.

Romley, who had the support of a number of Democrats in Arizona, also put to rest any speculation that he would try to run as a write-in candidate in the fall.

“I just don’t see it,” he told Heat City. “We just move on. I’m just going to keep doing the job through November.”

It was the first loss of Romley’s long political career. He held the county attorney’s office for 16 years, winning his first election in 1988 and earning three more terms after that until he retired in 2004.

Then in April, after a five-year absence, he agreed to accept an appointment to his old seat when his successor, Andrew Thomas, resigned to run for state attorney general. Tuesday’s primary and November’s general elections are part of a special process to find someone to finish out the final two years of Thomas’ vacated term.

“It’s my first loss,” Romley said. “And it’s not easy here.”

During the five years he was gone from the office, Maricopa County’s government descended into a major feud among most of its high-ranking leaders.

On one side were Thomas, Arpaio and a handful of other agency heads. On the other side were the Board of Supervisors, the county’s chief administrator and several judges. The battle resulted in numerous lawsuits and criminal charges, and the fallout from it continues even now.

Romley was picked by the board to help smooth out the mess. He said Tuesday that he hopes his brief return to the office will ultimately prove to have done that.

“When (Montgomery) comes in, if he prevails in November, it will be in much better shape,” Romley said.

He also said he and his staff tried to stay out of the mud during his campaign, a difficult feat given the volume of Arpaio’s attacks against him.

“Campaigns today are very nasty and when I chose to come back in, I really meant it when I said I was going to try to restore the dignity of the office,” Romley said. “We took the high road. And you can question whether it was good or wrong. But I think we conducted ourselves in a manner that we’re very proud of.”

In the end, he believes those very attacks by Arpaio were what did him in. He estimated that Arpaio spent $700,000 to defeat him, though the official tally won’t be known for several more weeks.

The most recent records from the county Elections Department show that Arpaio had spent $236,000 on “media buys” as of the end of July. His ads against Romley have been running regularly on network TV ever since.

“Maybe I was naive,” Romley said. “We knew it would have a tremendous impact, but I guess I’m surprised it was that big.”

Romley, by comparison, raised $172,000 for the race and Montgromery put together $99,000.

For his part, Montgomery pledged to stay out of the ongoing Maricopa County feuds. Though many of his law enforcement policies are staunchly conservative and similar to those of Andrew Thomas, he said he wants to be a no-drama officeholder.

“What I’ve pledged to the sheriff and the people of Maricopa County is that I’m going to be a partner in law enforcement,” he said. “I’m not interested in feuds and battles.”

Arpaio celebrated the victory of his likely future partner, too. “That’s going to make my job very easy,” he said. “It’s a great night for the Republican Party.”

Onetime presidential nominee Sen. John McCain weighed in on the fierce political feud in Maricopa County on Thursday by endorsing Rick Romley in the Republican primary for county prosecutor.

In an email to Romley’s supporters, the Arizona senator praised the interim county attorney as a prosecutor who has the wherewithal to help sort out a nearly two-year political feud that has plagued the local government here.

“The extraordinary powers to indict and prosecute come with the extraordinary responsibility to apply them honorably,” McCain said. “Rick does.”

Romley, who previously served 16 years as county attorney, took over the office again in April after Republican Andrew Thomas resigned to run for state attorney general.

During Romley’s five year absence, Thomas used his role as chief prosecutor to target nearly a dozen county officials who he said engaged in a massive conspiracy to undermine his authority.

When Thomas resigned in April, one of his targets, the county Board of Supervisors, appointed Romley to help smooth out the feud.

“If you believe, as I do, that experience matters — that character matters — then you’ll understand why I’m so proud to stand with Rick Romley in the race for county attorney,” McCain said in his statement.

By endorsing Romley, McCain essentially butted heads once again with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the senator’s longtime adversary who is backing Romley’s opponent in the GOP primary.

