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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

This is from this am NYT, and concentrates on my hometown, Phoenix.  But, 
Sage, Leslie, and maybe others have close enough proximity to the border to 
concern themselves with these issues.  And, they are occuring in the rural 
parts of S. AZ, as well as the cities.

I find this quotation telling.  He said it in such a non-pluused , 
no-big-deal manner :  

"Still, federal authorities have said there is no sign that the pattern of 
beheadings and mutilations of victims and the regular killings of law 
enforcement officers that characterize the violence in Mexico has arrived in 
the United States."

We are still okay, because, so far, they aren't rolling severed heads down 
the street, is the way I read that comment.

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Wave of Drug Violence Is Creeping Into Arizona From Mexico, Officials Say 
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: February 23, 2009 
PHOENIX — The raging drug war among cartels in Mexico and their push to 
expand operations in the United States has led to a wave of kidnappings, 
shootings and home invasions in Arizona, state and federal officials said at 
a legislative hearing on Monday.

The drug trade has long brought violence to the state, which serves as a hub 
as illicit drugs and illegal immigrants are smuggled to the rest of the 
nation. 

Over all, in this city and surrounding Maricopa County, homicides and violent 
crime decreased last year. But the authorities are sounding an alarm over 
what they consider changing tactics in border-related crime that bear the 
marks of the violence in Mexico. 

A home invasion here last year was carried out by attackers wielding 
military-style rifles and dressed in uniforms similar to a Phoenix police 
tactical unit. The discovery of grenades and other military-style weaponry 
bound for Mexico is becoming more routine, as is hostage-taking and 
kidnapping for ransom, law enforcement officials said.

The Phoenix police regularly receive reports involving a border-related 
kidnapping or hostage-taking in a home. 

The Maricopa County attorney’s office said such cases rose to 241 last year 
from 48 in 2004, though investigators are not sure of the true number because 
they believe many crimes go unreported.

The violence in Mexico — where more than 6,000 people were killed in the last 
year in drug-related violence, double the number of the previous year — is 
“reaching into Arizona, and that is what is really alarming local and state 
law enforcement,” said Cmdr. Dan Allen of the State Department of Public 
Safety.

“We are finding home invasion and attacks involving people impersonating law 
enforcement officers,” Commander Allen told the State Senate Judiciary 
Committee, whose chairman, Jonathan Paton of the Tucson area, called the 
hearing. “They are very forceful and aggressive. They are heavily armed, and 
they threaten, assail, bind and sometimes kill victims.”

Chief David Denlinger of the State Department of Public Safety said that 
while tactics like home invasions might not be new in the drug trade, “they 
are getting more prevalent.”

“Border crimes are not just on the border,” Chief Denlinger said, pointing to 
posters showing weapons, drugs and people who had been held hostage.

The hearing comes at a time of heightened anxiety in the United States 
brought on by the escalating violence in Mexico and a federal report in 
December that said the Mexican cartels “maintain drug distribution networks 
or supply drugs to distributors in at least 230 U.S. cities.”

The report from the National Drug Intelligence Center said the cartels posed 
“the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States; they control most 
of the U.S. drug market and have established varied transportation routes, 
advanced communications capabilities and strong affiliations with gangs in 
the United States.”

The violence in Mexico has come from a government crackdown on the cartels 
and a war among them over turf and trading routes to the United States.

Still, federal authorities have said there is no sign that the pattern of 
beheadings and mutilations of victims and the regular killings of law 
enforcement officers that characterize the violence in Mexico has arrived in 
the United States.

In some cases, the connection to the cartels in American cities are tenuous 
or not fully understood, law enforcement officials have said. 

But in this border state, the anxiety is acute and the ties to drug and human 
smuggling strong. 

The police and federal agents regularly seize large loads of cocaine, 
marijuana and other drugs smuggled in vehicles and sometimes on the backs of 
couriers and illegal immigrants linked to drug organizations.

At the same time, the vast majority of the weapons used in Mexico’s 
drug-related killings come from the United States, and Arizona is a top 
exporter. 

Terry Goddard, the Arizona attorney general, said his office had sought to 
clamp down on money wire transfers through the state that were believed to 
help finance the smuggling of drugs and people.

“They send us drugs and people, and we send them guns and cash,” Mr. Paton 
said in an interview.

Mr. Paton, a Republican who favors gun rights, said he was considering the 
possibility of introducing legislation intended to restrict “straw 
purchasers,” people who buy guns with legal documentation at shops and gun 
shows and then turn them over to drug traffickers.

Federal laws prohibit such purchases, but Mr. Paton said he believed that 
adding state sanctions would provide more muscle in fighting the practice.

Mr. Paton said there were already bills pending in the Legislature focusing 
on border crime. Prompted by the discovery of a rash of so-called drophouses 
in and around Phoenix, where migrants have been held against their will, one 
bill would increase penalties for those caught smuggling people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/us/24border.html