After trumpeting the success of his Border Strike Force, Ducey convinced other Republican governors to get on board. But it's not what he claims.
I think most Arizonans would say good job, whether or not they are part of a Strike Force or a trooper whose on a traffic detail.The Republican Governors Association, which Ducey leads, took out ads attacking Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for Arizona governor and eventual winner, for voting against the Border Strike Force while she was a legislator.
Despite Arizona having a dedicated Border Strike Force since 2015, with financial resources provided by an unquestioning Republican majority in the state legislature, its own statistics show it has failed to fulfill its promise of stemming the flow of illegal drugs or people.Arizona's Border Strike force has seized thousands of illegal drugs and hundreds of firearms since its establishment in 2015.Trooper Howard McDonald’s shift on Sept. 8, 2018, started at 12:28 a.m.
In one Border Strike Force case, Arizona troopers found 52 pounds of meth inside the gas tank of a vehicle.Four days later, another trooper with a K9 officer made a traffic stop on Interstate 10 near Tucson. That vehicle, according to court documents, was driving too slow. The driver was trembling when handing his identification to the trooper, documents say. The driver agreed to allow a K9 to walk around the vehicle.
Ducey, on Sept. 17, 2018, traveled to Tucson for a carefully staged news conference. The meth seized in the traffic stops was stacked up in plastic bundles on a table to his right. The logo for the Border Strike Force, a snake uncoiling itself to attack, was behind his head. In a subsequent news release, Ducey described the Border Strike Force combating the “threat posed by drug cartels and human smugglers along our southern border.”
A 24-year-old from Phoenix, Guillermo Parada, who troopers said carried 122 pounds of methamphetamine, pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiring to transport a dangerous drug for sale. The Arizona Department of Public Safety released more than 300 pages of weekly time and activity reports filled out by members of the Border Strike Force that document their activities. This is a sample of a page from a trooper.The Republic started investigating the Border Strike Force in 2018. That year, Ducey was seeking reelection and the efforts of the Border Strike Force figured prominently in his campaign commercials and stump speech talking points.
An Arizona judge ruled the DPS did not produce records promptly after it took the agency 18 months to fulfill and Arizona Republic records request.That same month, the DPS, speaking through an attorney, told The Republic it had located documents that were “significantly more responsive” to The Republic’s request for weekly documents that showed trooper activities.
A trooper’s activity report from August 2019 shows him logging his time, including the “PBJ” sandwiches he had for lunch.In the early days of the Border Strike Force, troopers would amass and head into the open desert in southern Arizona. Armed with newly purchased equipment from its initial outlay of cash from the Arizona Legislature, troopers would look for drugs being smuggled north.The operations were given names. A sampling: No Escape, Organ Grinder, Sidewinder, Rolling Thunder.
Frank Milstead, director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, talks on Sept. 17, 2018, in Tucson about the 225 pounds of methamphetamine recently seized on southern Arizona freeways. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey looks on.On Nov. 8, 2016, as part of Operation No Escape, law enforcement spotted five men carrying backpacks in the desert, presumably marijuana smugglers.
In 2018, the then-DPS director, Frank Milstead, told The Republic, in an interview, that the Border Strike Force had been constituted to work with its federal partners and patrol the open desert. “Well, our deserts have gone relatively quiet,” Milstead said. Fake pharmaceutical pills containing fentanyl seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Phoenix division.According to a report produced by the Drug Enforcement Administration, 88% of the fentanyl seized in 2019 came through legal ports of entry, not in the open desert.
For example, on January 5, 2016, trooper Kinser stopped a blue Lincoln Navigator that was driving too slowly in the left, or passing, lane of Interstate 10. Kinser knew that federal authorities had told troopers to look a blue Navigator that could be involved in an ammunition smuggling ring. Officials have touted the success of the Border Strike Force by the impressive seizures of drugs and weapons.It is not clear what constitutes a Border Strike Force case.
The DPS provided activity reports for troopers and detectives encompassing the time they were assigned to the Border Strike Force. Those detailed reports contained case numbers, or incident numbers.
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