ALL EYES ON FLA. JAIL AS ZIMMERMAN AWAITS RELEASE: SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — All eyes remain on the Florida jail where the man charged with murdering 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is awaiting release on bail, and it could be several days before he leaves.
George Zimmerman's attorney was still working Sunday to secure the money for bail and a safe place for the 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer to stay. But residents in Sanford, where Martin was killed, don't expect a ruckus once Zimmerman is released.
City commissioners haven't received calls from nervous residents. Protesters haven't showed up outside the jail. And talk at one local coffee shop seldom focused on the case.
"It's just kind of a non-issue now," said Michele Church, a server at Mel's Family Diner. "That's pretty much all anybody in Sanford wanted, was an arrest, so it could be sorted out in the court system."
BURNING MAN ON PROBATION: RENO, Nev. (AP) — Already reeling from a ticket snafu, organizers of the Burning Man counterculture festival on the Nevada desert now have another fight on their hands.
They're challenging the federal government's decision to place them on probation — and threats to pull their license — for exceeding the crowd cap last year at the largest outdoor arts festival in North America.
The Bureau of Land Management took the action against Black Rock City LLC after its offbeat art and music festival drew daily crowds of more than 53,000 on both Sept. 2 and 3 last year on the Black Rock Desert, 110 miles north of Reno.
BRC was issued a notice of noncompliance decision for exceeding the daily population cap of 50,000 allowed under terms of its special recreation permit for the weeklong celebration of radical self-expression leading up to Labor Day, said Gene Seidlitz, manager of the BLM's Winnemucca Field Office.
DETECTIVE BUMPS INTO CIGARETTE-BUYING SUSPECT: TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan detective can credit legwork, luck and one man's bad habit for his latest arrest.
A Traverse City police detective went to a local gas station Thursday to show clerks a surveillance video image of someone accused of stealing a woman's credit card a week before. The man Detective Kevin Gay was looking for was buying a pack of cigarettes there.
Capt. Brian Heffner, who leads the detective bureau, said a chance encounter like this is rare but welcome.
"The odds are definitely against this happening. ... On the exact day and time he's in there, the suspect is buying a pack of cigarettes," Heffner said.
AZ SHERIFF PLAYED PROBE FOR LAUGHS: PHOENIX (AP) — An audio recording has surfaced of an Arizona sheriff playing his refusal to cooperate in a racial profiling investigation for laughs at a fundraiser for an anti-illegal immigration group in Texas. He ridicules politicians who sought the probe and displayed contempt toward federal authorities who were — and are still — investigating him on two fronts.
The dismissive comments in 2009 by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio came as the U.S. Justice Department had already launched a civil rights probe of his trademark immigration patrols and the FBI already was examining abuse-of-power allegations for the sheriff's investigations of political foes.
In the September 2009 speech in Houston, Arpaio boasted that he arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants after politicians and federal investigators started to pick apart his patrols. He said he wouldn't cooperate with the inquiry, but said he would tone down the patrols — if he was proven wrong.
"But I'm not. After they went after me, we arrested 500 more just for spite," the self-proclaimed "America's toughest sheriff" said, pausing for laughter and applause.
