(The Center Square) – The Arizona Senate Thursday passed a resolution calling for state Attorney General Kris Mayes to resign over her comments saying it’s legal to shoot masked federal officers.
The vote was 17-13 along party lines. Republicans voted for the resolution. Democrats voted against it. Mayes, a Democrat, made her comments after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.
The resolution marks the first time the Senate has called on an attorney general to step down, according to the Senate’s Republican majority.
“The Attorney General publicly suggested Arizonans could invoke self-defense laws against law enforcement officers,” said Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who sponsored Senate Resolution 1036. The resolution calls on Mayes to retract her comments, issue accurate guidance on Arizona law and resign.
“Her statements were wrong, dangerous and fundamentally inconsistent with Arizona law,” Kavanagh said in a statement emailed to The Center Square and other media. “When the state’s top law enforcement officer implies that police officers may be lawful targets, the Senate has a duty to act.”
Things won’t go well for any Arizonan who attempts to invoke the “Stand Your Ground” law against an officer, the majority leader said.
Kavanagh previously told The Center Square that Mayes’ comments about people being able to legally “shoot law enforcement officers if their faces are covered and they’re wearing non-traditional SWAT-type uniforms is false.”
State law doesn’t allow Arizonans to shoot law enforcement officers, Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, said Thursday.
“Insinuating otherwise is unacceptable coming from the state’s chief legal officer,” Petersen said in a statement. “Our responsibility is to protect public safety and make the law unmistakably clear.”
Petersen is running for attorney general against Rodney Glassman and Greg Roeberg in the Aug. 4 Republican primary. The winner will run in the Nov. 3 general election against Hobbs, who’s running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
State Senate and House Democrats have rallied in support of Mayes. But Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who is running for reelection this year, called the attorney general’s comments “inappropriate” and said Mayes should retract them, according to media reports.
The controversy started when Mayes said during a TV interview that the state’s Stand Your Ground law says “if you reasonably believe that your life is in danger and you’re in your house or your car or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.”
She told 12News that she wasn’t giving people a license to shoot an officer, but asked how anyone would know someone is law enforcement unless they’re clearly identified as such.
Mayes said Sunday in a video that the “idea that [she] would want the life of any member of law enforcement put in danger is wrong and offensive, and it is an outright lie.”
She noted she appreciates the work by Arizona law enforcement who keep the state safe, but would not be deterred from criticizing the Trump administration for “its ongoing abuses of power.”
Democrats in the Arizona Senate and House defended Mayes at a news conference Thursday morning at the Capitol in Phoenix and in written statements.
“I trust my own ears,” said Lela Alston, the Senate’s Democratic Caucus chair. “Attorney General Mayes was issuing a warning that guns and this ICE regime can be a lethal combination, especially when ICE’s conduct violates the rule of law and legitimate law enforcement tactics.
“Alex Pretti’s murder has shown that our Attorney General’s concern is valid,” Alston said.
Senate Minority Whip Rosanna Gabaldon said “masked and often unidentified ICE officers” drag people off the street with no probable cause and seize children and put them in detention centers. She accused ICE officers of entering homes without valid judicial warrants and now murdering U.S. citizens.
