Blaine County Sheriff's Department now an Associate Member of Tri-Agency Task Force
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The Blaine County Sheriff's Department began its new role as an Associate Member of the Tri-Agency Task Force (TATF). Since the task force was first put together in 2015 the Blaine County Sheriff's Department has been a full member. Following decisions made and included in the 2022-23 Blaine County Commissioners budget they became Associate Members at the start of the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2022. The Tri-Agency Task Force (TATF) in 2015 was comprised of Hill, Blaine, Phillips, Daniels, Sheridan, Liberty, and Valley counties. Member agencies also included the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian reservations and the City of Havre.
"The task force basically has full members or associate members," explained Blaine County Sheriff John Colby. "The full members pay $30,000 to the task force and supply donate one officer and then there is a grant that matches that to pay the rest of the salary for that officer for the year." The reasoning for making the change from a full-time member to associate was done for a very specific reason, "As a full-time member we are sending an officer to Havre daily. They are conducting most of their investigations out of the Havre office or going to Fort Belknap, Malta, Rocky Boy, wherever the investigations take them," said Colby.
There has been plenty of concern about the increased drug activity within Blaine County and several folks have expressed concern about drugs moving through the county on the back roads or up north from the Canadian border. In moving back to an Associate membership Colby explains, "We keep our Deputy in Blaine County and gives the more opportunity to do those patrols out on the back roads, doing the patrols up north and some of the interdiction traffic that we've been trying to get going for a number of years." Under Sheriff Chris Adair added his thoughts, "Rather than having our Deputy in Havre, our guy is here in our county wearing our uniform working as a Deputy while still conducting the drug investigations."
When asked what types of investigations will be handled locally versus being turned over to TATF, Sheriff Colby stated, "If it's going to be a case that ends up Federal and requires traveling to different states and things like that. Those types of things will still be handed over to the task force." Sheriff Colby followed by saying, "They would still use our information and materials we collected to start the case." The Deputy would still be involved with the task force as they followed up with the case, "The Deputy could continue to work with them through it, assist them. The task force may bring them to assess information based on the Deputies knowledge. All of that would be paid for by the Feds."
"As an associate Member we still have resources with the Task Force. They will help us, we just won't have somebody there," added Undersheriff Adair. The Blaine County Sheriff's Department had 13 employees to cover the county at the start of the 2000's. That including four officers from the Harlem Police Department. Now the department has just eight officers, including Sheriff Colby and Undersheriff Adair. Moving to an Associate member with the task force essentially adds another Deputy to the serve Blaine County. "Even fully staffed, we are understaffed," said Colby. "For years we had a lot of serious crime in Blaine County, but we made arrests, put a lot of bad people in jail and we had a lot less serious crime. Nationwide the drug problem has just erupted, Fentanyl and Meth. What used to be pot is now Meth and Fentanyl. Heroine and Cocaine have been found in the area again and more often. All the drugs are coming back with a vengeance. It's a part of every walk of life and nobody is safe from it."
"Our first Fentanyl bust was here in Chinook about a month ago," said Adair. "Fentanyl is just starting to infiltrate Blaine County. I know it's crazy in Rocky Boy but it hasn't really got to Fort Belknap yet. It's just starting to head east." Sheriff Colby added that there have been a few fentanyl cases recently on Fort Belknap. "They haven't had any massive loads or anything like that, yet."
As a result of the increased drug activity in Blaine County, the officer assigned to the TATF had been working more and more in Blaine County as a result making the decision to become an Associate Member make even more sense. "We just decided we were better off keeping our Officer here, working locally than designating them to the task force," said Colby.
What makes things tough for local officers is all the speculation about drugs coming from Canada up north or through the back roads south, "These aren't guys from California running the back roads, they know what they're doing," said Undersheriff Adair. "In years past there were times we had three guys on a weekend night go down there, one guy spent the night. We know it's there, but to catch it is tough. We get people that say stuff, like they find parachutes up north that come from air drops. It's just like the south part of the county, you can't be there all the time."
Moving forward the Blaine County Sheriff's Department will continue to their very best to monitor and control the drug problem that is escalating in the county, including working with and assisting outside agencies in an effort to control the problem.
At the end of the day the most positive thing to come from this change is, "We have another deputy added to again without changing anything in our budget, I mean he basically just came back. There's not really any other way we could have adjusted our manpower," concluded Adair.
