Thread: Arizona task force patrols drug corridor

Arizona task force patrols drug corridor

by JJ Hensley - Apr. 2, 2011 08:12 PM
The Arizona Republic

With the U.S.-Mexico border the starting point and the Valley the end zone, there is a strategic game played every night between police and smugglers for control of the 50-yard line, a rugged stretch of desert that straddles Interstate 8 between Gila Bend and Casa Grande.

The area has become the focal point for the state's war on drug trafficking.

A group of specially trained deputies and police officers confront smugglers nightly in the same cat-and-mouse game the two sides have played for decades, officials say. But as traffickers have become more sophisticated, police have been forced to expend more resources and create new partnerships in an attempt to keep up.

"Do we think down here that we're going to dismantle a cartel and some of their cells? No," said Maricopa County sheriff's Lt. Steve Bailey. "But we have to do something."

What needs to be done is debatable. Consider:

- The National Day Laborer Organizing Network released a statement last week calling for federal intervention into Sheriff Joe Arpaio's plan to use aircraft to patrol the corridor as part of a monthlong operation targeting drug smugglers.

- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano cited decreasing violent-crime statistics last month in El Paso and said border security is better than ever. She was accused in conservative circles of understating the problem or willfully ignoring it.

- Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu predicted in early February that a deputy working in the area would get in a shootout with smugglers in the next two months.

- Gov. Jan Brewer famously claimed last summer that headless bodies were appearing in the Sonoran Desert, courtesy of smuggling crews.

On Friday, Arpaio pointed to drug seizures as a sign that the border is not secure.

"I know there are a lot of violent crimes occurring . . . Watch TV every night. What's that mean? We still have violent crime," Arpaio said. "As far as the drug traffic still coming in, that's serious. If we secured the border that much, why are we, with just 10 guys, making all these seizures if the border is secure.?"

Strip away the political rhetoric about living and dying along the U.S.-Mexico border and you have a dozen deputies and officers waiting for the sun to go down so they can outfit themselves with military-grade equipment and go off into the desert in search of traffickers.

The 10-agency task force consists of officers from the Tempe, Mesa and Phoenix police departments, along with the state Department of Public Safety and Pinal and Maricopa County sheriff's offices.

When asked about their safety, officers who work the corridor point to signs in the area that caution travelers about smuggling activity.

Officers on the task force believe the danger of a shootout persists as long as they keep confronting smugglers and taking more and more of their cash crop.

"Certainly, that's what we train for," Bailey said. But he added that he believes the smugglers carry guns as protection from other bandit crews.

To federal officials, the task force that brings together local, state and federal resources to target smuggling activity is proof that the government's border-security plan is working. An increase in border-patrol agents has freed up agents to participate in the task forces and work with local law enforcement to disrupt smuggling.

It's taken months of trial and error for the officers to find the right equipment and they have had training from experts in tracking, navigation and desert warfare to perfect their techniques.

The smugglers, who have worked in the area for years, can have the upper hand when it comes to manpower and resources.

Traffickers have installed their own radio transponders in southern Arizona mountains and use solar-powered radios to stay connected in the desert. They also have well-trained teams of backpackers who haul drugs through the desert, scouts positioned throughout the area to look for law enforcement, and coordinated delivery of vehicles that provide food, fuel and water to scouts and backpackers for their stays in the desert.

"These guys know this area better than we do," Bailey said. "They turn their (vehicle) lights off and just fly through there."

That's the situation that unfolded near Interstate 8 shortly after 9:30 Thursday night, when a sheriff's deputy pulled behind a truck and watched as the truck made a hard right turn onto a poorly marked desert road. As soon as the truck's driver saw the squad car, he turned off the truck's lights and launched blind into the desert. By the time sheriff's deputies and border-patrol agents tracked down the truck 30 minutes later, the men inside had fled into the desert and the supplies - water, potatoes, canned goods, gas and kerosene - were left behind.

A similar chase last month led task-force members to more than 1,700 pounds of pot stashed in a Dodge truck stolen from a 43-year-old Surprise man.

The task force's objective is not to target human smugglers but to intercept drug loads before they get to a stash house in the Valley where robberies and shootouts occur. In 2009, the group seized more than 4,800 pounds of pot in the area, worth nearly $5 million; last year, the task force confiscated nearly 20,000 pounds of pot worth almost $20 million.

Those numbers have recently turned the Vekol Valley into a tense battlefield in the decades-long drug war, but the area, with its array of washes and unmarked desert roads, was attractive to smugglers 25 years ago, said Department of Public Safety Maj. David Denlinger, who worked in the area and now coordinates DPS' border-enforcement efforts.

"Different corridors shift over the years based on enforcement activity south of the border and north of the border," Denlinger said. "There are constant adjustments made on both sides. With everything we do, they try to develop a counter to that."

http://www.azcentral.com/community/pina ... route.html

- The National Day Laborer Organizing Network released a statement last week calling for federal intervention into Sheriff Joe Arpaio's plan to use aircraft to patrol the corridor as part of a monthlong operation targeting drug smugglers.

Are you kidding me? This network must consider drug runners as part of their "organization". And they have the audacity to protest IN FAVOR of drug runners? That ought to be enough to have ICE and DHS investigating their members.