The Arizona House of Representatives was evacuated shortly after noon Jan. 24 and a police bomb squad was called to the building after a lawmaker who had recently been threatened over legislation she was sponsoring received a suspicious package.
After about 40 minutes, the building was cleared and employees and lawmakers were allowed to return to their offices.
A House spokesman said the building was evacuated on the recommendation of the House’s security personnel and the Department of Public Safety.
Phoenix police responded to the threat at the legislative building. A bomb-sniffing dog did not alert officers to the presence of an explosive device, so the package to Sinema and a similar one to Rep. Ben Miranda, D-16, were opened. Inside, officers found court documents from a man questioning the state’s sovereignty.
It is believed the sender mailed the packages to those members because they sit on the House Judiciary Committee. Similar packages were delivered to both Eddie Farnsworth and Adam Driggs, the Republican chairman and vice chairman of the committee, respectively.
It is unknown if the five other members of the committee also received packages from the sender.
House Speaker Jim Weiers said he agreed to the DPS request that the building be evacuated.
“We did not feel comfortable…because of the unknown origin [of the packages]. It’s better to take a bit of prevention,” he said.
Recently, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, introduced legislation that would prohibit groups like the Minuteman Project from patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border. The group does so to enforce federal law and is comprised of “Americans doing the job Congress won’t do,” according to its Web site.
Two days ago, Sinema said she had received numerous threats of physical and sexual assault via e-mail from people who objected to the proposed legislation. She said she forwarded the messages to the FBI and intended to provide them to the state Department of Public Safety.
Sinema said the incident reinforces the need for prohibiting such groups from performing federal duties.
“It just really makes the point,” she said, adding the groups often attract “fringe elements” that are prone to violence.
She said the package was a white cardboard box with her address handwritten on it.
“It didn’t look like a professional package,” she said, adding the return address was unfamiliar and from rural Arizona, where many of the threatening e-mails originated.
Despite telling her assistant to ask House security to open the package, she said she didn’t immediately connect the evacuation with the package, which she said was not particularly threatening.
“I wasn’t scared until they came by and said to get out of the building,” Sinema said. “Then I got scared.”
Since reporting the threats, Sinema has received special protection from both the Phoenix Police Department and the Department of Public Safety.