Thread: DPS tackling immigration - Beefing up staff, task force...

DPS tackling immigration-
Beefing up staff, task force allows spotlight to shine on drug, human trafficking

By ALAN LEVINE, Staff Writer August 19, 2008


DPS Director Roger Vanderpool tries to get out into the field whenever possible. He's seen above on Interstate 10, a mile or so north of the Florence Boulevard exit into Casa Grande, reporting on a truck with a shifting load problem. Afterwards, he crossed over to the northbound section of the freeway and rendered assistance to the driver, who was overwhelmed at getting help from an officer with four stars on his collar. At left, Vanderpool confers with members of a GIITEM unit at the Casa Grande DPS station. Another "I" was added to the acronym just over a year ago to reflect the new name - Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission. GIITEM units have been successful in combating gangs and the Mexican drug cartels in Pinal County and throughout Arizona.

Arizona Department of Public Safety Director Roger Vanderpool says filling of staff vacancies has helped the agency deal with such problems as heroin and gun trafficking and other gang-related problems.


In a recent interview Vanderpool discussed a number of law enforcement issues, including a drug-related crime wave causing severe problems for law enforcement south of the border.

Vanderpool began by assessing the state of the agency: "Three years ago DPS had hundreds of vacancies," he said. "At this time, we're not full, but we have more officers on the road now than we've ever had, and GIITEM (Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission) is built back up, and we're having great success in interdicting drugs and human trafficking.

"When someone says that no one else in Arizona is enforcing the illegal immigration issue, I take umbrage at that, because we have been enforcing, apprehending and turning undocumented aliens over to Border Patrol for years. As a matter of fact, in the last three years, we've turned in over 41,000 UDAs (undocumented aliens) to ICE and Border Patrol."

Big increase in heroin

Vanderpool acknowledged that human smuggling has become a kind of side venture for the drug cartels because of their existing mechanism for moving large amount of drugs across the border. "Drugs and people move north," he said, "and guns and money move south.

"We're still getting record amounts of meth, and we're starting to get a little bit of cocaine coming in, but we're also seeing a big increase in heroin. We're currently seizing pounds of heroin. There used to be a time when I was coming up through the ranks with DPS, if you got a couple ounces, that was a big bust. Now we're getting 5 to 10 pounds at a time, and that's something that we all should be very concerned about, because that's as bad as the meth problem. It drives people to desperation, and like meth, it's much tougher to get people off of heroin. A lot of it is being processed in Mexico - Mexican black tar heroin."

On the plus side, Vanderpool noted that his officers are seizing more drugs than ever. He estimated that last year the highway patrol seized more than 50,000 pounds of marijuana. In February alone, they seized more than 24,000 pounds, and since then there have been at least two seizures - one of 4,100 pounds and 2,000 pounds - out of commercial vehicles. He said that DPS was on a record pace this year for interdicting drugs.

"What that tells me is what a lot of us have known for a long time," he said, "and that is that we had only been scratching the surface, and we're seizing more because we have more people out there doing the interdicting, not only DPS but Border Patrol.

"I think that one of the things that gets lost in the border issue, in arresting illegal immigrants, is that's fine, but I believe what really is beneficial to our communities is the amount of dope that is being seized by law enforcement in Arizona, because that's dope that's not going into our communities and killing our kids. I'm more excited about that than anything else."

Methamphetamine

Vanderpool pointed out that although law enforcement has been successful in greatly reducing the number of small meth labs in the United States, the Mexican drug cartels have taken up the slack by establishing major labs south of the border.

"The cartels are in business to supply drugs to the United States," he said. "People look at me strangely and say, why should we be surprised that the cartels are getting into the meth business? It's like Wal-Mart putting another product on their shelves. For all intents and purposes, they already have the stores and the distribution network. They're making money on marijuana and cocaine, so why not make money on meth?"

Vanderpool estimated that thanks to new laws pertaining to the restricting of prescription medicines containing meth precursors such as pseudoephedrine, labs in Arizona probably are down to less than 20, which he labeled as "tweaker labs producing maybe a couple of eight-balls, one to sell and one for themselves. In that regard, it's been very positive," he said, "but there's still a lot of meth out there, with 99 percent of it being produced in Mexico."

