Maricopa Police to add Tactical Assignment Unit

The Maricopa City Council on Tuesday approved the addition of a sergeant and two patrol officers to create a Tactical Assignment Unit within the Maricopa Police Department.

The need for such a unit can easily be seen, police said, when considering that about 200,000 pounds of marijuana is believed to have come through Maricopa last month alone, based on estimates from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Arizona Border Patrol.

“It is coming through back roads, the farms roads,” said Officer Stephen Judd, a spokesman for Maricopa Police. “They are smuggling through hundreds to thousands of undocumented persons who come through Maricopa every month. It is just that right now, we don’t have the resources to focus our attention on it, nor would we as far as immigration goes.

“We know Maricopa is sitting in a corridor. That is why they approved a new unit.”

As things stand, local police must focus their attention on 911 calls, Judd said, making it impossible to keep an eye out for criminals trafficking in drugs or illegal immigrants.

“There are so many farm roads and back roads and there is so much county area and reservation around us, that we don’t have the manpower to sit on the road all night and see if a vehicle is coming through,” he said, adding that “we don’t have an air unit.”

Judd said Maricopa Police is working toward being able to request those types of resources from other agencies that do have them.

“If they are going to bring those things around, they are going to steer clear of Maricopa,” Judd said.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s highway patrol officers along with its detectives assigned to the agency’s Criminal Investigations Division confiscated more than 6,300 pounds of marijuana statewide in January alone.

None of the traffic stops or seizures are believed to have taken place in Maricopa.

“Most of our seizures are off the Interstate,” said Officer Chris Dunn, who is stationed at the DPS office in Casa Grande.

Most of the marijuana seizures came after canines with DPS or the U.S. Border Patrol helped search vehicles.

“With the new year the battle to intercept drug couriers along the highways in Arizona continues,” said Roger Vanderpool, Director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
“We are just as determined to take illegal drugs off the streets as drug couriers are to get their product through the state.”

The largest seizure took place Jan. 25 when 1,157 pounds of marijuana were seized near Sonoita.

“Last month we did not have any drug stops from vehicles,” Judd said. “We didn’t have any load seizures.”

Load seizures are large-scale drug busts generally associated with traffic stops, Judd explained. Because DPS focuses so tightly on the highways, it’s not surprising that they would confiscate more drugs from vehicles than local police agencies, such as Maricopa’s.

“That is really a drop in the bucket of what really came through,” Judd said of the DPS reported marijuana seizures from last month. “I bet 100 times more is what really came through undetected. We can only grab what we grab.”

With the new police unit, Maricopa Police plan on making a few more “grabs” of their own. For now, they are mostly in the form of confiscating small amounts for personal use in small, plastic bags. In January, they made two such arrests.

“We are well aware that we are a corridor area for a lot of things, drug immigration issues,” Judd said. “We are working steadily to put ourselves in a position where we can focus on those things more as they come through, hoping it doesn’t become an element here.”

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