A polygamous leader accused of taking more than 20 wives, including underage girls, pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and tampering with evidence charges stemming from a federal investigation into his community on the Utah-Arizona border.

The leader of a small polygamous group near the Arizona-Utah border had taken at least 20 wives, most of them minors, and punished followers who did not treat him as a prophet, newly filed federal court documents allege.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A leader of a small polygamous group on the Arizona-Utah line pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges of tampering with evidence, weeks after being stopped on a highway with young girls in an enclosed trailer.

Mohave County's sheriff says he'll cast a critical eye on a polygamous community on the Arizona-Utah line.

The issue of exactly when the U.S. Department of Justice learned of an alleged pattern of housing discrimination against non-members of Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect is the focal point of the latest development in a civil rights lawsuit aimed at polygamous towns on the Arizona-Utah border.

The House passed a new version on March 6 of a bill stimulated by corruption in Colorado City.

Law enforcement in a town dominated by one of the nation's largest polygamous sects has been preventing women from leaving, leading to a criminal probe of the church run by its jailed leader Warren Jeffs, Arizona's attorney general said Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit today against two rural polygamous towns, alleging that their police officers selectively enforce laws based on religion and defer to the wishes of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The Arizona House is scheduled to consider a bill Wednesday to allow the state to abolish the police department in the northern Arizona community of Colorado City.