The Casa Grande Police Department is teaming up with the Arizona Department of Public Safety to be part of the Gang Immigration and Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission, or GIITEM.
The Pinal County part of GIITEM will be headquartered in Casa Grande, Police Chief Mark McCrory told the City Council. This will make it easier for coordination and sharing of resources.
He added that the department detective who had been assigned to the U.S. Marshals Task Force will be transferred to GIITEM.
McCrory said the U.S. Marshals had begun redeploying more of its people to the federal courts system “and it really wasn’t the needs that we thought we needed for our city.” He added, “We mutually agreed to remove our detective from the task force. They have pledged to work with us regarding fugitive apprehensions, as well as technical assistance on cases that we need, so we’re really not losing anything with that.”
The Police Department has worked with GITTEM in the past with gang problems, but it was pointed out that there was some concern that lately the group was focusing more on border problems than on gang problems in cities.
McCrory said GIITEM has recently gone through a major overhaul, including adding new commanders. He and department personnel, including Criminal Investigations Division commander Capt. Angel Leos, met with GIITEM about becoming part of the revamped operation.
“We had some concerns by looking at some of the work they’ve been doing when we weren’t a member of GIITEM that they really weren’t helping our community the way we felt they could,” McCrory continued. “We addressed these very bluntly with them and discussed these at length and we decided on mutual goals, some ideas for some mutual strategies that would help our community, and we got a commitment from them to bring people in – initially 60 days – to focus on some of our problems that are starting to just creep to the top and cause calls for service, shots fired calls, things like that.”
Although the local GIITEM division includes all of Pinal County, McCrory said, “We did receive a commitment from every one of their command, all the way down to their sergeant who will be running that, that Casa Grande will definitely be the major focus of this task force.”
McCrory told the council that “the last three shootings and shots fired calls that we have here, they have been gang-related and it’s our belief that this partnership will enhance our ability to deal with gang and narcotics issues better within the city and sharing intelligence and the force multipliers.”
McCrory pointed out what he said are advantages to the partnership:
• “The whole concept of this task force is really accomplishing a very common objective that’s important to all law enforcement within our county – to do it as a task force concept.”
• “The DPS will reimburse our agency, on a monthly basis, 75 percent of the detective’s payroll expenses. This includes salary, benefits, workers’ comp, Social Security, vacation and sick leave. They will also provide a vehicle and all related equipment for this detective to be a member of the task force and reimburse any travel expenses associated with the task force.”
• “They will also allow us to access their intelligence analyst. They can work with the intel analyst that we currently have in our department on better tracking crime syndicates, cartels and gang activity within our county.”
• “There will be a force multiplier when it comes to helping our narcotics officers, anything with a gang nexus or a cartel nexus that would bring people into our community, to help work with us, which is a great help for us since we have a smaller narcotics unit.”
• “They can also provide us with air resources, and they have the technical assistance that we don’t have available.”
• “Their office is actually located within our city and their commander and supervisor are housed out of this office. That’ll make meetings, plannings, briefings and things like that a lot easier for our people to attend. Our command staff can get involved in some of these intel briefings and strategy sessions.”
There are a couple of disadvantages, McCrory pointed out:
• “It is a two-year commitment with (a) one-year extension.”
• “Realistically, there will be times that our detective will be pulled away from our city to assist in other locations within our county if they have gang issues. Our detective would not be housed in-house, it would be housed outside our agency.”
The major part of the partnership, McCrory said, is that, “We plan to add this detective to the GIITEM Task Force. He’s experienced with task force work, having come from the Marshals Service; he’s very good at relaying information to our field troops and to our detectives, so it’s not going to be just somebody carrying around a bunch of knowledge; it’s going to be shared knowledge. We plan on running joint gang and narcotics investigations with them, to be centered out of our city.”
He added, “And as a follow up, we worked out with them where our command staff will meet with the GIITEM command staff a minimum of two times a month to review the strategies, to review the pros and cons of activities that we’ve taken on, look at results and plan future operations.”
Answering a question from Councilman Ralph Varela on goals, McCrory said, “What we’d like to be able to do is use them as a force multiplier when they’re in our city and they can work with our people so that if we have a lot of activity, when we have calls for service like shots fired, that will draw a lot of our resources…What we’re hoping to use mainly on this is a force multiplier so that we can use their networks and their people to come into our community and help us out with some hot spots.”
Capt. Leos told the council that, “Our gang problem is always continuing. If you’re not dealing with it and showing them that we’re out there and we’re going to have zero tolerance toward gang activity, it will increase. You’ve seen that with the drive-by shootings…starting to have narcotics issues. We kind of let that go by the side, for lack of manpower, leadership change, so now we need to get on that.”
He added, “In ’07, ’08, we were having shootings every weekend, just about.”
As Councilman Karl Montoya sees it, “It’s good to see GIITEM get back into town, get refocused to where they are going. I think they kind of got lost with the border portion of that.”
He continued, “It’s good to see that they’re already back in town. They’re doing good work and putting a soldier with them is going to only enhance them. We know back from the past, where they’ve helped us with manpower and other accessories that go along with the job. I’m glad to see you guys take the initiative in doing that, because I think that’s what’s kind of missing the last time was having those monthly meetings and getting more involved at the top to give that direction.”
As a result of past anti-gang, anti-drug operations, several people were sent to prison, Montoya said, but “a lot of those people are starting to come out of jail and we’re starting to see a lot of difference. It’s a new policing out there and if we don’t stay on top of it, it’s our own fault. So I’m glad to see this coming back and you guys being proactive with it.”
Councilman Matt Herman said he had previously seen a presentation by a police officer where “he put together the whole family tree of gangs in Casa Grande. I hope you guys go to him for some resources, because he took a lot of his own time, I know, and put together this entire report – pretty impressive.”
McCrory answered, “He is involved in every strategic plan that we have. Very few people know this city on the crime side and the networks like he does. He is actively involved in every strategic plan that we have.”