Battle south of the border

Vanderpool noted that a virtual war is going on between the drug cartels and the Mexican government, and a good part of the problem is that the cartels have plenty of money with which to bribe officials and if bribery is out of the question, they have the means to use force to get their way. That relates to the issue of firearms being smuggled into Mexico from the United States.

"With all the violence, the Mexican government is very concerned, and they've got a legitimate complaint," Vanderpool said. "It is nearly impossible to legally buy a gun in Mexico. Recently, there have been some seizures of weapons there and some seizures here in the United States that were headed for Mexico and that is a concern for law enforcement, especially the movement of .50-caliber, long-distance sniper rifles."

Vanderpool pointed out that immediately upon taking office, President Felipe Calderon extradited two planeloads of high-ranking drug cartel members, and he has deployed the military to a much greater extent than his predecessor, Vicente Fox.

"He's deployed the military into areas like Tijuana," Vanderpool said, "where they went in and took over the police department. In fact, he has a good share of the Mexican military deployed along the Southwest border, because of border violence issues.

"Now the flipside for them, which we sometimes forget, is that they have an immigration and smuggling problem on their southern border, and if we think ours is bad, down there they have armed guerrillas, and you have real military action taking place down there. We have serious and dangerous issues on our border, but we are nowhere near the kind of problems that Mexico is facing. And I hope that God continues to bless us and we're never near that level of violence. Calderon needs to be able to succeed, but then Mexico didn't get into that mess overnight, and they're not going to get out of it overnight."

A degree of cooperation

In an effort to assist Mexican law enforcement and, at the same time, to bolster DPS efforts to enforce border issues, Vanderpool has been working with his counterparts in the state of Sonora, which shares the border with Arizona.

"We have regular meetings with Sonoran cops," Vanderpool said, "and I actually have a border liaison squad that does a good share of its work, actually, in Sonora. We're fortunate more so than, say Texas, because we only have one state to deal with in Mexico, and that's the state of Sonora, and we have some pretty good relations built up.

"We have a very good success rate of getting stolen vehicles back, as well as fugitives. Mexico has enough bad guys of their own, so they'll readily give an American down there back to us."

Using all the tools

According to Vanderpool, auto theft and gangs, human smuggling and immigration problems go pretty much hand in hand, and auto theft is really a key component of the majority of the crimes.

"The good thing is that we used to be number two in the country for stolen vehicles," he said. "We're eighth now, so we're moving in the right direction. That's a huge drop for us, and there are a lot of things that contributed to that: the buildup of law enforcement, the deployment of license-plate readers and bait cars. We're using all the tools in the toolbox, including GIITEM, because some of the individuals that would be stealing the cars are now being taken care of by the gang task force.

"We continue to increase GIITEM. Since last time we talked there's been another letter "I" added to GIITEM, and that's the immigration enforcement facet that's part of those special units now. It's not just gang intelligence, it's gang intelligence and immigration. The component of GIITEM dealing with immigration is called IIMPACT, and that is a cooperative effort of DPS, Phoenix PD and ICE, and they're the ones you see at these drop houses.

"Just recently, one of the drop houses that GIITEM investigated was responsible for yielding seven individual arrests for homicide. Two of them had already killed two individuals and burned them in a dumpster. When GIITEM hit the house with the search warrant, there was a third individual in a closet that was bound and gagged, and it was determined that he was next to be killed and burned. And those killings were messages to the other victims as to what would happen to them if they didn't come up with more money."

Vanderpool likened the situation to that of Middle East terrorism or some of the violence in the Prohibition days. "This is organized crime," he said. "What this is all about is money.

"As the housing market turns, more houses are becoming vacant. We are seeing signs that there are unscrupulous management companies that manage properties that are knowingly renting homes for use as drop houses.

"At the same time, the Legislature is enacting serious laws about people knowingly renting to the coyotes."

Vanderpool was asked if so many recent discoveries of drop houses in the Phoenix area is an indication that more illegal immigrants are entering the country.

"I don't believe that there are more illegals coming up," he said, "because that would contradict the figures that Border Patrol and ICE have, that actually show there's been a decrease in the apprehensions of smugglers in the Tucson and Yuma sectors. I think it's law enforcement recognizing the problem and approaching it from an organized crime standpoint. There are conspiracies going on, and it's all about making money. It's greed, which has been the downfall of humankind throughout history."
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?news ... 2087&rfi=6

This is good news!! sounds like they are at least taking in even illegal aliens...

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