Epoch Times: BISBEE, Arizona—Tired of waiting for the federal government to fix the border, Sheriff Mark Dannels decided to take matters into his own hands. A personal run-in with a Mexican cartel only cemented his motivation to rid his county of cross-border crime.
Five years ago, Dannels’s son, Sierra Vista police officer Justin Dannels, fatally shot a man allegedly connected to the Sinaloa cartel when the man tried to run him over during a traffic stop.
The following day, Dannels and his son both received threatening phone calls from Mexico. Then cartel members showed up in the sheriff’s backyard at midnight.
“Hell of a scary. But, I’ll tell you, if you run from them, you’re no better than they are,” Dannels said on May 5.
“Long story short is, we really took a deep look at what we were doing here and that’s one of the reasons that we said, ‘You ain’t going to threaten us, and you’re not going to scare us out of what we need to do,’” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we’ve pushed forward.”
Instead of capitulating, Dannels doubled down on ridding his county of cartel activity and cross-border crime. Cochise County in southeast Arizona is now one of the most secure of the 31 counties along the southwest border. It is a rare success story amid an unprecedented border crisis that is overwhelming the system.
The major new effort started in January 2017 and the formula Dannels adopted is simple: Place hundreds of cameras to detect traffickers and smugglers, catch them, and prosecute them.
“We put our cameras in areas where Border Patrol wasn’t going,” he said. “We went to the river areas, we went into the mountain areas, we went to the desert areas. And this is based on intel from our ranchers and our community folks saying, ‘We have a problem on our property.’ We’ve gone to private lands and we put those cameras strategically in areas where it helps identify the smugglers.”
The sheriff’s border team, called SABRE (Southeastern Arizona Border Region Enforcement), run by Sgt. Tim Williams, has placed 400 trail cameras in the county so far—with an estimated 700 to be up and running by year’s end.
The money for the cameras was raised from private donations—Dannels refuses to accept government money, with strings attached, to expand the program. keep reading
can’t believe that’s even possible with all of Ohole’s over-regulation due to ‘nudging’ more power for BLM…
This is a very welcome story, and I couldn’t be more impressed with the program and attitude of Sheriff Mark Dannels. Keep up the good work, sir, and please keep on trying to get other sheriffs to join in the effort.
edit: …and it is especially gratifying that you’re doing this without fed money and all with private funds. You’re right: you don’t want to get strangled with those attached strings.
Trump should hire this guy and implement it everywhere on the border possible.
Great story, and great work!
But I say give them all amnesty, with no chance of citizenship, which means they can’t be counted in the census, and stick them in the most expensive areas of the sanctuary cities.
If they don’t count in the census, there are fewer congresshitstains we have to deal with, and less of our money goes to them.
Soooo… whatever happened to those dead bodies he dropped in his yard that night? 😉
There is a simple solution really: ‘shoot on sight and shoot to kill! End of problem!!!!
They should not have to take such risks without the full force of the fed gov at their aid. Damn our useless political elites to hell for their greed and cowardice.
Another Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Gotta love him!
So when is he going to be convicted for contempt?
@Sniper – “There is a simple solution really: ‘shoot on sight and shoot to kill! End of problem!!!!”
Better yet, blow their living heads clean off and then stick their dead heads on poles in the town square with signs on them that read:
“Here lies a dead Mexican drug cartel person. We’re happy to ‘put you up’ in our town!”
Imagine that, what a novel idea, prosecuting and sentencing based on current law. Of course it helps to have a county atty, judge and jury who’re willing to uphold the laws to which they pledge an oath. I don’t see many willing to do that.
He has a brain, the proper attitude and sets a fine
example on keeping the hogtied Federal system out
of the operation.
There are plenty of good men out there who
can do the same.