Former Phoenix Police Chief Ruben Ortega passed away on June 8th. He was 86.

I do not hear the rousing skirl of bagpipes when I consider his death. Instead, I hear Clarence Darrow: “I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

In 1984 residents of the housing projects were up in arms when a Phoenix policeman shot Standley Wesley.

Chief Ortega went on television, pulled back his sport coat and touched his belly to show where Wesley had been shot in a physical confrontation with a cop.

But when I slipped into the hospital room where Wesley was recovering, his only bullet wound was in his back. The shell pierced his spine.

The city’s insurance coverage paid Wesley $10 million. But he would spend the rest of his life paralyzed and in a wheelchair.

The point is that Wesley was not wrestling with a cop.

He was fleeing the scene.

Police Chief Ruben Ortega lied.

At first, Chief Ortega responded that my photo of Wesley’s wound was doctored.

When that lie did not settle the black community, Chief Ortega had me followed and arrested when I drove away from a saloon.

And then this . . . Chief Ortega did not turn me over to the county jail.

No.

Chief Ortega held me in a cage in the police department building, refusing to allow my attorneys to bail me out.

He held me like this for 3 days and nights.

Judge Patricia Whitehead tossed the DUI allegations telling the prosecutors: Chief Ortega may not like what Mr. Lacey writes, but he cannot arrest him for it.

AzScam and a Stool Pigeon 

Perhaps Chief Ortega’s most notorious adventure was with Maricopa County’s top prosecutor Rick Romley.

Together they coordinated AzScam, a scheme to entrap greedy state legislators in 1990. The lawmen brought in a low rent mafia wannabe, Joe Stedino.

He offered guileless legislators cash bribes for a promised vote in favor of a legalized casino.

There was no casino.

What there was included videos of politicians taking bags of cash from Joe Stedino.

For many months, AzScam operated secretly.

During this time frame, I did a series of columns on Club 902, a dive bar wherein County Attorney Rick Romley maintained a lucrative financial interest.

According to street cops, neighbors and local guardian angels, Club 902 was the largest crack bar in metro phoenix.

Lieutenant Ron Hergert of the Phoenix Police Department said Club 902 was notorious for trafficking crack.

In 1989 alone, the cops made 127 arrests at the bar. More than half involved narcotics charges.

But none of those files, as required by law, were turned over to the state liquor control.

I met with that agency’s director, former Phoenix police officer Hugh Ennis, at the Stockyards Restaurant.

On February 7, 1990, I reported that Ennis would close Club 902.

The very next day, Joe Stedino began making inquiries about me.

When AzScam exploded publicly, legislators who took bribes from Stedino were prosecuted.

I got a call from defense attorney Larry Debus. He said I should come watch his defense of state Senator Carolyn Walker.

The witness Debus wanted me to listen to was none other than Joe Stedino.

Under Debus’ questioning, Stedino told the court how he’d been taken off AzScam to investigate me after I’d written about Club 902.

Stedino had gone to bars I frequented.

Word back from bartenders was Stedino wanted to know if I’d be interested in drugs. (I mean . . . moronic. Was this how policing was done?)

I listened, getting more angry as Debus dug into Stedino.

I sat in the very front of the court room mere feet from this dirtbag.

During a pause, Stedino looked at me and asked: “How you doin’ Mike?”

“Don’t talk to me you piece of shit,” I said without a second thought.

Debus was amused.

Enemies List

In late 1992, I answered my ringing phone.

The caller was Colonel Ralph Milstead, the head of the state police.

He wondered if I had time for a cup of coffee. I had time.

When we sat down, he explained that his men had followed me around Phoenix. He’d gone through my bank accounts without a warrant.

When I flew to my newspaper in Miami, an undercover trooper sat next to me on the flight. I was followed wherever I went.

Their concern was that I might be smuggling cocaine.

I had a couple of questions: What did you find out? Why are you telling me this?

He replied that I wasn’t a cocaine smuggler. He described me as a “workaholic.”

He explained that he’d received a terminal diagnosis recently and he wanted some good deeds on his score sheet before meetin’ his maker.

He’d undertaken this investigation at the behest of Police Chief Ruben Ortega.

As luck would have it, Ortega and Milstead had graduated in the same class at the police academy. More, they were paired together in the same patrol car.

(If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.)

I passed this information to one of my writers, David Pasztor.

With the cooperation of the state police, Pasztor discovered a vast filing system of Police Chief Ruben Ortega’s containing intelligence on an enormous network of anyone who raised their voice in Greater Phoenix.

Ortega resigned from his post in 1991. In 1992, he became chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department.

In a recent obit, Phoenix’s alleged paper of record called Ortega “the first Hispanic” chief of Phoenix police.

But given Ortega’s reputed hostility toward Mexican immigrants, that designation seems largely ironic.

Death Becomes Him

And so it passes that Chief Ruben Ortega passed.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot…

Not by me.

Nor by many others.

Michael Lacey is the former executive editor of Village Voice Media, a onetime 17-newspaper chain credited with winning more than 3,800 writing awards, including a Pulitzer. He remains out of prison, pending his appeal in federal court, which the Ninth Circuit is expected to hear in oral arguments this fall. Read more by Lacey, here.