Philip Genaway

The police chief of the fast-growing Mojave Desert city of Adelanto was arrested Tuesday and charged with 36 felony counts of embezzling more than $30,000 in drug investigation and canine operation funds. Philip Genaway, 53, pleaded not guilty to the charges after being booked at San Bernardino County Jail. Genaway, arrested at his home, was released on his own recognizance pending an Oct. 28 pretrial hearing.

The police chief of the fast-growing Mojave Desert city of Adelanto was arrested Tuesday and charged with 36 felony counts of embezzling more than $30,000 in drug investigation and canine operation funds. Philip Genaway, 53, pleaded not guilty to the charges after being booked at San Bernardino County Jail. Genaway, arrested at his home, was released on his own recognizance pending an Oct. 28 pretrial hearing.

Just days after the Adelanto city manager fired the police chief, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department appointed a temporary commander to run the agency while the City Council debates whether the sheriff should take over in the small Mojave Desert town. The upheaval comes as the city of 18,000 tries to recover from a series of recent police scandals, including a 1994 case in which two officers beat a confession out of one man and forced another to lick his blood off a booking room floor.

The Adelanto Little League could always count on sparklers and Piccolo Petes as money-makers during its annual Fourth of July fundraiser. But the San Bernardino County district attorney's office alleges that Adelanto Mayor Jim Nehmens and his wife, Kelly, used the fireworks sales to line their own pockets. They were arrested Tuesday, each charged with three counts of grand theft by embezzlement. If convicted, they could each face nine years in prison.

A former Adelanto City Council member who resigned after questions of her citizenship status were raised two years ago now faces deportation for voting in the 2004 presidential election. Cuban-born Zoila Meyer surrendered to the San Bernardino County office of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday and was arrested on charges of violating immigration laws.

The head of Adelanto's animal control office has been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty after investigators said he systematically drowned dozens of kittens over four months last year. Kevin Murphy, 36, was charged Monday with six counts of killing, maiming and abusing animals and faces up to six years in prison if he is convicted.

Adelanto may mean "progress" in Spanish, but many say this scruffy high desert community -- founded in 1915 by the inventor of the Hotpoint Electric Iron -- is perpetually stuck in a quagmire of corruption and scandal. Recent accusations of animal cruelty against Kevin Murphy, head of the city's animal control department, have once again fueled notions of a Wild West town operating on the fringes of the law.

Mayor Tom Thornburg unfolds his latest letter from the public. "You and your city attorney are as crooked as there are 24 hours in a day," he reads aloud. The mayor is not pleased. "We think the city is pretty clean," says Thornburg, 67, who's also a criminal defense attorney and a convicted felon. Adelanto boasts a minor league baseball team, but it's not known for that. For years, this desert outpost of 13,000 has suffered the infamous reputation of a Wild West town.

When he took over as mayor, Tristan Pelayes thought shutting down the Charlie's Girls strip club on the edge of this desert town would be his biggest headache. Half an hour after being appointed, he knew better. Pelayes was handed a set of recall petitions that accused him and two other City Council members of everything from corruption and racketeering to poor hygiene and problem marriages. "It's totally groundless.

The high-desert town of Adelanto in San Bernardino County is a small and gritty place with 13 police officers, a one-cell jail and more tumbleweeds than people. Yet each year, more than 1,500 arrests occur there--one for every 10 residents. So when Police Chief Philip Genaway heard about a new state law allowing the county to bill him $122.90 for every person his officers booked into the county jail, his reaction was sharp.