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Crime tumbles in neighborhoods along border
David McLemore | Statesman.com | July 17, 2006

DEL RIO — From Tommy Vick's backyard, the Rio Grande is a picture postcard of serenity as it cuts through steep limestone bluffs, sunlight catching on dark water. Until recently, it was more of a battleground.

For more years than anyone remembers, thieves regularly crossed from neighboring Mexico at will, ransacking Vick's Vega Verde Estates neighborhood, stealing whatever couldn't be tied down and darting back across the river before police could respond. In November, thieves even made off with Vick's lawn tractor.

"They tied it to a homemade raft and floated it across on inner tubes," he said. "A tractor! That was nearly the last straw."

But officials say such crime in Texas' border counties is down dramatically this year because of initiatives that increased police presence fivefold in some areas. The lesson, they say, is simple.

"It shows we can take back control of the border if we can saturate the area with law enforcement officers and create high visibility," said Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan.

"But for it to work, it's going to have to be permanent. We have to take on the whole border."

Since December, when Gov. Rick Perry provided $10 million in state and federal grants to the 16 border sheriffs for a border-security effort called Operation Linebacker, Jernigan has been able to increase patrols through overtime pay and newly hired deputies. Crime in the Vega Verde area began to tumble.

Then with another $1.2 million in state funds, Operation Del Rio flooded Val Verde County and four neighboring counties with extra law enforcement officers for three weeks last month. The sheriff says crime came to a virtual standstill.

Operation Del Rio established the equivalent of 1,000 officers in the five-county region, according to Jack Colley, chief of the Governor's Division of Emergency Management. For Jernigan, that meant he could place 10 deputies on duty per shift, a fivefold increase.

"The Vega was eating us alive. Thieves hit there and were home enjoying a drink by the time we could respond," he said. "The additional money means we can patrol there every day. We also put up security cameras, and now the Border Patrol has begun making more frequent patrols."

Jernigan's office has provided no specific figures, but officials say major felonies — homicides, burglaries and thefts — were down in Val Verde County by three-quarters during Operation Del Rio. Nearby Maverick County reported a one-quarter drop in crime. The other three counties — Dimmit, Zavala and Kinney — experienced significant reductions, too, officials said.

Heightened law enforcement has paid off for Vick and his neighbors. Burglaries have virtually dried up. The sheriff's office had received 40 phone calls a day to report a crime. Now it's four.

Vick, a 15-year resident of the neighborhood, said the almost constant assault by thieves took its toll on the 60 households along this five-mile curve of the Rio Grande.

"They take TVs, water pumps, computers, radios, electrical equipment and tools, anything they can carry," Vick said. He estimates burglaries have cost him $20,000.

"I saw a couple of guys take an above-ground fiberglass pool from a neighbor's house and float it across to Mexico."

Some owners have abandoned their homes as a lost cause. Most homes show signs of the assault — repaired doors and windows, heavy locks, security lights and a string of trailers and outbuildings damaged by burglars in search of loot.

Vick said even that didn't help one night a few years ago. His wife woke him to say someone was in the house. They had taken pictures off the wall and stacked some electronic goods on the porch. By the time he arose and got his rifle, the thieves had run into the river.

The area has also seen more than its share of drug traffic. In January 2003, a gun battle raged along this portion of the river between Border Patrol agents and suspected drug smugglers caught running marijuana.

An estimated 500 rounds were fired.

No one was injured as agents took two Mexican citizens into custody and seized about 1,000 pounds of marijuana.

At times, the violence has spilled over from the U.S. side. In 1999, Vega neighborhood resident Patrick Bordelon was arrested and later convicted of manslaughter in the shooting death of a Mexican teenager he caught on his property.

A year earlier, Bordelon had been convicted of aggravated assault in the shooting of another Mexican man who was walking near his home.

"The Vega was just out of control. There were frequent shootings and burglaries every night," said David Wharton, a former Customs inspector now working temporarily as a deputy for Operation Linebacker. "Dopers were starting to use the abandoned houses as stash houses."

Last summer, the frustration got to be too much for law enforcement.

On Aug. 8, veteran sheriff's investigator Lt. Larry Pope responded to a burglary call in the Vega neighborhood about four houses down from Vick. When he got there, property owners were in the back, pointing to the Mexican riverbank where men were unloading stolen goods from a homemade raft.

Pope called the Border Patrol and was told it would be awhile before they could put a boat on the river. A call to Mexican officials was even less helpful.

In his report, Pope wrote that he said, "If I had a boat, I could get those things myself." A neighbor offered up his fishing boat.

"Nobody wanted to create an international incident, but the stuff was just right there, 30 or 40 yards away," Jernigan said. "So Larry took off his badge and gun and took the boat across to pick up the goods. It took several trips — one thing they stole was an air conditioner. But he got it all back.

"Texas law says that whenever a law enforcement officer finds stolen property, he's supposed to seize it so it can be returned to its lawful owner," he said. "And that's exactly what Larry did."

As pleased as Jernigan is with the successes of recent border security operations, his big concern is what happens next. Is the government's interest in the border steady, or will it fade with the next crisis?

"To sustain the successes we've had recently, we need to have this kind of response to border crime on a more permanent basis," he said. "As a society, we have to recognize that we can't ignore the border ever again."

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