The debate over Gov. Jan Brewer's description of headless bodies in the Arizona desert has eased, but she may have revived it with a comment in a new interview with the New York Times Magazine.
Asked about whether she had mis-stated the level of border violence in Arizona, Brewer argued she hadn't and cited a recent fatal shootout — in Mexico.
In the interview, Times reporter Andrew Goldman asked: When you signed Arizona’s immigration law in 2010, you cited concerns about growing border violence. But according to the F.B.I., violent crime dropped in Arizona almost 14 percent the previous year.
Brewer answered: As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Fifty thousand people in Mexico have been murdered. Puerto Peñasco, 60 miles south of our border, just had five people and a police officer killed. That is like part of Arizona, and it is spilling over into our state.
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In 2010, Brewer told Phoenix TV newsman Brahm Resnik: “Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded.”
Gubernatorial challenger Terry Goddard and others criticized her for exaggerating the problem of border violence and scaring away tourists. At that point, no border-area medical examiners had received any decapitated bodies among the hundreds of illegal immigrants found in the desert.
But some of Brewer's defenders felt she was vindicated when, in October 2010, a man was beheaded in Chandler, apparently as a result of a cross-border drug-trafficking conflict. In January this year, another headless body — this one with the hands and feet also were cut off — was found in Pima County northwest of Tucson.
The shootout Brewer cited in the interview was a conflict among drug traffickers that took place July 19 in broad daylight in the Sonoran tourist town known as Rocky Point.
