County to build police facility in Colorado City
 
By Linda Stelp
Kingman Daily Miner
 
The Mohave County supervisors have voted to spend $200,000 for a new law enforcement building in Colorado City.

During a special meeting Tuesday, the three members of the Mohave County supervisors voted unanimously to release the funds immediately because of recent unrest in the polygamist community.

The county will negotiate a land lease with Mohave Community College and develop an intergovernmental agreement with the state of Arizona for shared use of the facility, which will be a modular building.

This month, 21 men were excommunicated from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, including Mayor Dan Barlow. The struggle between two factions has torn the tightly knit polygamist community, which is along the Utah border in the Arizona Strip, north of the Grand Canyon.

Allegations of child abuse, incest and welfare fraud have forced public officials to take a closer look at the secretive society in which teen girls are forced to marry older men.

The building will be shared by the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, the county attorney’s office, the State Attorney General’s Office and Arizona Child Protection Services.

The closest sheriff’s deputies have been stationed is the Littlefield area, which can be reached only by about an 80-mile trip through Utah.

Mohave County Sheriff Tom Sheahan has dispatched additional deputies to the area to decrease the threat of violence.

“I don’t see this ending anytime soon,” he said Tuesday.

Mohave County Manager Ron Walker said in a prepared statement Tuesday that the county will act as quickly as possible to prepare the site for the building.

“The sewer will be the biggest holdup,” Walker said at the meeting. “We are looking at 90 days. The sooner the better, time’s a wasting.”

In a related matter, District 3 Supervisor Buster Johnson withdrew his motion to spend $50,000 of contingency funds to assist the state with transportation and temporary housing costs of women and children fleeing the polygamist lifestyle in Colorado City.

Johnson did so after listening to Mary Lou Hanley of Child Protective Services in Phoenix on speaker phone at the board meeting.

Hanley said the state will pay the costs of children and adolescents fleeing abuse in Colorado City.

“Keeping children safe is our priority,” she said.

Eight children from Colorado City found their way to Child Protective Services in Phoenix last week.
 
KingmanDailyMiner.com
Originally published Thursday, January 29, 2004
 
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