WAVE OF DRUG VIOLENCE IS CREEPING INTO ARIZONA FROM MEXICO, OFFICIALS SAY

PHOENIX -- The raging drug war among cartels in Mexico and their push
to expand operations in the United States has led to a wave of
kidnappings, shootings and home invasions in Arizona, state and
federal officials said at a legislative hearing on Monday.

The drug trade has long brought violence to the state, which serves as
a hub as illicit drugs, like cocaine and marijuana, and illegal
immigrants are smuggled to the rest of the nation.

Over all, in this city and surrounding Maricopa County, homicides and
violent crime decreased last year. But the authorities are sounding an
alarm over what they consider changing tactics in border-related crime
that bear the marks of the violence in Mexico.

A home invasion here last year was carried out by attackers wielding
military-style rifles and dressed in uniforms similar to a Phoenix
police tactical unit. The discovery of grenades and other
military-style weaponry bound for Mexico is becoming more routine, as
is hostage-taking and kidnapping for ransom, law enforcement officials
said.

The Phoenix police regularly receive reports involving a
border-related kidnapping or hostage-taking in a home.

The Maricopa County attorney's office said such cases rose to 241 last
year from 48 in 2004, though investigators are not sure of the true
number because they believe many crimes go unreported.

The violence in Mexico -- where more than 6,000 people were killed in
the last year in drug-related violence, double the number of the
previous year -- is "reaching into Arizona, and that is what is really
alarming local and state law enforcement," said Cmdr. Dan Allen of the
State Department of Public Safety.

"We are finding home invasion and attacks involving people
impersonating law enforcement officers," Commander Allen told the
State Senate Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Jonathan Paton of
the Tucson area, called the hearing. "They are very forceful and
aggressive. They are heavily armed, and they threaten, assail, bind
and sometimes kill victims."

Chief David Denlinger of the State Department of Public Safety said
that while tactics like home invasions might not be new in the drug
trade, "they are getting more prevalent."

"Border crimes are not just on the border," Chief Denlinger said,
pointing to posters showing weapons, drugs and people who had been
held hostage.

The hearing comes at a time of heightened anxiety in the United States
brought on by the escalating violence in Mexico and a federal report
in December that said the Mexican cartels "maintain drug distribution
networks or supply drugs to distributors in at least 230 U.S. cities."

The report from the National Drug Intelligence Center said the cartels
posed "the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States; they
control most of the U.S. drug market and have established varied
transportation routes, advanced communications capabilities and strong
affiliations with gangs in the United States."

The violence in Mexico has come from a government crackdown on the
cartels and a war among them over turf and trading routes to the
United States.

Still, federal authorities have said there is no sign that the pattern
of beheadings and mutilations of victims and the regular killings of
law enforcement officers that characterize the violence in Mexico has
arrived in the United States.

In some cases, the connection to the cartels in American cities are
tenuous or not fully understood, law enforcement officials have said.

But in this border state, the anxiety is acute and the ties to drug
and human smuggling strong.

The police and federal agents regularly seize large loads of cocaine,
marijuana and other drugs smuggled in vehicles and sometimes on the
backs of couriers and illegal immigrants linked to drug
organizations.

At the same time, the vast majority of the weapons used in Mexico's
drug-related killings come from the United States, and Arizona is a
top exporter.

Terry Goddard, the Arizona attorney general, said his office had
sought to clamp down on money wire transfers through the state that
were believed to help finance the smuggling of drugs and people.

"They send us drugs and people, and we send them guns and cash," Mr.
Paton said in an interview.

Mr. Paton, a Republican who favors gun rights, said he was considering
the possibility of introducing legislation intended to restrict "straw
purchasers," people who buy guns with legal documentation at shops and
gun shows and then turn them over to drug traffickers.

Federal laws prohibit such purchases, but Mr. Paton said he believed
that adding state sanctions would provide more muscle in fighting the
practice.

Mr. Paton said there were already bills pending in the Legislature
focusing on border crime. Prompted by the discovery of a rash of
so-called drophouses in and around Phoenix, where migrants have been
held against their will, one bill would increase penalties for those
caught smuggling people.