Kingman, USA - The Colorado City fire chief has been indicted on 30 criminal charges based on an April 2010 raid on that city’s fire station and official’s homes.
Colorado City Fire Chief Jake Barlow was charged on an original indictment Aug. 4 on 27 counts of violating the duties as custodian of public funds, two counts of participating in a criminal syndicate and one count of assisting in a criminal syndicate, Deputy Mohave County Attorney James Schoppman said.
Barlow is expected to be arraigned Aug. 23 before Superior Court Judge Steven Conn. His defense attorney will be Mike Piccarreta, the Tucson attorney for Warren Jeffs when he faced criminal charges in Mohave County. Barlow faces up to 12 years and six months in prison if he is tried and convicted of each of the more serious participating in a criminal syndicate charge.
Mohave County law enforcement officers raided the fire stations April 6, 2010 in Colorado City and in Hildale, Utah as well as the homes of Barlow and Colorado City Manager David Darger. The investigating into Darger is ongoing. Colorado City, along with Hildale, is the home of the polygamist sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church.
The investigation looked into the alleged misuse of the fire department’s credit cards for personal use in connection with the fire departments and the city government. Seized in the raid were computer hard drives and cameras. The computers were examined by experts from the state’s Attorney General’s Office and the Arizona Department of Public Safety in Phoenix.
In recent years, the county attorney’s office has also investigated charges of child abuse and sexual misconduct by nine FLDS church members including Jeffs, the church’s prophet, whose charges of sexual conduct with a minor in two 2007 Arizona cases were dismissed in June 2010. Jeffs was convicted in Utah for rape and was serving a 10-year prison term when his conviction was overturned in July by the Utah Supreme Court and remanded for a new trial. Jeffs was recently convicted and sentenced to life in prison on rape charges in Texas.