Thread: Pinal County forms new anti-drug cartel posse

Pinal County forms new anti-drug cartel posse



Photographer: KNXV

Posted: 7:24 PM By: Steve Kuzj
FLORENCE, AZ - More eyes, ears and guns are headed to the border battle to take on the Mexican drug cartels.

The Pinal County Sheriff's Office announced the formation of a new "anti-smuggling" posse, Wednesday. A number of their experienced volunteer posse members are being specially trained for an anti-smuggling task force.

Sheriff Paul Babeu announced the posse would be armed with weapons and work with SWAT teams. Their mission will be to catch drug cartel members and seize their drugs and weapons as they patrol.

Sheriff Babeu says this task force is all about damaging the cartels.
"The message to them is, ‘We will do everything in our power in Pinal County to stop you in Pinal County so you do not get into Metro Phoenix, and other parts of America,’ " Babeu said in a press conference.

With not nearly enough money or resources to stop the Mexican drug cartels on their own, the sheriff's office, with the help of District 5 state Senator Sylvia Allen (R), recruited a number of former military personnel and law enforcement officers. They will make up the posse.

The members will be armed with semi-automatic rifles and advanced tracking gear. When under the supervision of other deputies, the posse members will also have the authority to make arrests.

Kevin Taylor is the man running to take the sheriff's badge away from Babeu in the upcoming election. He told ABC15 he smells a last-minute political stunt.

"There are 25 days, give or take, before the election and this is just now coming out? Ludicrous,” Taylor said. “It should've been done, and the sheriff should have taken that responsibility two years ago."

The sheriff’s office says their posse volunteers have already begun some of their training. Whether or not they have an impact on the safety and security of Arizona will have to wait to be seen.

Pinal County forms new anti-drug cartel posse

Babeu’s new posse too risky to insure


By Lindsey CollomThe Republic | azcentral.comWed Oct 31, 2012 8:27 AM

An armed volunteer posse set up by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu to scan the desert for violent drug smugglers is running into serious bureaucratic opposition that might thwart the controversial operation.

County officials from across the state and their insurance underwriters believe Babeu has gone too far in recruiting military veterans to help his deputies, who patrol one of the most dangerous sections of Arizona desert, and have deemed the operation too risky.

Following legal warnings from alarmed underwriters that provide liability cover for posse volunteers in most county sheriff’s offices, an agency that coordinates insurance cover is changing its policy to specifically excludeBabeu’s Anti-Smuggling Posse.

The Arizona Counties Insurance Pool, a risk-sharing program for 11 of the state’s counties, has begun drawing up new policy rules as a direct response to Babeu’s move to send volunteers out to observe and report drug- and human-smuggling activity in the desert of western Pinal County.

The changes are unlikely to affect volunteer-posse operations in any other member county.

