On Tuesday members of multiple agencies including the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, met in Sierra Vista to launch the Safe Streets II Initiative, whose mission is the deployment of Cochise County Sheriff’s Office personnel, alongside Local, State, and Federal partners to address the epidemic of smugglers endangering the innocent motoring public by recklessly driving in Cochise County.
This partnership, formed into the Safe Streets II Task Force, will work together using the philosophy of Prevention, Education, and Enforcement to deter and apprehend those who aggressively drive through our communities. They will use actionable, real-time intelligence to deploy resources to safeguard communities and citizens.
On March 01, 2022, the Safe Streets Task Force was created to counter the unique threat to the innocent motoring public that the criminal element crossing the border poses. This task force was comprised of members from the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (H.S.I.), Arizona Department of Public Safety, Sierra Vista Police Department, Tombstone Marshall’s Office, Bisbee Police Department, and the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office. This operation ran from March 1, 2022, through December 31, 2022, and as a result of the collaborative effort, C.C.S.O. saw a noticeable decline in smuggling related pursuits by January 2023.
However, in September of 2023, two C.C.S.O. Deputies were seriously injured while investigating two separate human smuggling incidents. A pattern of smugglers recklessly endangering the innocent motoring public and public safety partners began to re-emerge. As a result of the well-documented facts that human smugglers pose a continuous and imminent threat to the citizens of Cochise County and the innocent motoring public, the Cochise County Sheriff, through the collaboration with the members below, launched the Safe Streets II Task Force Initiative. The Task Force shall do what is reasonably necessary to minimize the threat toward the immediate community and apprehend these dangerous drivers.
- Apache County Sheriff’s Office
- Arizona Department of Public Safety
- Benson Police Department
- Bisbee Police Department
- Coconino County Sheriff’s Office
- Douglas Police Department
- Huachuca City Police Department
- Navajo County Sheriff’s Office
- Pinal County Sheriff’s Office
- SEACOM
- Sierra Vista Police Department
- Tombstone Marshal’s Office
- United States Border Patrol, Naco Station
- United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations, Douglas
- Willcox Police Department
- Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office
