With 30 aircrafts patrolling at least 30 days, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office most recent crime suppression sweep is poised to become one of the largest in Arizona’s history.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday announced the launch of “Operation Desert Sky,” targeting drug-smuggling desert corridors in the southwest and southeast parts of the county. Unlike previous crime sweeps, Operation Desert Sky will use 30 fixed wing aircraft to spot smugglers from the air.
Airborne “spotters” will report any unusual or suspicious activity to deputies on the ground, according to Arpaio. Operation Desert Sky will also enlist the services of drug sniffing dogs, armed posse members, human-smuggling and drug-enforcement units and SWAT teams equipped with M-16s.
The operation comes as a response to 207 recent arrests of illegal immigrants and the seizure of nearly 36,000 pounds of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines in the past year.
“I don’t go along with the theory that the border is more secure than ever before,” Arpaio said, adding that human- and drug-trafficking statistics from last year contradict a number of reports quoting federal officials who say that crime along the border has dropped.
“I’m not going to blame the federal government because they are never going to secure the border. I blame the politicians that say we must secure the border first,” Arpaio said.
Drug enforcement in Arizona’s interior, he argued, should be an example for border security.
A task force composed of 10 Valley agencies has joined the effort to halt smuggling as well. The task force, which 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, originally focused on eradicating meth within Arizona.
Production of the drug has declined enough in recent years that the task force has started to focus on smuggling across the desert corridors and along Interstate 8.
“Isn’t it easier to go down here and get (drug loads) on the road versus getting them after they’ve come into town?” asked Lt. Steve Bailey, a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy and task-force commander.
Experts say legislation and law enforcement in the past five years have made it more difficult for meth cooks to purchase pseudoephedrine and operate large-scale labs in the United States. The decline in meth-lab seizures across Arizona has been dramatic, down from 130 incidents in 2004 to five in 2010, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
Meth use may have fallen in line with the rest of the country, but the state still remains a distribution hub for meth and other drugs, one major reason for launching Operation Desert Sky.
The foe for the former meth-task-force officers has changed from simple meth cooks to sophisticated drug-trafficking organizations that have installed their own radio transponders in southern Arizona mountain ranges and use solar-powered radios to stay connected in the desert for days. The organizations are also heavily equipped, touting a number of military rifles like the M4, according to Bailey.
Task forces along desert corridors that originally used techniques familiar to urban narcotics officers and fans of police-crime dramas, including wiretaps, undercover informants and sting operations, have started to use techniques more familiar to fans of war films: heavy equipment, camouflage and night-vision goggles.
“It’s a dangerous world out there,” Arpaio said, adding that the armed volunteers are putting their life on the line for a good cause.
Human rights activist Salvador Reza said Arpaio’s newest operation is a “dangerous escalation of the prejudice and violence for which the state has become known.”
“It will spend taxpayer dollars to put 30 pilots into the air and put everyone at risk by arming vigilantes with M16s and machine guns, according to reports,” he said.
Arpaio denied the claim that taxpayers would foot the bill for the operation, saying that funds will come from the $1.5 million the Arizona Legislature allotted to fight illegal immigration. Besides that, he added, posse members are volunteers and the task forces involved are already used daily.
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Joe Arpaio
“If we don’t arrest anybody,” he said, “I’ll be just as happy because it will be used as a deterrent.”