Veterans Day brings many events to E.V.

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Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has garnered international media attention for his illegal immigration enforcement effort, one of the most aggressive in U.S. history. But it comes with a price – slower response times on other calls, a dropping arrest rate and, for a time, excessive overtime costs. A five-part Tribune investigation examines the enforcement effort including it’s hidden costs.

Related: Tribune celebrates winning Pulitzer Prize

Database updated August 2009

The Arizona Board of Education’s Investigations Unit has been revoking licenses for educator sexual misconduct since it formed 12 years ago, but it had never built a detailed database on such incidents until the Tribune started making public records requests for them. 

Part II: Queen Creek foreclosed?

Part III: Foreclosures stall growth

Despite great growth in the East Valley over the past decade, school districts are grappling now with declining enrollment. In a three-day series, the Tribune looks at how incorrect population estimates, the housing market bust, aging neighborhoods, competition among school districts, and the dynamics of the Hispanic population have school officials wondering, “Where have all the children gone?”

Human smugglers have built a lucrative and often brutal industry that generates billions of dollars annually moving loads of illegal immigrants through Arizona. When things go smoothly, the immigrants pay their money and move on. But when things turn bad, beatings, rapes and murders often follow. In a three-day series, the Tribune looks inside the industry that treats human beings as cargo – from the plazas in Mexico where the human smuggling trail begins to the drop houses in the Valley where it sometimes reaches a bloody end.

More than 60 Maricopa County jail inmates have died since 2004, many from illnesses that would be treatable in normal medical settings. The deaths and other health complaints, most of which go unnoticed by the general public and the media, have raised concerns about access to treatment and growing legal liability to county taxpayers. At the same time, county administrators refuse to release documents in support of their claims that conditions have improved or jail consultants are allowed to tour the jails.

Earth fissures have cracked homes, swallowed a horse and slashed property values in several areas of the state. But an effort to map the dangerous cracks by the Arizona Geological Survey aims to help builders and consumers identify fissure locations and make smarter choices about development. The Tribune has assembled an interactive look at two most fissure affected areas in the East Valley: Apache Junction and Chandler Heights.

Tribune's reporter Nicole Beyer takes a closer look at students' and drivers' misbehavior on E.V. school buses. This special report was done in collaboration with ABC 15.  

Information contained in these stories comes from court records and hearings, hospital and medical records, police reports, school records and interviews with the family and others involved in Pam Kazmaier’s case and her life. 

For years, elected officials and city staffers in the East Valley have gone to extraordinary lengths to aid Mesa-based Cactus Towing. Company executives used campaign contributions and powerful lobbyists to ensure the company thrived by securing lucrative government contracts. 

When the members of Apache Bravo Young Marines learned of a local soldier nearly killed by a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, they made a commitment to honor him in an unusual and unprecedented way.  

For more than 40 years, Banner Mesa Medical Center has anchored the city’s northwest corner with a full menu of hospital and healthcare services. But the aging hospital is closing this week, its patients scattered between a number of other East Valley facilities. On the same day, the new Banner Gateway Medical Center will open in Gilbert. 

The five-day period from July 27 to July 31, remembered now as the Chandler roundup, has become one of the darkest chapters in the city’s history. It still reverberates through the city’s social and political landscape today.