Parker Live News from the Parker Strip since 2009.
The La Paz County Sheriff’s Department has been awarded $300,000 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a component of the Department of Homeland Security, and another $25,000 by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
The bigger grant was awarded under Operation Stonegarden, which exists to fund law enforcement agencies in efforts to secure U.S. borders and improve overall border security.
“Yuma County is a Tier 1 county, because they’re next to the border, we’re a Tier 2 county,” said Sheriff’s Lieutenant Richard Epps, speaking to Parker Live. “We’ve been funded through Yuma County in the past, once a year we get together and tell them what we need. But this time, Border Patrol saw the effort we were putting in and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Phoenix saw the effort, they decided they wanted us to be our own funding county.”
With the grant comes the responsibility of putting together a local Integrated Planning Team which will decide how to allocate funds among local participating agencies.
“Once we had the invitation, we reached out to Parker Police, Quartzsite Police, CRIT Police, DPS, all agencies within our county, and told them what’s going on, asked them if they wanted to take part. CRIT and Parker did not complete, but the others did, so there are 3 agencies involved,” Epps said. “We received the $300,000 and that will be split between the 3 agencies.”
Epps said the Sheriff will be the chair of the new team, and the team will sit down with Border Patrol, Homeland Security and other relevant entities and divide it up for the maximum impact.
“At the La Paz County level, we do intercept border crossers, but the focus for us is human trafficking, sex trafficking and drug smuggling. Our placement between the two largest cities, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and on the major corridor, Interstate 10, puts us in a good position to put the funding to good use.”
Epps said the Sheriff is pleased that the department has been recognized for the hard work it’s been doing.
The $25,000 grant from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office is for officer safety equipment, according to Epps.
“We got a letter from them stating that we’re approved for the amount,” he said. “We always think, what are the safety needs for our officers. One of the biggest that we haven’t been able to afford by ourselves is the ability to track our patrol vehicles with GPS. So we never know exactly where they are on a map until we make contact with deputies.”
The Spillman software used by the Sheriff’s Department has an add-on ‘module’ that will allow the extra capability, according to Epps.
“It will track the vehicles, and dispatchers will be able to see. This is huge for us, because it’ll allow better coordination, better planning, and when a call comes into dispatch, they’ll know how close officers are immediately. The Sheriff and Captain have been trying to do it for 4 years but it’s so expensive, so it’s great to have this grant to open up that module and optimize it based on the system we already have.”
Wonderful! Put to good use!
Use it wisely please.
Fantastic. The people of La Paz county know they are well protected, but this means even more! Thank you for all you do.
Great!
Catch all the crack heads!!
Order some crackhead attack dogs
That is wonderful.
Now you know why states have lost their autonomy. The Feds keep dangling cash to keep them in line and if a state doesn’t want to comply with the Feds, the cash stops. Long gone are the days when states were self sufficient. More than 33% of Arizona’s budget is paid for by the Feds.
This is great, maybe new Vehicles on the horizon ????
So happy
Great news????
Awesome News! Can y’all loan me $2??? #backthebadge
La Paz County Sheriff’s Department Keep Up The Great Work Brothers!
Right on
Dam, CRiTs Chief is a fool for passing that up. Heard he doesn’t play well with others and doesn’t have a slight clue what he’s doing when it comes to Police work. I see the council picked themselves a good one for the job.
Yes,
Wonderful..????????????✝️
Thats Awesome!
for the 5g ballon they allowed last month
The taxpayers of La Paz County are paying the salaries of the sheriff and his deputies, charged with protecting residents and property in Paz County. How helpful is it when the sheriff spends his time drafting proposals for federal and state funds for the purpose of diverting Sheriff’s Office personnel from protecting La Paz County citizens to protecting the US border? Is the Border Patrol so incompetent that it can’t protect the border without diverting manpower from the Sheriff’s Office and county taxpayers?
As a taxpayer in La Paz County, I’m offended that I not only have to pay federal taxes to support the Border Patrol, but I’m also now paying for Sheriff deputies to help protect the border.
Call the sheriff and ask him why it takes so long to respond to a call, and he will tell you that he’s short of manpower. The law enforcement personnel that this new grant money will tie-up means as much as response times will take even longer now.
It’s time for new leadership among all elected officials, across all local and state government agencies. Seriously, with the exception of the CRIT chief, I no longer see a skosh of evidence that there is a single elected official today who knows what s/he should be doing. We’d all be better off if we just elected chimpanzees to office. And going by some of the comments, we’d be better off with chimpanzees for neighbors, too.
The Officers participating in the Federal operations are working overtime (paid by these grants), on their normal days off. Officers on duty and assigned to districts do not participate while on normal shifts, designated to Patrol and/or to respond to calls. If anything, Officers on the Fed Ops can be diverted to assist with emergency traffic and could actually DECREASE response times for emergency calls. If they weren’t working the detail, they’d be off duty, at home or other personal activities.