HOTLINE SET UP TO CATCH CAMPAIGN SIGN THIEVES

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office is setting up a telephone line hoping
to get tips that will lead to the arrest of those stealing hundreds of
political signs in the Valley.

The hotline began operating Thursday after surveillance cameras placed in
Phoenix this week caught adults walking way with signs opposing a medical
marijuana initiative on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The cameras didn't pick up facial characteristics of the people stealing
the signs, thus making it difficult to identify them, said Barnett
Lotstein, a special assistant to the county attorney.

Lawyers decided to place the cameras after supporters of Attorney General
Janet Napolitano, the Democratic candidate for governor, and opponents of
Proposition 203, the medical marijuana initiative, complained that hundreds
of their campaign signs had been disappearing.

Removing signs is a crime punishable by hefty fines or up to 12 1/2 years
in prison, depending on the value of the placards.

Scott Bales, a lawyer representing the Napolitano camp, said people are
targeting her political posters along Central Avenue.

Troy Corder, a spokesman for a group opposing Proposition 203, said that
roughly 300 of the 700 signs the campaign set up throughout the Valley are
now gone.

"We don't know who would benefit by taking our signs down," said Corder of
Battleground Arizona, the group opposing the medical marijuana initiative.

The campaign, he said, spent $42,000 printing the signs.