Well, the Arizona budget is in and now, we’re hearing the fallout. Who got the funding they wanted and say they need? What got left out?
For State Troopers Association President Jeff Hawkins, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
State troopers have long been underfunded in Arizona — and they’ve been sounding the alarm about it for years: from outdated communications systems, to dilapidated rural facilities, to a shortage of deputies, to a general lack of morale.
Last year on The Show, Hawkins told The Show the situation was dire.
"Here’s the other one I think citizens probably don’t want to hear. That if you’re outside of Phoenix and Tucson, we don’t work the freeways from midnight until 4 or 5 in the morning. And to think that if you need our services, like you see a wrong-way driver or an impaired driver, or you see a road rage that’s happening on I-40, or you’re making your way to Vegas, there are no troopers to respond," he said. "So, you know, if I’m a cartel, all I have to know is I want to get my dope on the freeways from midnight to 5 in the morning. And if I make it through Tucson and Phoenix and get it to I-40, I can get it to the rest of the part of the country. I mean, I think that that part for me alone, as a citizen and someone that pays taxes — what do you mean I don’t have troopers working at night?"
Now, Hawkins said there were some wins and some losses in this year’s budget negotiated between the Democratic governor and the Republican-run Legislature.
Full conversation
JEFF HAWKINS: I think my membership will be somewhat happy with it, but not completely.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. And we’re going to talk about that. Let’s talk about a few of the wins. One of those I’m imagining is $9 million more this year for one-time vehicle replacements for DPS officers. And this obviously, you know, makes a lot of sense when it comes to people doing your job. Highway Patrol crashes a lot of cars, right? You have to put those into evidence, replace them?
JEFF HAWKINS: Well, you know, I think this may be a shocking statistic, but we were notified and or responded to, just in the first six months of this year, 733 wrong-way driver reports. And we lost several of our patrol cars to collisions with those folks.
But yes, we have car issues, maintenance issues. A lot of our guys don’t work in metropolitan areas, so they work out in rural Arizona where there aren’t car dealerships. So we need to make sure they have, good, low-mileage, reliable vehicles.
So it was somewhat of a win. We just need to work on getting a few more dollars for cars because the misconception is that all that money is going to Highway Patrol and it’s not. It’s going to our criminal investigations, academy replacement vehicles, vehicles for folks that repair our radios. They just get a small portion of the money.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. I understand there is employee assistance money in here for folks dealing with mental health problems. What’s that look like?
JEFF HAWKINS: Well, that was a win. It’s one of the things that we advocated in what our initial budget ask for, and it’s to support our employee assistance program. And it does provide mental health care, provides staff to help our employees, not just troopers, but also our professional staff, because they deal with a lot also. So, a real big win, and we’re appreciative of the department taking this first step, and then the Legislature funding it, and with support from the governor also.
LAUREN GILGER: What about these 100 positions for border enforcement? These are 50 detectives and 50 for the major incident program to do with border-related investigations, incidents, things like that. Does that assist the shortage of officers you’ve been seeing?
JEFF HAWKINS: Well, we didn’t get any new positions. They just reworded current positions. So the 50 positions statutorily needed to be provided as a ramp-up for our major incident division, which investigates the officer-involved shootings and any major incident that agencies would like to be investigated. The other 50, they just renamed things.
I would say boots on the ground, we didn’t get an additional body this year. It’s just — we call it MID. The MID got what was supposed to be coming their direction and the agency as a whole didn’t receive an additional body.
LAUREN GILGER: So what does that do to the kind of really big shortage of officers that we spoke about last year when you were on The Show? I mean, how many open positions do you still have today?
JEFF HAWKINS: We have over 400 vacant positions, which is catastrophic. I mean, the numbers are just astounding. And with our current budget, I’m hoping, before they made some adjustments, we were only going to be able to hire for attrition. I believe now we’ll be able to hire additional bodies this year. That’s how bad our budget was. And we dealt with the governor, and she was, her staff was trying to accommodate that, and they did give us a few more dollars so that we could hire for not just attrition, folks that retired or quit.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. What about when it comes to providing backup, overtime pay, things like that? Is there some wiggle room in this budget now to try to assist in that, especially as you’re facing a shortage of officers still?
JEFF HAWKINS: You know, I would say it’s not as big as we’d like to see, but there was some money put towards it. We have a program called Arrive Alive Arizona. It’s very important to us. We’ve invested money into it with what we’re currently seeing over a 7% reduction in fatal collisions and over 20% increase in arrests.
We’re going to try to see if we can get more money mid-year to try to keep that program going. It’s become very effective, and it’s also a force multiplier for us, meaning we’re working and bringing guys to areas where there’s already really low staff, and we’re bringing extra folks in on overtime. We do need more money, though. We got the bare bones, but we’re hoping we can make it stretch. What we have to assess, of course, hopefully nothing big happens.
LAUREN GILGER: Any raises this year for officers?
JEFF HAWKINS: No.
LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask you about a big issue here, which is funding for helicopter repairs. I know two members of the DPS Aviation Bureau were killed earlier this year in a helicopter crash in a very old helicopter, right?
JEFF HAWKINS: That’s correct. It’s 23 years old. A little disappointed. That was one of our asks and it didn’t get funded, was to replace the remaining 23-year-old helicopter, so that we didn’t potentially have some of the same issues with mechanical, potential mechanical issues. So, disappointed with that portion of it. That helicopter should have been replaced this year.
LAUREN GILGER: Are officers worried about going up in it? Are they still flying that other 22-, 23-year-old helicopter?
JEFF HAWKINS: I would say I have not spoken to my members specifically about it, but it’s definitely an issue, and it needs to be addressed. And it needs to be replaced. We need to be giving our employees the utmost confidence and going up in older helicopters. You know, I don’t want them to have that anxiety.
So, I think that’ll be one of our top asks next year is to try to get the remaining, to one to replace the plane that crashed, but then to also replace the additional 23-year-old helicopter. Actually, it’ll be 24 years old, by the time we have the ability to address it.
LAUREN GILGER: Final question for you, Jeff. I know that when we spoke in the past, you highlighted this kind of alarming statistic that 13 of our 15 counties in the state basically have no DPS trooper coverage between like midnight and 5 a.m. because you just don’t have enough people to be out on all of those highways all over the state all the time. Does this budget and these kind of increases that you’re talking about, these wins that we outlined, make a dent in that?
JEFF HAWKINS: I would say no specific money has been given that I’m aware of to address that issue. Now, I have to give the colonel of Highway Patrol some credit, and our leadership here at DPS. They’re trying to use what fiscal dollars they have to try to make sure we’ve try to get some 24-hour coverage out there in high-crash areas and in our dope corridors.
But I think the Legislature and the governor’s office needs to make a statement on making sure we have 24-hour coverage, and that we’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul to get it done. That we set a goal to get this done in the next three to six years, that we have 24-hour coverage.
LAUREN GILGER: But we are not there yet, you’re saying.
JEFF HAWKINS: No. There are some areas where there are people working at night, but not the entire state. And not what I would consider to be fully covered. I-40 is not covered 24 hours a day. I mean, that’s an — that’s a huge interstate going through our entire state. So, it’s a priority, and really, it’s just a priority to try to keep our citizens safe, and to be able to answer the calls when they may need us most.
LAUREN GILGER: All right. Jeff Hawkins, president of the Arizona State Troopers Association, joining us to talk about what happened in this year’s budget. Jeff, thank you for coming on. Appreciate you following up here.
JEFF HAWKINS: Thank you, Lauren. Have a good morning.
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