Thread: Yuma sheriff gets armored car to patrol border

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=3953913&nav=HMO6

Yuma sheriff gets armored car to patrol border
Oct 8, 2005, 09:32 AM
Yuma County sheriff's deputies will now be patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border in a surplus British military armored personnel carrier.


The $18,000, nine-ton, six-wheeled vehicle is needed because of increased attacks against deputies and U.S. Border Patrol agents by drug and migrant smugglers, sheriff's and patrol officials said. The agencies frequently work together.

The Border Patrol's Yuma sector also has a new armored car, this one a 4 1/2 ton vehicle picked up from the Baltimore police. It's set to go into service in a few months.

Law enforcement officers in the border region are increasingly subject to rock throwing, gunfire and being rammed by fleeing vehicles.

In the first six months of 2005, 167 assaults, 104 rock throwing incidents and six cases of officers targeted by gunfire have been documented by the agencies in the Yuma region, sheriff's Maj. Leon Wilmot said.

In August, a rock thrown by an illegal immigrant forced a Border Patrol helicopter to land west of Yuma. The rock hit the rotor blade of the A-Star chopper, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing. No one was hurt.

Wilmot said he hopes the armored personnel carrier deters the violence, and stops those who try to ram their way to freedom.

"Hopefully, when they see this, they'll know they just can't run into this and get away," Wilmot said.

Border Patrol spokesman Michael Gramley said federal officers already use "war wagons" pickups with detention compartments in the back and metal grates on the windows to protect agents from rock throwers.

But the new military vehicles will be the first capable of withstanding gunfire.

Put a 7.62 mm GPMG and they will deter them till they get an RPG.