Strike Force
DPS personnel would have seized in their regular duties.
The DPS has not released reports or other documentation that would shed light on the Strike Force.
The Governor’s Office has not provided supporting documents to show how it arrived at numbers that attest to the Strike Force’s effectiveness — the figures included in news releases and Ducey campaign commercials.
The Arizona Republic has asked for records on these topics, but those requests have yet to be fulfilled. The DPS also has not granted a request for a Republic reporter to accompany Strike Force members on an operation or to observe routine activities.
The DPS and the Governor’s Office have released figures showing the number of people who are assigned to the team, but those numbers conflict.
The Arizona Republic reviewed available reports, budget documents, news releases and spoke with officials about the Strike Force.
The Republic was able to determine: ❚ Ducey and the DPS publicize drug seizure and arrest numbers to the Border Strike Force that result from routine patrols made by regular troopers, some of whom are paid for by federal programs. It is not clear how those drug seizures become part of the Strike Force statistics.
❚ Ducey, in speeches and ads, portrays the Strike Force as a line of defense in the no man’s land of the Arizona desert. But the force, conceived as a way to patrol vast swaths of desert, does the bulk of its work on state highways.
Ducey, meeting with The Republic’s Editorial Board recently, said the “stunning” numbers accumulated by the Strike Force resulted from a special tactic that the Strike Force was using.
He declined to detail it. “Why would I say the tactic?” he said.
DPS Director Col. Frank Milstead, during an interview at a law-enforcement summit in late September, offered a different possible explanation for the statistics: Strike Force members are not making all the traffic stops that result in drug seizures.
If a trooper encounters drugs during a routine stop, that trooper could call in a detective who is part of the Strike Force, Milstead said. The stop then could be added to the Strike Force statistics, he said.
A DPS spokesman, in a later email, clarified that the Strike Force conducts “parallel investigations” on cases started by traffic stops.
The email also described traffic stops as part of the Strike Force, suggesting that some number of patrol troopers in southern Arizona are considered members of the Border Strike Force.
The Arizona Sheriffs Association opposed the Border Strike Force when it was first announced in 2015, saying it was redundant and would distract the understaffed DPS from its primary duty of patrolling the state’s highways.
Two sheriffs whose counties are on the border cite widespread suspicion in law-enforcement circles that the Strike Force numbers are inflated.
What is billed as Strike Force busts, the sheriffs suggest, are actually the result of the solid, routine work the Arizona Department of Public Safety has consistently done and that now is rebranded in an effort to help Ducey politically.
Tony Estrada, the longtime sheriff of Santa Cruz County, said the eye-popping drug-seizure figures — disproportionate to the Strike Force’s size — only could make sense if “every trooper that’s out there that makes a stop or seizure, that’s included in the Strike Force figures.”
Sheriff Leon Wilmot of Yuma County said such speculation has been common among his cohort of county sheriffs.
“It’s circumstantial,” Wilmot said, “but the thought does cross your mind.”
Wilmot said he can’t help but wonder about the motive behind both the Strike Force and its lofty reported seizure numbers.
“Are we getting the true number or are we just pushing the agenda?” Wilmot said. “My big thing is: Get politics out of public safety.”
Wilmot and Estrada have refused to take part in the Strike Force. The sheriff ’s offices in the other two border counties, Cochise and Pima, have signed memorandums of understanding that placed their already-existing border-crime task forces under the umbrella of the Border Strike Force.
Ducey’s Democratic challenger, David Garcia, has accused the governor of using the Border Strike Force as a political tool to stoke fears about public safety, even as 24-hour patrols in border counties remain an unfulfilled promise.
“When politicians who have never worn a uniform to protect anything prance in front of those who do for their own political gain, that is a political ploy,” Garcia said at a debate last month.
Although the Strike Force was introduced with a splash of news coverage, it largely avoided public attention after it received its initial funding in 2016.
When the federal Homeland Security secretary toured the border in February 2017, the Strike Force was not mentioned in the Governor’s Office news release.
Starting with Ducey’s 2018 State of the State address in January, it has emerged as a frequent talking point in this re-election year. Ducey’s office has sent four news releases and held two news conferences this summer involving the Border Strike Force. The DPS has sent out nine releases in 2018 about Border Strike Force activities.
Milstead said those news conferences and releases were motivated solely by the successful work of the Strike Force.
“There’s no political pressure at all,” Milstead told The Republic. “It’s really about keeping Arizona safe.”
In 2014, facing a crowded Republican primary in the governor’s race, thenstate Treasurer Ducey created an ad that promised he would take all measures to secure the border.
“Our southern border remains wide open and unprotected,” he said in the ad, which blamed the situation on then President Barack Obama. “As governor, I’ll fight back with every resource at my command: fencing, satellites, guardsmen, more police and prosecutors.”
Eight months into Ducey’s first term, an August 2015 story in The Republic looked at how Ducey’s promises of increased border security had gone unfulfilled with one legislative session under his belt.
The story quoted an Avondale voter who expressed “buyer’s remorse” about voting for Ducey because he had seemingly abandoned his border-enforcement promises.
The next month, the Governor’s Office and the DPS started quietly assembling the Border Strike Force. In November, The Republic was invited to take a plane ride with Ducey and Milstead, during which the two unveiled details of the new Border Strike Force.
Ducey said he planned for the bureau eventually to expand to 180 people, including troopers, analysts and pilots, and to be supplemented by deputies from border counties. The target would be the Sinaloa Cartel, which the administration said was the source of the vast majority of marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin that flowed into Arizona.
“It’s the cartels and the traffickers that we want to focus on,” Ducey said on the plane, “and that’s what a Strike Force is going to aim at.”
The plan for the Strike Force emerged during the earliest days of the administration, said J.P. Twist, the senior adviser credited in the article with spearheading the initiative.
Twist, currently the manager of Ducey’s re-election campaign, declined an on-the-record interview this year to discuss the formulation of the Border Strike Force.
The Strike Force was created, according to budget documents filed with the Legislature, by pulling 56 sworn personnel and $7.8 million from other parts of the DPS.
In January 2016, Ducey and the DPS asked lawmakers for $31.5 million in additional funding for the Border Strike Force. The Legislature eventually would grant it $26.6 million.
Ducey, in his 2016 State of the State address, mentioned the initial success of the Border Strike Force.
He said that “already, with minimal investment,” the Strike Force had achieved impressive results: 300 arrests, and the seizure of 4,400 pounds of marijuana, 194 pounds of methamphetamine and 21 pounds of heroin.
A journalism student at the University of Arizona, working for Arizona Sonora News, filed a public-records request shortly afterward asking for documents to support those figures.
The resulting story said the numbers didn’t add up.
The 800 pages of documents showed 51 arrests, not 300, according to the story. They also showed 1,685 pounds of marijuana seized, not 4,400 pounds. The documents didn’t show any large seizures of heroin or methamphetamine.
Most of the records, the story reported, showed drug seizures from routine traffic stops.
At the time, the DPS explained the discrepancy by saying it didn’t release some documents that involved ongoing investigations.
Months later, as the DPS issued its annual report for fiscal 2016, the statistics of those initial three operations were ratcheted down. In that report, the DPS said operations seized 2,011 pounds of marijuana, less than half of what was initially stated.
The report also cited 89 pounds of methamphetamine seized, not the initial 194 pounds.
After the DPS released that initial tally, neither the department nor the Governor’s Office released overall statistics for the Strike Force for more than two years.