Three men come to mind for their courage, bravery and intelligence – men I met during my years doing conservative talk radio in San Francisco.
Three Arizona sheriffs talked with me and my audience many times over the years and the singular theme of their words was one of freedom, law and order, and the safety of the citizens under their jurisdiction.
They are names you should know because they put their lives and reputations on the line to tell it like it is. They put the spotlight on the fact that the federal government has betrayed the people of this country by allowing the border to be a sieve and, in the process, allowing drug cartels to take control of thousands of acres of U.S. territory – as well as allowing vicious criminals to be released into our streets to continue their violence against innocents.
The three names are Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County and Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County.
Sheriff Babeu was just in the headlines, filled with anger that the Obama administration has facilitated the release of violent criminals onto our streets and, as a result of lax border enforcement, has allowed swaths of the Southwest to be under the control of violent drug cartels.
Babeu, the youngest of the three, is the first Republican elected sheriff in the history of his county and is in his second term of office. He’s also vice president of the Arizona Sheriff’s Association.
He’s media savvy and, when he’s on TV or radio, has no qualms about expressing his disgust with what he and all Americans face on a daily basis due to the disregard the federal government has a secure border and the resulting influx of illegal aliens and the problems that causes.
Last week, Babeu was on a helicopter tour with GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, over an area 70 miles inside the U.S. border. The territory was filled with cartel lookouts, drug trails and caves armed with AK-47s.
Babeu says the U.S. has no control over this area, part of which is just 30 miles from Phoenix. When I last talked with him about it, he was explicit that the situation has only gotten worse as the cartels move billions of dollars in drugs and thousands of people across the border.
He’s also furious the feds are releasing violent criminal immigrants onto U.S. streets, and he named three, none of which are from Mexico. A Russian and an Iraqi, each guilty of murder and a Sudanese with multiple arrests for assault and parole violations in two states, all released in Arizona in the last month.
Babeu told Fox News, “This is going to end very badly for people.”
“You don’t release murderers into the state of Arizona and somehow think that they are just going to go about their business and try to find a job.
The senior man, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been the constant target of Barack Obama’s federal government. If you just dropped onto earth from Mars and saw the extent of the legal attacks by the feds against a man duly elected by voters for six terms of office, you’d think he was a major lawbreaker.
Uh, no. The feds are after Sheriff Joe because he follows immigration laws as written, and the feds don’t like that. I wrote about that in my WND commentary Aug. 17.
Sheriff Larry Dever was elected four times as sheriff of Cochise County and was preparing for another election campaign, uncontested.
Dever was articulate and smart. Being sheriff of a county with an 83.5-mile border with Mexico, he had firsthand experience with the problems of border crime.
He talked to the press and took his case to Phoenix and to Washington. Dever testified before Congress, supported Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, and was critical of the Obama administration’s handling of border issues.
He was not afraid to confront the people in Congress who are all too willing to ignore the law and allow lawbreakers – yes, illegal border-crossers are lawbreakers – to spit in the faces of Americans and the Constitution.
And then he was dead, killed Sept. 18, 2012, in a single vehicle accident on a gravel road in Northern Arizona. He was said to be driving to meet his sons for a camping/hunting trip before one of them deployed for Afghanistan.
The official word about Dever’s death is that it was an accident and that he was drunk. The first police report said nothing about liquor in the cab, and yet later reports said there were empty cans and bottles.
Virtually all of his friends said Dever didn’t drink and, in fact, for him to have had so much alcohol in his system, he’d have to have consumed 12 beers or 12 shots.
The early report said a vehicle driving behind Dever reported the wreck and that the truck was standing upright off the road with Dever in the cab dead. The driver of that vehicle was never publicly identified.
The autopsy did not list any severe injuries; the official word was the truck rolled over, but that’s hard to believe. A rollover means a vehicle rolls over sideways. Yet if you look at the pictures of the truck, the front end and hood are smashed in; the vehicle sides were virtually undamaged and the doors could be opened.
That’s no rollover I’ve ever heard of – and I believe there was more to his death than we’ve been allowed to know. If that’s the case, then either the feds or the cartels were sending a message to other law enforcement officials to just shut up!
Thanks to the courage of Arpaio and Babeu, that hasn’t happened. If anything, the anger in the West and, indeed, across the country is growing as the killing fields of the illegal aliens in this country continue to grow.
The anger of law enforcement officials in Arizona, Texas and other states is being heard more and more as the innocent dead are identified and as the Obama administration continues to release violent criminals into our communities.
Babeu says the immigration system is broken, and the sheriffs want the criminals deported.
Who’s listening?
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