Polygamous police get pass from AZ House

The polygamous practices in Colorado City, protected by the local police, may continue without interference. Yesterday, the Arizona House rejected a bill aimed at revoking the city’s police force; SB 1433.

Attorney General Tom Horne had proposed the legislation, which some lawmakers viewed as geared only toward the polygamous Colorado City, ignoring concerns about the town of Quartsite and possible police abuse there. Only Representative Harper spoke out about Quartzsite, he said the “perceived thuggery” of the police department and government officials “reached a fevered pitch” last year. Representative Lesko reminded fellow legislators that an April 18 memo by Solicitor General Dave Cole advised that the bill is not unconstitutional.

According to the Yellow Sheet, “Perhaps the most bizarre part of the debate of S1433, however, was the lengthy exchange between Goodale and Ash. Goodale was the first to speak against the bill, and she said that, in addition to being special legislation, the measure unjustifiably goes after a community where no wrongs have been committed. She called on lawmakers to “not pay any attention to the disingenuous comments about these families being harems” in the memo Horne distributed today, and said the people of Colorado City are “normal citizens” who “simply [practice] an alternate lifestyle which we may not choose, but which they have chosen for the past 100 years or so.” Ash said that, based on his conversations with former Colorado City residents, it is clear that “there is a problem up there [and] atrocities have been committed for decades and decades.” Goodale challenged him on that, and asked Ash if prominent former Colorado City resident Flora Jessop was the source of his information. Ash acknowledged that she was – but so were several other former residents he had spoken with when he served as a legal adviser to DPS from 1978-83. He said Jessop’s information confirmed what he had heard from others during that time. After Goodale challenged Ash on what he meant by “atrocities,” he explained that he meant the rape of underage women who were held against their will by the FLDS church. He then issued his own challenge to Goodale: “If you are in a position to state that those kinds of atrocities haven’t happened, I’m willing to listen.”

Goodale then attacked the victims’ credibility. Goodale said only “young women of legal age” enter into “celestial marriages” with older men. The church’s problems, she said, “were addressed by putting Warren Jeffs in prison for life.” Goodale then gently chastised Ash about Jessop, and said he should have closely examined “her background, her reliability, her veracity” before believing what she said,” according to the Yellwo Sheet.

The bill 25-28 on the roll call vote.

According to the Yellow Sheet, Horne said he was “very disappointed” by the vote, and disagreed with some lawmakers’ assessments that polygamy in Colorado City is a lifestyle choice, or that stories of abuse in the polygamous enclave are exaggerated. “It’s not a lifestyle choice that should be respected when they’re forcing underage girls into harems, or when they’re expelling young men so the old men can dominate the young women. That’s not a lifestyle choice. That’s terrible oppression in the 21st century United States.”

Horne said, “There was testimony in committee that these local police, when women try to escape their harems, they drag them back and they become prisoners, that they’ve participated in expelling close to 1,000 young men from the town… so that the old men won’t have competition for the young women. I think that’s horrible. The police are taking their orders from Warren Jeffs and they won’t help. On the contrary, they’re there to keep the young women there.”

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