Stats, Lies and Video Tapes: Why is Sheriff Babeu (McCain's Co-Star) LYING about Crime Stats in Pinal County?

You've probably seen him by now, in one of numerous TV interviews or walking with Sen. John McCain along the U.S.-Mexico border fence in the senator's latest television ad. He is Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, a 41-year-old who arrived in Arizona from Massachusetts in 2002 and who has become the new face of Arizona border sheriffs in the last two months, although his county is about 90 miles from Mexico.

He's the blue-eyed, shaved-headed man in a crisp sheriff's uniform who makes the following claims:
1. Violence is "off-the-charts" in Arizona,
2. He is defending the state's new immigration-enforcement law
3. He is lamenting the federal government's inability to secure the border.

Babeu, especially with his nouveau staunch stance against "illegal immigration," has a penchant for self-promotion. Some label him a less abrasive version of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. But Arpaio was a law enforcement officer who turned politician, while Babeu is a politician turned sheriff looking for hollywood lights, fame and future political office.

While in Massachusetts, he was on the city council. Shortly after losing his election try for Mayor, he moved to Arizona looking to restart his political career. He started as a police officer, then he was elected sheriff of pinal county in 2008. Babeu did not make the border a key campaign issue until one of his deputies, Louie Puroll, was allegedly shot by who he claimed were smugglers. Babeu has his own facebook page and posts his own videos and his latest TV appearances to promote his future career.

On April 30, in a televised interview with CBS reporter Bill Whitaker, Babeu said, "Assaults against police officers, officer-involved shootings, home invasions, carjackings, violent crimes are off the charts. And you ask why is that? We can clearly point to the flow of illegal immigrants." Babeu has made "many claims" regarding what he says is an increase in border violence. He said he convinced Sen. McCain and Kyl to take a harder law enforcement stance on their 10 step border security plan because of the crime increase. He also has appeared in ads with McCain repeating his claims.

But to some, including longtime Arizona law enforcement officials, Babeu is a pretender. Many officers question how 3 1/2 years spent patrolling Chandler's streets, plus a border deployment, qualify him as a national expert on border security, said Bill Richardson, a retired Mesa police officer who also worked for 10 years on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force in Pima, Pinal and other counties. "It would be like a college freshman pre-med student who's had one anatomy class telling a veteran pathologist how to do an autopsy," said Richardson, who has followed Babeu closely since 2008.

Smuggling has long occurred in western Pinal County, but Babeu's claims of soaring violence have more to do with his own political aspirations than reality, Richardson said."What he's very skillfully doing, much like (Joe) Arpaio and (State Sen. Russell) Pearce, is he's creating fear or fanning the flames of fear, that the undocumented are the root cause of crime in Arizona," Richardson said. "In fact, they are not." Figures from the Pinal County Sheriff's Office show major crimes in the county have either decreased or remained steady over the past three years. However, Babeu and Lt. Tamatha Villar said the information for this year is preliminary and does not provide a complete picture of crimes - such as bodies found in suspicious circumstances - likely linked to the border. "I'm not making these things up," Babeu said. "There is more than enough stuff that's going on here, and the threat is real."

The AZNet reporter studied the stats and asked: "I asked Babeu about what he’s referring to when he says violence is "off the charts" and has reached "epidemic" proportions. I told him that we had received crime statistics from his department showing that all major crime stats have dipped or stayed the same in the past three years. He said, “not for us.” When we showed him the statistics for homicides, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts, vehicle thefts and arsons from his own department (see below), he and spokeswoman Tamatha Villar said these numbers were not being run off of “UCR” codes, which refer to “Uniform Crime Reports” kept by the FBI. Babeu said, for instance, that in 2010, there had been 26 homicides. Villar said, “I have to confirm that” but agreed there have been more than the 1 listed in the chart. The reporter asked for Babeu to send him the corrected statistics but he never received them.

Here are the crime stats provided by the Pinal County Sheriff’s records department:

Reference:
Babeu is new face of Arizona sheriffs
Border Boletín: What's behind Babeu's border claims