Arpaio endorsed challenger Bill Montgomery, a former prosecutor in the county attorney’s office, and even paid for television commercials attacking Romley.

Romley and McCain, however, share more than just a common foe in Maricopa County. Both men are also veterans of the Vietnam War, where McCain was a POW and Romley lost both his legs.

McCain, who is also facing challengers in Tuesday’s primary, referred to the war connection as part of the endorsement, saying Romley “has spent nearly his entire life in service to others.”

“From his service to our country in Vietnam, where he lost both legs during battle,” McCain said, “to his relentless pursuit of justice for the victims of crime, Rick understands that doing what’s right, popular or not, is the true measure of service.”

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will go on to face Libertarian Michael Kielsky in the November general election. No Democrats are running in the race.

Turns out the editors over at Phoenix magazine named me the best blogger in the Valley for my work here on Heat City. Here’s what they wrote in their annual Best of the Valley issue:

Favoritism, shmavoritism – the Valley’s best blogger is PHOENIX magazine contributor Nick R. Martin, whose independently-produced Heat City news blog (heatcity.org) is a true marvel of D-I-Y journalism. Competing against entire newsrooms at The Arizona Republic and other newspapers, Martin took first place in breaking news at the most recent Arizona Press Club Awards for getting the scoop on a series of arrests related to the 2004 bombing of the Scottsdale diversity office. And he essentially performed this service for free, since Heat City is funded by public donations.

I was surprised and honored. The issue landed in subscriber mailboxes this week, making perfect timing for my transition back to freelancing and writing on Heat City. Hopefully the work here will continue to live up to the title.

You can see a handful of Phoenix’s other picks on its website. But the whole September issue is worth buying on newsstands when it comes out. It features enough to do in the Phoenix area to keep you entertained for months.

Oh, and for full disclosure: I have contributed a number of stories to Phoenix magazine in the past two years. However, I wasn’t part of the editorial process for this issue. And I am not being paid to write this post.

We parted ways amicably last week, about a month and a half into my tenure there. In that time, I wrote a few good stories, offered some ideas on technology/social media and got to work with some seriously talented journalists.

While I won’t bore anyone with the details of my departure, I will say that I have great respect for the Guardian and the big impact it has had on Arizona politics given its newcomer status. I wish everyone there the best of luck moving forward.

For now, I intend to return to freelancing and exploring other journalistic opportunities. You may have noticed I also came back to Heat City today with a story about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s massive campaign spending. You can expect to see more stories here in the immediate future.

Finally, and this really can’t be said often enough: Thank you to all my readers and fans for your constant and continued support. You make the work worth doing.

As always, email me at nick@heatcity.org with comments or story ideas.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio continued dishing out huge amounts of campaign cash during June and July, surpassing the $1 million mark in total spending with more than two years still to go before he is up for reelection.

Arpaio, a Republican who has now raised nearly $3 million for his 2012 reelection campaign, spent just shy of $400,000 during those two months alone.

That brings his total campaign spending to $1.07 million since starting his fifth term in January 2009, according to reports he filed last week with the Maricopa County Elections Department.

It makes the sheriff one of the top political spenders in Arizona, putting him ahead of most candidates for Congress and all but one person running for statewide office.

According to the latest disclosure, most of Arpaio’s spending in June and July, roughly $236,000, went to buying ads in local media.

While the report doesn’t say anything specific about the media buys, Arpaio appears to have only bought television air time for two ads this year. Both of them have led to an investigation by county elections officials.

The ads appear to have little to do with Arpaio’s own 2012 reelection, although they mention he plans to run for a sixth term. Instead, the 30-second spots attack two of his fellow Republicans who happen to be running in primaries this year against candidates Arpaio has endorsed.

The ads, which target Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley and attorney general candidate Tom Horne, make passing reference to Arpaio but go on to lump the two candidates in with Democratic President Barack Obama and liberal politics.

