OPERATION WRANGLER PUT ON HIATUS AFTER FIRST WEEK

A week after being announced in grand pomp, Operation Wrangler, Texas
Gov. Rick Perry s latest border enforcement effort, was already over.

Operation Wrangler translated into a one-week surge, from Jan. 22 to
Jan. 28, that cost the state $4 million, said Robert Black, a
spokesman for Perry. The operation is to be repeated in a few months,
Black said.

In El Paso, police Chief Richard Wiles said he understands that there
will be a one-week surge every quarter, putting the next one sometime
after March.

That s the last we heard about how it s going to work, he
said.

Asked what the governor expected to accomplish in a week, Black said,
The overall goal is to keep the bad guys off balance, confused and
reduce crime. They don t know where we re going to be and for how
long. From the intelligence we re getting on the other side of the
border, the confusion is prevalent.

The state was still compiling data from participating agencies around
the state last week and did not have a tally of arrests.

30 officers participating in Operation Wrangler checked 336 vehicles,
issued 159 citations and arrested 25 people. They also focused on
tractor-trailers, inspecting 28, issuing 16 citations and putting two
out of service for safety violations.

The El Paso County Sheriff s Office dedicated three to five additional
two-man units to the effort per shift, Lt. Gomecindo Lopez said, but
didn t have arrest statistics ready last week.

Operation Wrangler was announced as a statewide initiative involving
200 local police and sheriff s departments and 6,800 federal, state
and local personnel, including 604 Texas National Guard soldiers, some
as far away from the border as Texarkana and Amarillo. The intention
was to cut into border crime. All efforts are stopped for now.

Operation Wrangler is a continuation of Gov. Perry s border surge
strategy. Last year, the state paid for several short surges in law
enforcement presence along the border. Some of the operations yielded
impressive drops in crime in specific counties as much as 60 percent
but that was not sustained yearlong, nor did the reductions spread
border-wide.

Crime did not decrease in El Paso County or in the city last
year.

El Paso police Cmdr. Eric Shelton, who was the incident commander for
Operation Wrangler for his agency, said the state had the different
cities exchange information during a daily conference call for the
duration of the program.

They want to do those surges. We re trying to determine how effective
statewide surges are, he said.

In El Paso, the one-week deployment of extra officers cost about
$80,000, according to Wiles, to be reimbursed by the state s Homeland
Security money. The officers, working on overtime, were posted on
Interstate 10, U.S. 54, Montana and Alameda, and at the international
bridges.

The priority was looking for drugs or human trafficking. A lot of it
has to do with regular police work. You pull someone over for speeding
and you start talking to the driver. That s how a lot of crimes are
solved, Wiles said.

The Police Department also paid overtime for some special units, such
as the Stash House Unit, allowing for the seizure of 1,082 pounds of
marijuana Jan. 22. The bust would probably have been made anyway but
the overtime money allowed for more immediacy, Cmdr. Shelton said.

El Paso was allocated $432,000 for Operation Wrangler, which will
carry over to the next surge operation, officials said.

We were originally asked to spend the whole amount in a week, Wiles
said, which would be impossible.