Hildale, USA - Disputes over fields, grain silos, water rights and homes in a polygamous community have gotten so bad, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, that an emergency hearing is needed as “quickly as possible.”
The request comes amid death threats and allegations that local police are refusing to enforce court-backed decisions made by the fiduciary overseeing virtually all property in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.
Arizona wants Utah’s 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg to hear a rundown of events that illustrate a “growing tension” over use of property held by the 68-year-old United Effort Plan Trust in the twin towns.
A majority of residents of the two towns are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Residents ran the communal property trust until 2005, when its assets were targeted by lawsuits and it was placed in state control.
Among the conflicts mentioned in Arizona’s report: A May 24 fight over a field during which Seth Cooke, a UEP Trust advisory board member, threatened to “get my .270 and come out here and start shooting people.”
Cooke made the comments to Helaman Barlow, a deputy with the Colorado City Marshal’s Office.
The board members, appointed by Lindberg, assist trust overseer Bruce R. Wisan in making property use decisions.
Cooke told Barlow he would “kill everybody in this [expletive] town” if his mother died and he were not allowed to attend her funeral in the sect’s meetinghouse.
After reviewing a recording of the exchange, Arizona authorities asked Cooke to resign from the board.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff was aware of the threat, but spokesman Paul Murphy said he did not “have an answer” at press time about what position, if any, Utah had taken on the matter or its position on Arizona’s request for an emergency hearing.
Cooke did not respond to a request for comment.
Lindberg froze all proceedings in the UEP case in November 2008, providing a window for settlement talks aimed at resolving the various legal disputes involving the trust. The talks failed.
Lindberg extended the stay after the sect contested the court takeover in a February appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, which has not yet issued a ruling.
But property conflicts have continued.
FLDS members consider UEP lands to be sacred consecrations and for the most part have refused to participate in the secular management imposed by Lindberg, while continuing historic uses of trust land.
Wisan, meanwhile, has assigned new property leases to people no longer associated with the sect. Arizona’s motion says those court-backed land-use decisions are being ignored by local law officers and by city officials. The cities were found by an Arizona discrimination office to have engaged in religious discrimination by refusing to provide water to a home Wisan rented to a disabled, ex-FLDS member.
On Tuesday, a new dispute erupted, according to an attorney representing FLDS members — this time over a grain silo Wisan had apparently leased out that actually belongs to a storehouse overseen by the sect’s bishop.
“It’s a direct affront to the community,” said attorney Rod Parker.
Arizona authorities cite other fights over water use, homes and fields.
Deputies have said that unless presented with a valid lease or specific court order, they will not intervene in “civil” disagreements over property.
“If an officer is presented with a court order, that court order will be fully enforced by both the Marshal’s Office and the prosecutor,” said Kenneth H. Brendel of Flagstaff, who serves as prosecutor for Colorado City.