“There is not a county that has a posse like Sheriff Babeu’s proposed Anti-Smuggling Posse,” said Bill Hardy, ACIP executive director. “Normal posse activities include neighborhood-watch patrols, welfare checks — in other words, an extra set of eyes in the neighborhood. Additionally, they provide traffic control at accident and crime sites. We have never had a problem with those (posse members).
“However, we do not think it’s good risk management to put a group of gentlemen with weapons out in the desert at night, becoming involved in human- and drug-smuggling enforcement efforts.”
Arizona Counties Insurance Pool is governed by a board of trustees composed of representatives from each member county. It does not include Maricopa, Pima, Yuma and Coconino counties, which are self-insured.
During a board meeting last week, Hardy said trustees directed him to devise language that would modify the insurance policy to preclude liability coverage for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office’s Anti-Smuggling Posse. The instructions followed an Oct. 22 letter to Babeu from ACIP’s legal representative, alerting the sheriff to the trustees’ and underwriters’ concerns regarding the posse’s function and mission.
“As understood by ACIP, this posse will consist of volunteers,” wrote Kenneth C. Sundlof Jr., an attorney with Jennings, Strouss & Salmon P.L.C., general counsel to the insurance pool. “The volunteers will be provided with semi-automatic weapons and surveillance gear by the Sheriff’s Department. While volunteers will be chosen based upon their prior law enforcement or military backgrounds, these volunteers will not be certified law enforcement officers. The purpose of the posse is to patrol the Western Pinal County area to report observations of possible illegal smuggling activities.”
Babeu has said members of the armed, all-volunteer posse do not patrol or make arrests. They assist law enforcement as needed, he said, but their main focus is surveillance and intelligence gathering at the direction of a multijurisdictional SWAT team led by the Sheriff’s Office. The size of the posse has not been disclosed.
The Sheriff’s Office would not clarify the new posse’s function and activities to date. Tim Gaffney, Babeu’s director of communications and grants, said the sheriff, in relaying a conversation he had with Hardy on Tuesday morning, told him “the county insurance pool will be covering our Anti-Smuggling Posse fully just as they do for other posse duties.”
Hardy acknowledged the call and said he told Babeu that ACIP is reviewing the policy.
“As of today, because the policy hasn’t been changed, I guess (Babeu) could make that statement,” Hardy said, adding later that “the position of the board is to move forward with not providing it. We just haven’t developed the policy language to date.”
Sundlof’s letter to Babeu said the underwriter had advised ACIP that it “will likely amend its policies to exclude coverage to volunteers engaged in law enforcement activities, at a minimum.”
Later in the letter, Sundlof refers to “the statement of the underwriter that there will be no liability coverage for the posse.” The current protocol gives county supervisors discretion to approve volunteer claims for workers’ compensation, and that will apply to new posse members as well, he added.
It is not clear what would happen if the Anti-Smuggling Posse were to continue to operate in the desert without liability coverage.
Not providing coverage to a sheriff-sanctioned group is bad policy, said Scott Strobel, president of the Pinal County Deputies Association, a nearly 200-member group and bargaining entity for sworn, civilian and volunteer Sheriff’s Office staff.
“I don’t know the details, so I don’t understand where it’s high risk,” Strobel said. “It’s no more high risk than having a posse member on duty. There’s just as many high-powered weapons in the metropolitan areas as out in the desert. It’s just that in the desert, it’s more remote.”
Babeu announced the formation of the Anti-Smuggling Posse earlier this month. It is separate from the Sheriff’s Office’s other posse groups, whose members assist patrol deputies and participate in search-and-rescue operations.
His new posse in some ways mirrors legislation Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, sponsored this year to require Gov. Jan Brewer to establish an armed-volunteer state guard on the border. Senate Bill 1083, which Babeu supported, passed in the Senate but stalled in the House. Critics listed liability and training as chief concerns.
Uniform for all member counties, the ACIP policy insures volunteers assisting in government business, including those engaged in law-enforcement activities.
Maricopa County has a similar policy. Cari Gerchick, county communications director, doubted that liability coverage would ever be restricted for the Maricopa County sheriff’s posse.
“Frankly, you’ve got a statute that authorizes them to act as long as they have a sheriff’s officer with them or are under their supervision,” Gerchick said. “I don’t see us meddling in what is appropriate law enforcement, but different counties operate differently.”
State law gives elected sheriffs the ability to request the aid of volunteer posse and reserve organizations. A sheriff may also authorize members of the sheriff’s volunteer posse to carry firearms if they have received firearms training approved by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board.
Hardy said he’ll need to walk a fine line in crafting the revisions to the policy due to the technicality of insurance-coverage language. Although trustees did not move to pull coverage from other sheriffs’ posses, he said “we may not be able to do what we want to accomplish what we want to do without reducing coverage for all sheriffs’ posses.”
The Board of Trustees will ultimately approve the language and vote on it. There’s no indication the group will veer from its plan, Hardy said Tuesday, adding that “they are not interested in covering the type of exposure as outlined.”
Sheriffs officials from two member counties on the Arizona/Mexico border — Santa Cruz and Cochise — say the changes won’t affect their operations. Cochise County dissolved its sheriff’s posse a few years back.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said the four volunteers in his office’s Law Enforcement Assist Team mostly help with crowd control and traffic. Team members are asked to report suspicious activity but may not get involved unless it’s at the direction of a sworn officer. Babeu has said his new posse is no different.
Estrada said he’s grateful for volunteers, but he questioned whether they should be taking on roles typically reserved for peace officers. Saying he could only speak for his own county, Estrada said, “This is not a game down here.I think everything is well intended, but I don’t personally or professionally feel comfortable with another group in here that hasn’t had the level of training that peace officers are known and recognized for.
“I wouldn’t want to see anybody come down here and do police work. I think we have enough agents down here to take care of that situation.”

NY Times Advertisement