Tucson Region
Beefed-up enforcement nets results

Record year by far for marijuana busts
Does it also mean more drugs are getting through?
By Brady McCombs

Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.06.2009

Border Patrol agents find it by the ton in the desert, stuffed inside trucks that scale border fences using ramps or in burlap packs left under trees by backpackers who walked for days.
Customs and Border Protection officers discover it at ports of entry in just about anywhere you can conceivably hide something: in tiny packages stuffed in women's purses, bicycle tires or gas tanks or in huge loads hidden among pallets of bell peppers in tractor-trailers.
Sometimes, authorities find bundles that were strapped to ultralight planes that flew over the border or dragged through tunnels beneath the border.
Whether in big or small packages, or at or between ports of entry, marijuana seizures continue to become a more frequent occurrence along Arizona's stretch of U.S.-Mexico border — the busiest on the Southwest border for such seizures.
The 1.6 million pounds seized by Arizona law enforcement in 6,939 incidents in the recently completed fiscal year 2009 shattered all previous records, nearly doubling the 2005 fiscal year total, show figures from the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
The increase in seizures can be explained by several factors, say drug enforcement analysts:
• There are more Border Patrol agents. The number of agents in the agency's Tucson Sector is up to 3,300, from 2,400 in 2006. The Border Patrol accounts for the majority of the seizures: 1.2 million pounds in fiscal 2009.
• Those agents, and other police in the border area, have more time to focus on drug smuggling because the flow of illegal immigrants has slowed. Apprehensions in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector have dropped by 51 percent since 2004.
"If I am not apprehending people, I have two to three agents to put out in an area where I have intel about possible drugs coming across," said Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante.
• Drug trafficking organizations feel more pressure to move loads rather than stockpile them in Mexico because of the Mexican government's crackdown on cartels, said Tom Hayden, program coordinator for the Arizona HIDTA. There are also indications that the Mexican government has shifted its focus from eradicating crops to seizing loads near the border and targeting cartel kingpins, said Jeannine Quear, an intelligence analyst with the National Drug Intelligence Center.
While the record year shows that federal, state and municipal cops are cracking down, Hayden admits that it also shows that Mexican drug trafficking organizations still consider Arizona as the avenue of choice.
"Why do you keep sending the drugs in the same location?" Hayden said. "I think the answer is that they are still getting a significant amount through."
The proximity to major cities and highways coupled with the vast desert expanses have made the Arizona corridor ground zero for marijuana smuggling since at least 2003, Hayden said. Arizona accounts for about half of all the marijuana that enters the U.S. from Mexico, he said.
That won't change until law enforcement starts seizing so many loads that it becomes a bad business model to come through Arizona, he said.
More drugs, more home invasions?
Whether the increased amount of marijuana coming through the Tucson area — the main redistribution point before the marijuana is sent on to the Midwest and East — fuels more home invasions is unclear.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department has investigated 51 home invasions since Jan. 1, which puts the county on pace to reach or exceed the 56 recorded in 2008, said Lt. Michael O'Connor.
But home invasions reported to Tucson police are down — 107 since Jan. 1, compared with 134 at the same time last year, said Assistant Chief Brett Klein.
Most home invaders are young local men who have been previously involved in gangs, auto theft, burglaries or drug trafficking. More drugs means more stash houses, which makes it a lucrative business for criminals, O'Connor said.
"It's a target-rich environment for these home invaders," O'Connor said. "That is going to spur even more of them."
Even though yearly numbers are down, Tucson police have seen a recent spike in home invasions that it attributes to the fall marijuana harvest season.
"When you see an increase in the narcotics trade, you are probably going to see an increase in home invasions," Klein said. "What happens a lot of times is that the dope gets here and the people start stealing it."
Home invasions were also common in the 1970s when far less marijuana came through Tucson, said Walter Nash, a Tucson drug defense attorney since 1971. That's why he doesn't think more drugs directly correlates to more home invasions. Nash thinks more criminals are turning to home invasions.
"There are more people that you could describe as traditional criminals that have decided robbing a drug dealer is more lucrative than robbing a Circle K," Nash said.
Good news or bad?
During the record haul, cops made a seizure every one hour and 15 minutes, capturing an average of 4,500 pounds each day. In fiscal 2005, they made a seizure every two hours and 15 minutes, finding an average of 2,400 pounds a day.
Whether the increased seizures should be cause for celebration or concern is difficult to assess, authorities say.
Some believe the increased seizures show that law enforcement is stopping a larger share of a similar quantity of drugs, resulting in less marijuana reaching cities across the U.S.
"Things are getting tighter at the ports," said Brian Levin, Customs and Border Protection spokesman for Arizona. "We've got more resources down there. We are getting more inspections taking place. Our scrutiny is getting more intense. We are putting pressure on these organizations."
But street prices for marijuana haven't changed in recent years, said Quear of the Drug Intelligence Center, which casts a doubt on the theory that fewer drugs are making it into the market.
The other belief is a bit scarier for Arizonans: that border agents and police are no more successful than they've ever been, and the increased seizures are a sign that more drugs than ever are flowing into the country through Arizona.
Nobody knows for sure what percentage of drugs law enforcement stops, but investigators have estimated they seize between 20 percent and 30 percent of all marijuana that comes across the border. Based on those estimates, roughly 4 million to 6 1/2 million pounds of marijuana made it past agents and on to Midwestern and Eastern states.
That's not good news for the Tucson metro area, said O'Connor of the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
"When you have that amount of dope that is coming through, that is going to spur other illegal activity," he said.
Nothing expected to change
The National Drug Intelligence Center doesn't expect Arizona to lose its position as the principal U.S. arrival zone for Mexican marijuana.
Mexican drug trafficking organizations "maintain large-scale cannabis grow sites in Mexico and have direct connections to organizations in Mexico that provide a ready supply of marijuana," wrote HIDTA in its 2009 drug market analysis for Arizona. "Such production capabilities and connections ensure that the flow of Mexican marijuana will continue, despite law enforcement seizures of large quantities of marijuana in the United States and Mexico."
Drug smugglers continue to change routes and methods to get loads past the growing legion of law enforcement. For instance, instead of using Interstate 10 to move loads north out of Tucson, they are using Arizona 77, 79 and 60 north to Interstate 40, the HIDTA report shows. To outwit border agents, smugglers are using ultralights, tunnels and car carriers retrofitted with ramps that allow trucks to drive over border barriers.
Authorities also have noticed more cars outfitted to resemble government or company vehicles. In December 2008, the Arizona Department of Public Safety found a ton of marijuana in a truck made to look like a United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery truck.
"I don't see them just closing up shop and leaving," Hayden said. "They are in this for the long haul."