Customs and Border Protection released its national use-of-force data in October, but the agency has refused to provide sector-by-sector numbers that would allow the Arizona Daily Star to assess local incidents.
When the national data was released on Oct. 13, less than two weeks after the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, CBP’s Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske said it was part of his commitment to making the policies and processes of the country’s largest law enforcement agency in the country more transparent.
The data showed that use-of-force incidents, lethal and less-lethal, had decreased for a second straight year.
Assaults on officers had gone up slightly from fiscal year 2014 to 2015, but remained lower than in 2011.
The day that data was released, the Star requested Arizona-specific numbers and a reporter was referred to the national statistics.
The Star followed up with officials on Oct. 14. On Oct. 15 an agency representative said officials in Washington, D.C., would have to sort that data and it would take time because employees are busy preparing year-end statistics.
The Star followed up once again on Oct. 23 and was told three days later that the information would not be released because the numbers were not final. A reporter pointed out that the local data were used to create the national report, but the agency again said no.
Later that day, the local CBP office released the number of assaults on agents for the Tucson and Yuma sectors, but no data on how often agents used force.
The number of assaults on Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2015 — as of Aug. 31 — is less than a third of what they were in 2011, from 282 to 88 with a month left in the fiscal year, the data shows.
In the Yuma sector, it went down from 31 to eight and in Tucson from 251 to 80.