Arpaio has endorsed Romley’s primary challenger Bill Montgomery and Horne’s primary opponent, Andrew Thomas.

After a complaint by Romley earlier this month, the county elections department opened an investigation into the ads, trying to determine whether Arpaio is allowed to use his reelection money to weigh in on other races.

Only four Arizona candidates have spent more campaign money this year than Arpaio, according to the latest campaign reports.

Sen. John McCain has spent $19.2 million for his reelection campaign. His Republican primary challenger, J.D. Hayworth, has spent $2.6 million. Republican gubernatorial hopeful Buz Mills spent $3.3 million before dropping out of the race in July. And Rep. Gabrielle Giffords spent $1.1 million for her reelection bid.

Watch one of Arpaio’s ads:

Starting this week, my work will be appearing regularly on the political news site, the Arizona Guardian. The specifics are still being worked out, but the broad outline was hatched over the long Fourth of July weekend. I’ll be covering a number of political races as well as helping the Guardian grow as a company. This is a great opportunity to work with a fledgling company that has a bright future.

Yes, the Guardian is a paid-subscription site, which means you’ll have to pony up some cash to read it. You may remember I wrote a fairly in-depth profile about the company last year in Phoenix magazine. At the time, I said it was too expensive for most people, but the company’s target readers — lobbyists, lawyers and politicians — were often willing to pay the price because it gives them the kind of news they need for success.

That model has worked for the Guardian so far. Now, the founders are hoping to build on that accomplishment. They are open to new ideas and experiments, and that’s where I’ll be playing a role. What does that mean specifically? I’ll let you know once we figure it out.

Heat City will still be here. This site will remain a place for me to write stories that don’t have a home anywhere else. The only difference now is that my political (and sometimes legal) stories will be appearing in the Arizona Guardian.

As a special offer for readers of Heat City, the Guardian is also offering a 60 percent discount to new subscribers. This means individual readers can get access for just $12 a month (down from $30) and businesses, such as law firms, news organizations and creative agencies, can give all their employees access for just $60 a month (down from $150). When you sign up, simply enter the coupon code heatcity for your discount.

Finally, if you’ve been one of the generous people who has financially supported Heat City over the past year and a half, we are planning something special for you. Look for it in your email box over the next week.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is more than two years away from his next election, but he has spent more money campaigning in recent months than almost any candidate running in Arizona this year.

Only Sen. John McCain and wealthy gubernatorial candidate Buz Mills have spent more money. Both Republicans, however, are in red-hot primary races that go to the polls next month.

Arpaio, meanwhile, doesn’t face his next contest until the second half of 2012. Yet his most-recent financial disclosure shows the Republican sheriff has already spent $671,318 on his campaign.

By contrast, Gov. Jan Brewer, arguably the most popular politician in the state right now, has spent just $135,886 in her fight to keep the seat.

Records show most of Arpaio’s money has gone to the Summit Consulting Group, a Phoenix firm that’s been managing a huge nationwide fundraising blitz for him.

Carried by Arpaio’s popularity with conservatives nationwide, the effort has shattered Maricopa County fundraising records by bringing in $2.5 million, much of it coming from out of state.

From April 2009 through May 2010, Summit received $600,765 for the campaign. It’s not clear precisely how the money was spent, with most of the payments, 35 in all, listed as simply “Fund raising, consulting, adm” on Arpaio’s disclosure forms.

Summit’s president Chad Willems did not immediately return a call seeking comment, and Arpaio could not be reached.

The latest disclosure, which was filed June 22, shows the sheriff’s supporters gave him $1.2 million in just the first five months of this year.

That’s double the $610,000 he raised back in 2008 when he last won an election. That campaign was believed at the time to be the most expensive in Maricopa County history.

Most of Arpaio’s fundraising this year took place as he was flirting with a run for governor. Had he run, Arpaio could have shifted the money from his campaign for sheriff into the gubernatorial bid. He ultimately ruled out the run for higher office on May 3.