Since last February, members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors have been struggling over accepting, rejecting, and ultimately terminating a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security named, “Operation Stonegarden.”
This federal grant has been awarded annually to law enforcement agencies, particularly our own Pima County Sheriff’s Department, to assist with and cover costs and expenses incurred by the sheriff as a result of on-going law enforcement activities and programs along Pima County’s international border and other similarly underserved communities in that same area. The focus of Operation Stonegarden has always been to help our sheriff combat criminal activities that are rampant along our southern border, specifically drug, human, and illegal firearm trafficking, among other serious crimes. It should be noted that this same $1.4 million federal grant has been approved and accepted routinely for the last 12 years by the very same supervisors that currently serve as the board’s majority.
In a most surprising, and unsettling, series of moves, the board’s majority voted – after more than a decade of rubber-stamping acceptance – to first reject, then conditionally approve, and then to finally terminate the $1.4 million grant. Following the initial rejection in February, and after justifiable public outrage, one supervisor in the majority moved to reconsider accepting the Operation Stonegarden grant and attached five conditions to be met by the sheriff. The board accordingly approved, by a 3-2 vote, accepting the grant. Then last month, after it was determined by both the county administrator and even the ACLU that the sheriff had satisfied all five of the conditions, the board majority voted to terminate the grant anyway, by a 3 to 1 vote, with yours truly casting the lone vote to continue to accept the grant funds.
Over the past seven months, our community has heard urgent pleas from all of our area law enforcement agency heads, and most stridently and passionately from Sheriff Napier, imploring the supervisors to accept the Operation Stonegarden grant. Unfortunately, those urgent pleas from our law enforcement community were drowned out by opponents of accepting the grant, who stated that they represented the “community standards” of Pima County.
The overarching concern and question facing our community is what, after 12 years of the board consistently and routinely accepting Operation Stonegarden funds, has changed so dramatically and suddenly to now make that very same grant so unacceptable and deserving of rejection and termination? The answer is simple: politics.
Those who oppose supporting our sheriff and protecting our borders simply do not like – perhaps, even hate – President Trump. Terminating the Operation Stonegarden grant merely because of who resides in the White House is an egregious approach to conducting public policy, particularly when such opposition comes at the expense of public safety. Those opposed to accepting the funds seem to feel that they are “sticking it in Trump’s eye” and making some sort of impactful statement against President Trump and his administration. They could not be further from the truth, or from reality. The termination of the Operation Stonegarden grant was a very dark day for Pima County.
I will continue to support all of our law enforcement community heroes and particularly, Sheriff Napier and our brave deputies. All of us, too, must continue to support the valiant efforts of those whose selfless task it is to protect our citizens, our county, our state, our borders and our nation. Politics should never enter into the decision-making process of creating public policy when citizen safety and law-enforcement efforts are jeopardized.
