The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
SIERRA VISTA — Crime-fighting challenges for cops and prosecutors, and what they’re going to do about it, were presented to the City Council and staff members on Thursday.
Some Cochise County administrators and law enforcement representatives also took the briefing from Sierra Vista Police Chief Ken Kimmel, with Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer on hand as well, as they looked back at recent years involving increased property crimes, burglaries and drug and gang violence within the Sierra Vista city limits and the surrounding areas.
These trends continue.
According to the police chief’s presentation, there were five homicides in Sierra Vista jurisdiction in 2005, and four more in 2007. From 2005 to 2006, there was a 45 percent increase in violent crime in Sierra Vista, and an 8 percent increase from 2006 to 2007.
 Sierra Vista Police Chief Ken Kimmel addresses City Council members at Thursday’s community partnership work session at the police station. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) |
But the largest increase in crime has come in burglaries. The police chief said there were 195 burglaries in Sierra Vista in 2006, and 277 last year. And between November and February, there have been 147 burglary reports.
Police and other law enforcement face challenges investigating these crimes.
Shootings last year left one man dead in September, and another shooting victim in October who would not cooperate with police investigators, Kimmel said. Several were injured and one man killed in an ambush at Mountain View Apartments in November, and one of the three suspects in that homicide investigation remains at large. The last shooting of 2007 ended up in an arrest, but the first shooting of the year, in which a man was shot in the head and killed at Nancy Hakes Park, remains unsolved for lack of cooperation with investigators.
A recent stabbing at Paul’s Pub was unique in that it was not gang related, as apparently all of the shootings listed above were, Kimmel said.
Mayor Bob Strain, whose home was burglarized and his two cars stolen from his garage last month while on family vacation, noted that while the gang- and drug-related violence tend to get the biggest headlines, the burglary epidemic in Sierra Vista, which apparently is directly related to the narcotics problem in Sierra Vista, is more widespread — with the potential to impact more residents.
Burglaries in Sierra Vista tend to happen during the day, and burglars tend to target homes on corner lots or with alley access, and pet doors.
There appear to be competent burglar teams in the area who have probably been busted before and have learned lessons about how to do it better at less risk of getting caught, Kimmel said.
Typically, property crimes like theft and burglary have a drug link, and while there is probably a relatively small portion of the local population involved in narcotics use and trafficking, they will apparently always be willing to kill one another and steal to those ends, Kimmel said.
Strain requested Thursday’s briefing to address and discuss the crime trends.
And issues other than the crime on the streets were discussed.
Recruiting and retaining new people is a problem the Police Department shares with the County Attorney’s Office. Kimmel said the last time the Police Department was fully staffed was 1991, though it came close in December with only one open position.
The County Attorney’s Office is four prosecutors shy of being fully staffed right now.
Rheinheimer also said a particular vein of federal funding for local prosecution of drug and violent crime has been cut to two-thirds in the forthcoming federal budget, with a veto promise to U.S. Congress by President George Bush if an emergency appropriation comes along.
But prosecutors, he said, are pessimistic about efforts in Congress to seek enough votes to override such a veto and hope those funds are freed up by the next president.
But the almost constant tie-in between meth or other narcotics and property crime, such as burglary and theft, has historically allowed such federal funding to be used in prosecuting drug-fueled property crime in Cochise County, Rheinheimer said.
At the Police Department, there are officers who are in specialized areas, such as four Street Crimes Unit officers, a detective assigned to cooperate with the Drug Enforcement Administration, an officer who acts as the terrorism liaison officer in cooperation with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Fry Task Force in which city police cooperate with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office in unincorporated enclaves in Sierra Vista and its periphery to target criminal activity, and the Target Offender Program in cooperation with the County Attorney’s Office.
The Target Offender Program allows pooling of suspect and criminal information among local agencies and the prosecutors in order to prosecute to the fullest gang offenders, repeat drug, violence and property crime offenders, and their associates.
Rheinheimer said a tough part about prosecuting local gang-related offenders is, there is no defined power structure within the gang that facilitates the gang members’ crimes to the explicit benefit of furthering those criminal syndicates — as is the more evident dynamic in bigger jurisdictions such as Maricopa and Pima counties.
So shootings such as the Mountain View Apartments ambush on Nov. 21 just kind of bubble up among criminals. In that incident, Kimmel said, the victim and perpetrators were part of the same Crips subset.
So far, all of the shootings have involved victims who were either drug traffickers or gang affiliates.
But, Kimmel said, if that ever changes, it could spur bigger changes in community perspective and local criminal justice policy.
The police chief added that the Fry Task Force, in combination with redevelopment in the city’s West End, has been successful in curving crime trends in enclaves such as Fry Townsite, but the criminal element displacement has caused crime spikes in other nearby areas of to the city.
Strain made the point that residents want to see evidence of accountability on the part of criminals.
Rheinheimer said most of the people who are arrested and charged with felonies end up being convicted in some fashion or another, even if it’s a plea agreement. While that may seem like “half a loaf,” it is important to be patient in waiting for a convict to become a repeat offender, because that is when Arizona criminal statute allows for prosecutors to lock people up for a long time, Rheinheimer said.
Councilman Bob Blanchard asked about the liability of parents whose children commit crimes.
Rheinheimer said civil liability is limited, for better or worse, and criminal liability for juveniles is geared toward rehabilitation more so than is the adult criminal justice system.
Criminally, the County Attorney’s Office applies to the juvenile court to seek prosecution as an adult, and that decision is weighed against things like the age of the juvenile, criminal record and his or her attitude.
There was also a question from the council about the cooperation between the local agencies and federal agencies such as the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI.
Kimmel said the relationship between Sierra Vista police and the local FBI office and DEA is good.
But the FBI, with its duties much changed from things like bank robberies to intelligence gathering after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has its own inner challenges, he said.
And, Kimmel said, the Border Patrol has stepped up its response times to calls from Sierra Vista officers who come across loads of illegal immigrants, which is good because in the past city officers were faced with the decision to either detain illegal immigrants for multiple hours, waiting for federal agents, or to let them go outright.
The city of Tempe was sued for illegally detaining immigrants based on federal laws that municipal agencies are not authorized to enforce, and with that precedent in mind, the Sierra Vista city attorney advises against such detention based on federal immigration laws, so its a good thing Border Patrol responds in a timely fashion to such calls from the city, Kimmel said.
herald/review reporter Gentry Braswell can be reached at 515-4680 or by e-mail at gentry.braswell@svherald.com.
Richard Mathewson wrote on Sep 22, 2008 2:14 PM: