The marshal’s office is going into its fifth year as part of Operation Stonegarden with a $40,000 boost. The boost, part of $1.5 million given to Cochise County, is part of the $7.2 million given to Arizona to help state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies fight border crime as part of the operation.

The boost for Tombstone accounts for 62 percent of next year’s funds, which go into aefect Oct. 1 for Stonegarden.

“Every year we’ve gotten a little increase,” said Tombstone Marshal Larry Talvy. “The first year it was just strictly money, paying for officers to be out on the street. The next year we got vehicles, we got all-terrain vehicles. This year we got vehicle equipment such as in-dash cameras, deflating devices and license plate readers. And all this enables us catch these violators. And each year we get more and more stuff.”

The Tombstone Marshal’s Office is out there doing that same thing as the Border Patrol, said Mario Escalante, the public affairs officer for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol.

“They are part of the Stonegarden partners. And to us, having any other agencies, is like having another set of eyes.”

Talvy said since Operation Stonegarden was introduced, each year they have increase the number of car seizures, illegal immigrant arrests and also drug arrests or seizures.”

“There are many [trafficking] routes that go through Tombstone,” said Talvy. “In fact it has been increasing significantly because of the amount of pressure they put on Highway 90 and along 191 over by Douglas.”

The pressure put on those two main roads have forced traffickers to circumvent the check points and try to find new routes through rougher terrain, like the areas around Tombstone which is mountainous with limited vehicle access, he said. But with the grant money from Stonegarden they now can do patrols with ATVs.

And ATV patrols are something that Deputy Jose Olivas has become familiar as part of Stonegarden, checking known load locations, empty sheds and outhouses in the field where people may try to hide from checkpoints.

There more law enforcement officers are out there, the higher the chance of getting caught, said Olivas.

But before Stonegarden, Talvy said, “When we’d be out there in normal patrol of the town, if we got a vehicle with numerous illegal immigrants we’d stop them and turn them over to Border Patrol. But what’s happened now is that we’ve got the ability to put resources out there to catch more. Because being a small department we don’t have enough resources all the time. Especially during the day, we might have one officer on duty.”

Now with Stonegarden, the grant allows the marshal’s office to utilize more resources, like being able to pay another person to come out and help.

He said the bulk of this coming year’s boost will go to paying for overtime.

The marshal’s office has the means to provide the assistance that the federal government has asked for, said Talvy. “It all lays on the federal government to maintain the illegal immigration issue, but with us assisting them they had to find a way to provide more resources.”

So far this year, the marshal’s office has accrued about $25,000 in overtime. Talvy said without the boost, they could not afford to keep personnel and pay out of the department’s own pocket, because overtime is strictly used only for emergency cases such as homicides or domestic violence.

He said the average week for marshal deputies is 58 hours. But added to that is an average of 24 hours as part of Stonegarden, making a workweek into about 80 hours.

“With the federal government giving us that excess money it helps us put another resource out there and it doesn’t come out of our personal budget.”

Overtime may be in the bill for Tombstone but the boost isn’t only for that.

Mario Escalante, the public affairs officer for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, said “We provide the agencies with funding depending on what they feel is their need.”

He said Cochise County’s needs may be different from Pima County’s. “Everybody varies in what would help their department during the phases of this grant.”

As for the needs of the marshal’s office, paying for overtime is at the top.

“If they’re giving us this money, we better be spending it and spending it right,” Talvy said.