Updated Oct 31, 2011 - 9:57 am
Arizona law enforcement on alert after threatening fliers found
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Print | Originally published: Oct 28, 2011 - 1:13 pm
PHOENIX -- Arizona law enforcement officers are on alert Friday after a stack of threatening fliers were found at the Cesar Chavez Plaza.
The fliers were left for Occupy Phoenix protesters.
The flier titled "When Should You Shoot a Cop?" encourages people to kill "any government agent" who violates their rights.
It also claims people have a right to resist police searches at places like airports, the border, and sobriety checkpoints.
It encourages people to kill any government agent who violates their civil rights.
The flier suggests that people can act a number of ways if they are detained by a police officer.
"If a cop decides to treat you like livestock," the flier states, "You usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop."
A Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputy found the fliers and turned them over to the Department of Public Safety.
"We don't know who created this memo because it was at the rally, it just appeared there," DPS's Bart Graves said. "We're looking into how it got there and the authorship."
DPS issued a "Counter-terrorism" alert to state law enforcement agencies.
"That's kind of a big name for saying we contacted local law enforcement, " says DPS spokesman Bart Graves. "It's telling them that 'We are aware of it and we are tracking it.'"
The flier ends with the following paragraph.
"The next time you hear of a police officer being killed ‘in the line of duty,' take a moment to consider the very real possibility that maybe in that case, the ‘law enforcer' was the bad guy and the ‘cop killer' was the good guy. As it happens, that has been the case more often than not through recorded history."
As of Friday afternoon it was not believed that the fliers had anything to do with the Occupy Phoenix protests, according to Graves.
"At this point, we don't have any reason to believe that these fliers have anything to do with the Occupy Phoenix situation, but our investigation will turn up more information about the origin of it."
