Pinal sheriff: Drug cartel hitmen attacking rip crews

Paul Babeu

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu warned Memorial Day travelers in the western part of the county to be wary of drug cartel assassins.

Babeu urged caution on the part of his deputies and encouraged campers, hikers, mountain bikers and all-terrain vehicle riders using back roads, trails and campsites in areas known to be drug smuggling corridors to consider carrying firearms.

Monday’s advisory cited recent cases in Pinal County that Babeu said involved cartel hitmen, known as “sicarios” in Spanish, attacking the “rip crews” that steal drug loads from rival cartels.

In an email included in the advisory, Tim Gaffney, deputy chief of administration at the sheriff’s office, relayed a warning from the supervisor of the anti-smuggling enforcement unit.

Gaffney pointed to an incident in early April near Sunland Gin Road south of Casa Grande in which a drug smuggling suspect fired a shot at Border Patrol agents.

Several days later, Gaffney wrote, the Border Patrol and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office responded to the Vekol Valley west of Casa Grande where a member of a rip crew reportedly was shot while stealing a drug load.

In an incident Monday south of Arizona City on the Tohono O’odham Nation, Gaffney said the Border Patrol received a call for medical help for a person who was shot in a gunfight.

“During interviews it was confirmed that the cartel has hired sicarios — ‘hit men’ — to come and eliminate rip crews in the area,” Gaffney wrote. “These sicario crews have been advised to shoot and kill rip crews on sight.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department did not report any incidents involving drug cartel assassins in the western desert areas that it patrols.

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“We haven’t seen activity like that down here,” said department spokeswoman Deputy Alicia Cartwright.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, said in a statement that agents put themselves in harm’s way every day to stop drug smuggling and seize firearms and drug proceeds headed to Mexico.

“Some of this work is not publicized in the interest of prosecuting criminals and understanding their organizations,” the agency said.

The agency works with local law enforcement on several task forces that “focus on dismantling the criminal networks perpetuating violence in Arizona,” the statement read.

The Border Patrol referred questions about the Pinal County cases to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the Pinal sheriff’s office has referred cases from April but could not confirm whether the cases involved rip crews.

In the news release, Babeu said Pinal deputies arrested 21 cartel scouts and “many more smugglers” last year.

“It’s a distressing reality that President Obama is unwilling to protect the public from armed incursions across the border and well into Arizona,” Babeu said in the news release.

A reporter asked Babeu whether the travel warning and criticism of the Obama administration were related to his current campaign for District 1 in Congress. In response, Babeu said “it has everything to do with that” and he has been talking about cartel violence since he was elected sheriff eight years ago.

“It’s obscene to me the fact that we have this going on, that we have cartel members that literally think that they own the place,” Babeu said.