Overview
As violence escalated in the rural areas of Pima County, Sheriff Dupnik called for a new and innovate approach to combat the growing threat to both our citizens and visitors of Pima County. The Border Crime Unit (BCU) is a full time interdiction squad that focuses on both highway interdiction and desert deployments in an effort to detect, intercept, and otherwise disrupt criminal activity associated with a border nexus. While immigration enforcement is better left to our federal partners, the Border Crime Unit concentrates on crimes associated with the human and drug trafficking trades and the peripheral crimes resulting from each.
The BCU is comprised of two full time squads capable of deploying in very remote areas that were not traditionally patrolled. The unit is both intelligence and technology driven and can be deployed in 4 wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicle, and by air platform. Two full time Border Patrol supervisors are attached to the BCU to share resources and information with one another and the unit works very closely with regional partners in a collaborative effort to reduce crime.