The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Mort Rosenblum
A recent Star headline piqued my attention: "Bill strips Arizona Rangers of power." That seemed sensible. Experience in saner, safer societies makes clear we need to re-fund real police with civilian oversight and help from mental health professionals.
But the bill was sponsored by two denizens of the Senate in a state reputed globally for its plethora of forked-tongued species.
Curious, I followed Google and then Wikipedia down gopher holes via "AI," more artificial than intelligent, to Jared Kushner's Middle East and beyond. I reemerged to stark reality: The First and Second Amendments are now up for grabs.
I first noticed the Rangers' ominous black-clad presence at the Book Festival a few years ago, loaded down with lethal hardware to keep the crowd safe from those "domestic terrorists" this administration now uses as an excuse for its growing reign of terror.
Luis Alberto Urrea, whose eye for telling detail is as sharp as his wit, suggested I check them out. Among so many books on the southern frontier, none matches his reportage in "The Devil's Highway" on human dimensions of the "border crisis."
At their booth, I spoke with Rangers about their aims and attitudes. I moved on when eyebrows furrowed, and conversations turned to obvious suspicion about who the hell I was to be nosing into their affairs.
The Wikipedia entry, truffled with "citation needed" notes, is prefaced by a warning it often uses, which would have given the vapors to the Scottish scholars who founded the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1768. Basically: This might be horse droppings.
It says the Rangers, founded in 1901 and modeled after the famed and still functional Texas Rangers, "were tasked with hunting down and arresting outlaws in the Territory, especially along the Mexican border ..."
They were "well-trained, well-equipped, and very effective at apprehending even the most dangerous of outlaws, evolving into one of the finest law enforcement agencies in the country," Wikipedia says. "By 1908, most of the outlaws had been arrested, killed, or had fled into Mexico. The Rangers were disbanded for political reasons in 1909."
I was otherwise occupied covering other stories then ("citation needed"), so I'll skip ahead to 1957 when volunteer vigilantes borrowed the old name and attributed past glory to their origin story.
The piece in the Star, from the Arizona Republic, said that documents show Barry Adams, the state commander, ratted out undercover police to a motorcycle gang.
Other stories involve husband-and-wife Rangers murdered in Taylor, north of Show Low, last June. The wife's son fled to Missouri and was killed by state troopers in a shootout.
Stepping back, this is not about Arizona Rangers but rather a state and a nation that and now at grave risk from ill-trained armed enforcers, particularly ICE and Border Patrol officers, who Feds now allow to shoot first and not bother asking questions later.
Arizona has come a long way in the wrong direction.
The Senate bill on the Rangers, SB1071, recalls SB1070, which was passed into law in 2010. In sum, anyone was at risk for driving while brown in a state where the summer sun darkens most people's skin.
On routine traffic stops, police were to check anyone they suspected might be an undocumented immigrant to ask for federal registration documents. The Supreme Court reversed part of the law in 2012, and it was overturned entirely in 2016.
In comparison, I remember a Tucson High classmate, who had me rolling around in laughter at a routine police encounter he described. The cop stopped his barely street-legal "low rider" and walked slowly around it, looking for a reason to give him a ticket.
His friends followed close behind, imitating the officer's walk. "Hey, man, arrest this guy," one said. "He's got bird shit on the windshield." Not amused, the officer muttered and drive away. I've lost track of him, but I suspect he would not try that today.
In all human organizations, judgment depends on individuals. When lawmen are allowed to terrorize, brutalize and open fire on anyone, blameless U.S. citizens included, far more numerous good ones face fierce peer pressure not to testify against bad ones.
Trusted reporters who understand the complexities need to reflect hard facts, free of persecution by a faithless government that savages their constitutional protection.
Ex-Gov. Janet Napolitano, who Barack Obama put in charge of securing the "homeland," grasps reality. Remember? "You show me a 50-foot wall, and Iβll show you a 51-foot ladder.β Now it is more about tunnels and holes in fences. But still.
She recently observed: "βIn the United States people have fundamental speech rights, and we have the freedom to film and follow cars under our constitution. Law enforcement agents should be trained in how to handle that and not respond with tear gas and pepper spray."
In my search down these gopher holes, I found almost nothing about the proposed law to rein in the Arizona Rangers. One piece appeared in the online "California Globe" by a guy who described himself like this:
"... a millennial, constitutional, conservative commentator, content creator, and writer. Blessed to be a husband and a father of four, he was born and raised in New Jersey, but he 'got better' and moved to Arizona."
That did not include "credible reporter," so I went to Wikipedia. which bounced me to a hard-right purveyor of worldviews. Among a string of activities, he founded the Globe, edited Jared Kushner's New York Observer and was a PR flack for Rudy Giuliani.
The details are complicated, but the crux is simple.
The Globe piece was a paean to Mark Finchem, who, along with Wendy Rogers, sponsored SB-1071. Finchem said the bill only meant to take away the Rangers' special status and make it a private security contractor.
In a normal world, this makes sense. But public servants sworn to keep Americans safe praise and pardon insurrectionists armed to their ears who stormed the Capitol. Yet citizens with legal sidearms out of sight at peaceful protests deserve anything they get.
Across America, nearly 7,000 state, county and local police forces are charged with keeping order. If a Justice Department under the thumb of a felon president commits abuses and bigfoots cops trying to do their jobs, "rule of law" means nothing.
The upshot of all this is simple. Democracy can't survive without a "mainstream" press with proven credibility and side eddies off that mainstream of "independents" with the right of free expression. And most of all, a citizenry that knows which is which.
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