After years of a gang of thugs running rampant through the town … after the community screams and the police finally are forced to act … after teen violence continues and the police chief insists there’s nothing to see here … the town of Gilbert has finally identified the problem.
It’s reporter Robert Anglen.
One of the two Arizona Republic reporters who ripped the cover off the state’s fourth-largest city — that thin veneer that Gilbert is, essentially, Mayberry — is the problem.
Better, apparently, to protect the town’s precious reputation than to actually protect the town.
For more than a year, Anglen and reporter Elena Santa Cruz have been dogging the story of how the “Gilbert Goons” terrorized the East Valley, culminating in the October 2023 beating death of 16-year-old Preston Lord.
It was the worst-kept secret in town, what with chatter and cellphone recordings of the assaults by a group of mostly white, affluent teens — assaults that went mostly unchecked by police.
Once this ugly story went public, seven arrests were made, but the story didn’t end.
In July, a group of teenage boys in ski masks burned down a barn where 10 girls were having a movie night. The girls had just seconds to escape.........